Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) argued that the popular vote should take precedence in a presidential election, just after he lost the popular vote to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in Iowa.
“I think that the Electoral College has run its course and in the future, we ought to pick our presidents in a way that makes sure that the one who got the most votes actually gets to be president,” Buttigieg said in a CNN town hall on Thursday.
Buttigieg won the Iowa caucuses with 564 state delegate equivalents, while Sanders only won 562.
But Sanders won the popular vote, with a 6,114 vote lead in the first vote and a 2,631 vote lead in the second vote.
Since first announcing his campaign for president, Buttigieg has joined prominent Democrats calling for an end to the electoral college after failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lost to President Donald Trump in 2016.
Buttigieg made a splash in liberal circles after he boldly called for the end to the electoral college while announcing his run for president.
“We can’t say it’s much of a democracy when twice in my lifetime the Electoral College has overruled the American people,” he said at his campaign kickoff rally in South Bend, Indiana, in April.
Buttigieg called for a constitutional amendment to change the way that federal elections are run, calling the electoral college “undemocratic.”
“I think most Americans, of any party, ought to be able to get on board with the idea that one person, one vote, counting equally, is the fairest way to choose our president,” he said in June.
Trump has argued in favor of the electoral college.
“With the Popular Vote, you go to just the large States – the Cities would end up running the country,” Trump wrote on Twitter in March. “Smaller States and the entire Midwest would end up losing all power – and we can’t let that happen.”
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