Pete Buttigieg wants to scrap the Electoral College and add seats to the Supreme Court, and he’s been saying it for years.
Quick Take
- Buttigieg called the Electoral College “undemocratic” and pushed a national popular vote as far back as 2019.
- He repeated the call at a Tulsa town hall in May 2026, saying whoever gets the most votes should win.
- His broader plan also includes adding justices to the Supreme Court and granting Puerto Rico statehood.
- Governor Ron DeSantis publicly pushed back on the proposal in August 2026.
- Ending the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, which Buttigieg admits won’t happen “overnight.”
Buttigieg’s Long-Running Push to Scrap the Electoral College
Pete Buttigieg, the former Transportation Secretary and possible 2028 candidate, has spent years calling for the end of the Electoral College. In a 2019 NBC News interview, he said, “Twice in my young lifetime I’ve seen the American people overruled by the Electoral College,” adding, “It’s time for that to go because it’s undemocratic.”
He didn’t stop there. In the same interview cycle, Buttigieg said, “one person, one vote, counting equally, is the fairest way to choose our president.” He wants to replace the state-by-state system the founders built with a straight national popular vote, a change that would hand outsized power to a handful of massive, Democrat-heavy cities and coastal states.
A Constitutional Amendment, Not a Quick Fix
Buttigieg has admitted this isn’t a simple policy switch. Asked directly in March 2019 whether killing the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment, he answered “Absolutely,” and said, “It wouldn’t be easy to do overnight.” That’s an understatement. Amending the Constitution requires two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states, a deliberately high bar the founders set to protect against exactly this kind of sweeping, top-down rewrite of how America picks its president.
The Electoral College was built to make sure candidates can’t just run up huge vote totals in a few big cities and ignore the rest of the country. Buttigieg’s own words show he understands the system is protected by design, yet he still frames it as a temporary inconvenience standing between Democrats and permanent control of the White House.
Same Message, New Decade
Buttigieg hasn’t backed off. At a Tulsa, Oklahoma town hall in May 2026, he told the crowd, “The candidate who receives the most votes should be President of the United States,” calling a national popular vote a “really good idea.” That’s the same argument he made seven years earlier as South Bend mayor, proving this isn’t a one-time soundbite but a core piece of his political identity heading toward a possible 2028 run.
Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign paired Electoral College abolition with another radical idea: expanding the Supreme Court. Business Insider reported in March 2019 that “democratic reforms,” including ending gerrymandering, Puerto Rico statehood, and a constitutional amendment to kill the Electoral College, topped his list of priorities as president. Fox News reported the same pairing that year, with Buttigieg pushing to “pack” the Supreme Court alongside scrapping the Electoral College.
DeSantis and Others Push Back
The renewed 2026 push drew fire from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who slammed Buttigieg for calling to eliminate the Electoral College and pack the Supreme Court during an interview posted to social media. Conservatives see the two proposals as connected: both would strip away checks the founders built into the system, one by neutralizing state-based representation, the other by letting whichever party holds power stack the courts in its favor.
Podcast Summary | The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Secretary Pete Buttigieg: The American Dream Is DEAD. We're Running Out Of Time To Fix It!
Overview
Pete Buttigieg argues that the American dream is statistically dying, with economic growth failing to reach ordinary…
— Podcast Quickie (@podcast_quickie) August 3, 2026
Buttigieg frames this as fixing a broken democracy, but the founders built the Electoral College precisely to stop a few population centers from dictating terms to the whole country. Harvard historian Jill Lepore has noted that reforming or scrapping the Electoral College is the most frequently proposed constitutional amendment in American history, dating back to 1803. That history shows the idea keeps resurfacing, but it also shows it keeps failing, because most of the country still values the balance the current system provides.
What’s clear is Buttigieg isn’t hiding his goal. He’s been consistent since 2019, and he’s still making the same case in 2026 as he eyes a future national run. For conservatives who value the constitutional structure that protects smaller states from being steamrolled by coastal power centers, that consistency is exactly the warning sign worth watching.
Sources:
thehill.com, floridianpress.com, breitbart.com, foxnews.com, brookings.edu
