Does everyone understand the reason behind the Electoral College? In case you have missed it, it was to give more election power to the slave states than the popular vote would give them.
How? Because the House of Representatives, thus the number of votes in the Electoral College, were apportioned not by how many people could or would vote, specifically eligible voters. Nay, nay. They were apportioned by the population by counting slaves as 3/5 of a “human” for population purposes. Thus, the slave states were given more representatives per “eligible voter”. Not only did this give the slave states an inordinate representation in the House of Representatives but increased their participation in the Electoral College as a result.
The argument was that because of the makeup of the United States Senate, where each state received two Senators, this advantage was offset by an increased representation by the overrepresentation from smaller states.
- As an aside, keep in mind that the makeup of the United States Senate was supposed to be a separate body, chosen by the state legislators, to represent States and States Rights and to offset the “People’s House” much like the House of Lords offsets the House of Commons in England. Senators were never elected by a vote of people but selected by the state government. Only later was that changed.
The small state offset seemed to be in play in the only time the Electoral College overrode the popular vote during the slave-owning period of America when John Quincy Adams was elected over Andrew Jackson.
In all, the popular vote has been thwarted on five occasions; John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison, Rutherford B. Hayes, George W. Bush, and our current resident. While I cannot speak for the current resident, yet, only George W. Bush was reelected to a second term and all of the above presidents were historically considered mediocre at best. So much for the argument in favor of the Electoral College.
The fact that the Electoral College has overridden the will of the people in two of the last three administrations points to the likelihood that it will influence the Presidential Election process on a more regular basis as time goes on. This is due to demographics. As populations leave the predominately conservative strongholds, such as the south and the mid-west, these states theoretically lose electoral votes in the House of Representative. In fact, in many states, a minimal number of representatives already represents them so that is not the issue. What is the issue is that each of these states gets an automatic small state offset of two senatorial votes. Thus they have always garnered extra voting power.
Moreover, as I have written before, the Electoral College will not go away because these over-entitled states are the very states who need to ratify a Constitutional Amendment to get rid of it. They will not give up their power regardless of how much they pretend to believe in one person – one vote.
No the Electoral College is here to stay, regardless of all of the bandying about by various Presidential candidates. We would not accept such a crass power grab from a third-world country’s election process but we accept it here. The Electoral College is our last homage to our Slave past.
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