Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) took her beef with the Electoral College a step further over the weekend, expressing her hope to be the “last American president elected by the Electoral College.”
Warren, a longtime critic of the Electoral College, posted a clip of a campaign event where she took a question from an attendee who asked for her thoughts on the Electoral College.
“I want to get rid of it,” Warren said to applause, outlining her goal to “be the last American president elected by the Electoral College.”
“So here’s my goal. My goal is to get elected and then be the last American president elected by the Electoral College,” she told the crowd.
“I want the second term to be that I got elected by direct vote. Popular vote. I just think this is how a democracy should work. Call me old-fashioned, but I think the person who gets the most votes should win,” she continued:
This is far from the first time the presidential hopeful has expressed her disillusion with the age-old system, which has served as a safeguard against mob rule – i.e., densely populated coastal areas effectively determining the course of the nation – in the United States.
She said during a CNN town hall in March:
[W]e need to make sure that every vote counts, and you know, I want to push that right here in Mississippi because I think this is an important point. You know, come a general election, presidential candidates don’t come to places like Mississippi. Yeah. They also don’t come to places like California and Massachusetts, right? Because we’re not the battleground states. Well, my view is that every vote matters, and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has joined Warren in calling for the extinction of the system.
“Abolish the Electoral College,” he tweeted in July:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who endorsed Sanders, has also mocked the system that has, election after election, given flyover America a proportional voice.
“All right, everyone. It’s been a minute. We’re coming to you live from the Electoral College,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a video in August, showing empty plainlands.
“Many votes here, as you can see. Very efficient way to choose leadership of the country. I mean, I can’t think of any other way. Can you?” she added:
President Trump ultimately defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 by surpassing the 270 Electoral College threshold, amassing 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227.
Trump critics, leftist critics, particularly, have attempted to use his popular vote loss to delegitimize his presidency, despite the fact that he is not the first candidate to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. Former President George W. Bush, for example, won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000.