(CNN) On Monday night, in a CNN town hall in Jackson, Mississippi, Sen. Elizabeth Warren made some news: She supports getting rid of the electoral college as the method by which we elect presidents.

"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 -- and every vote counts," the Massachusetts Democrat said, to raucous applause from the audience (The Democratic base is very much up in arms over the Electoral College, after Donald Trump won the White House in 2016 despite losing the popular vote by almost 2.9 million votes to Hillary Clinton).

How realistic is what Warren is proposing? And how much -- really -- would it change how candidates campaign for the nation's top job? To get some answers, I reached out to Sanford Levinson, a constitutional law expert and professor at the University of Texas Law School (Check out this talk Levinson gave at Harvard in 2016 for more of his thoughts on the Electoral College).

Our conversation, conducted via email and lightly edited for flow, is below.

Cillizza: Warren said she favors abolishing the Electoral College to make "every vote matter." Is that what getting rid of the Electoral College would do?

Read More