Electoral College: vestige of slavery
Toolbox
Published: October 30, 2008
The Herald's Oct. 28 "Electoral travesty" editorial was right on target in demonstrating that the Electoral College undermines the basic democratic principle of "one person, one vote." Under the Electoral College system, winners can become losers and losers can become winners.
This has happened five times in our history, most recently in 2000 when Al Gore won the national popular vote but lost in the Electoral College.
Although the editorial was on sound ground in calling for Electoral College abolition, it badly misstates that the Electoral College was "created when the Founding Fathers sought to secure the power of individual states. It was a way of protecting small states from domination by the large states of Virginia" and others.
History proves otherwise. That the Founders sought to advantage small states is a myth. The dirty secret is that the Electoral College was devised, in large part, as a compromise measure to protect and advance human slavery.
If protection of small states was the Founders' goal, they did a very poor job. Under the winner-take-all scheme (awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most votes in the state) in effect in 48 states, the 12 smallest states that are effectively noncompetitive among the candidates (Utah, Wyoming, Vermont, for example) have only 40 electoral votes. The 13 smallest of these cast only 6 percent of the total Electoral College votes, hardly the bulwark envisioned by the Herald editorial.
The deepest political divisions at the Constitutional Convention were not between big and small states, but between free and slave states, The Electoral College emerged as a compromise to secure votes from Southern delegates determined to protect their slave economy.
During July 1787 deliberations, James Madison, a Virginia slaveholder, proposed the Electoral College compromise for presidential elections. Although he noted that "the people at large" were "the fittest" to choose the president, he found "one difficulty ... of a serious nature" that made direct popular election unacceptable. Madison noted that the "right of suffrage was much more diffuse in the Northern than the Southern states; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes."
In other words, the more vote-heavy Northern free states could outvote lesser voter populace Southern slave states. Madison's compromise was to tie presidential electors to representation in the House of Representatives.
Here's the catch. By the time Madison and his allies advanced their Electoral College compromise proposal, the convention had already agreed to count five slaves equal to three free men in order to increase Southern slave power in the House of Representatives. In other words, the Electoral College votes were based on populations that counted slaves (who could not vote), thereby protecting the Southern slave economy. Slave power rules.
The immediate effect of the infamous "3/5 compromise" was in the 1800 election between John Adams (no slaves) and Thomas Jefferson (200 slaves). Adams received 65 votes. Jefferson got 73 for which the slave states provided 53. If the slaves had not been counted, Jefferson would have lost in the Electoral College. As a result of the 3/5 rule, Jefferson rode into the White House on the backs of enslaved human beings.
Forty years ago, the Electoral College was almost abolished when the U.S. House passed a bill to end the College by a huge bipartisan vote, supported by Richard Nixon. The bill died, however, as Senate Judiciary Chairman James Eastland of Mississippi joined fellow racist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina to kill the legislation which would have greatly reduced Southern power.
Vermont had a great opportunity earlier this year to join many other states in reforming the Electoral College short of outright abolition by joining an interstate compact, "The National Popular Vote" (NPV), which would guarantee an Electoral College majority to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The choice of the majority of voters would be the Electoral College winner. No more winners becoming losers, and losers becoming winners, as happened eight years ago.
To its credit, the Vermont General Assembly this past April passed the NPV bill. To his discredit, on the other hand, Governor Douglas vetoed the legislation the following month.
The Herald is right that "the Electoral College is a crime against democracy." This vestige of slavery, America's Original Sin, should be abolished, or at least, reformed by the NPV compact.
It's a stain on our past and a threat to our future.
JEFF TAYLOR
Clarendon
The writer was a member of the Electoral College in 2000 and 2004.
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