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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis fired back at Pete Buttigieg early on Friday over the former transportation secretary's renewed push to abolish the Electoral College, warning that doing away with the system would leave Americans waiting weeks to learn who won a presidential election. "Abolishing the electoral college would mean not knowing who won the presidency for 4 weeks while California keeps counting. No thanks," DeSantis wrote on X.
Buttigieg made the case again this week on MS NOW with Jen Psaki, arguing that the Electoral College "makes no sense" and should be abolished because it is a remnant of "some very arcane, parochial politics in the 1770s," and that every vote should count the same. DeSantis's post quoted a post by Fernando Amandi Sr. carrying Buttigieg's words.
DeSantis has made the same argument before. When Buttigieg first called for abolishing the Electoral College in an interview this summer, DeSantis responded that it was "fast becoming the moderate position on the left," adding: "The true commies want to abolish the US Senate as well." He has also repeatedly pointed to California's slow counting, writing in June that "Florida processes more than 10 million votes in a matter of hours. California takes days, or sometimes even weeks, to count the votes. It's pathetic, and it's corrosive to our civic culture."
Buttigieg, who served as transportation secretary under President Joe Biden and is seen as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, has long backed the change, including during his 2020 presidential run. He repeated it at a town hall in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in May, telling the crowd: "What if we selected our President by letting the person who got the most votes take the office, instead of the Electoral College?" He argues the change would force candidates to campaign everywhere — Democrats in Texas, Republicans in New York — and give voters in smaller states the same weight as voters anywhere else.
Supporters of the Electoral College say it protects the role of smaller states, while critics argue every vote should carry equal weight nationwide. A Pew Research Center survey found 63 percent of Americans support choosing the president through the national popular vote.
Ending the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment — approval by two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states, or 38 of the 50. There is also a separate effort, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, under which states agree to award their electors to the national popular-vote winner once states holding at least 270 electoral votes have joined. Eighteen states plus Washington, D.C., have enacted it, totaling 222 electoral votes. After the Democrats' midterm sweep, the compact has a potential path to 283 electoral votes if the party's new trifectas in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada join — though the compact would likely face legal challenges, including over the Constitution's Compact Clause.