Guest Post: Electoral College, by Rev. Lorrie Owens, NAACP San Mateo 

The reason for the Electoral College (in the words of James Madison): “There was one diffi­culty however of a seri­ous nature attend­ing an imme­di­ate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffus­ive in the North­ern than the South­ern States; and the latter could have no influ­ence in the elec­tion on the score of the Negroes. The substi­tu­tion of elect­ors obvi­ated this diffi­culty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objec­tions.” Analysis by Wilfred Codrington III: “Behind Madis­on’s state­ment were the stark facts: The popu­la­tions in the North and South were approx­im­ately equal, but roughly one-third of those living in the South were held in bond­age. Because of its consid­er­able, nonvot­ing slave popu­la­tion, that region would have less clout under a popu­lar-vote system. The ulti­mate solu­tion was an indir­ect method of choos­ing the pres­id­ent, one that could lever­age the three-fifths comprom­ise, the Faus­tian bargain they’d already made to determ­ine how congres­sional seats would be appor­tioned. With about 93 percent of the coun­try’s slaves toil­ing in just five south­ern states, that region was the undoubted bene­fi­ciary of the comprom­ise, increas­ing the size of the South’s congres­sional deleg­a­tion by 42 percent. When the time came to agree on a system for choos­ing the pres­id­ent, it was all too easy for the deleg­ates to resort to the three-fifths comprom­ise as the found­a­tion. The pecu­liar system that emerged was the Elect­oral College. The race-conscious­ness estab­lish­ment—and reten­tion—of the Elect­oral College has suppor­ted an enti­tle­ment program that our 21st-century demo­cracy cannot justify. If people truly want ours to be a race-blind polit­ics, they can start by pluck­ing that strange, low-hanging fruit from the Consti­tu­tion.”

Editor’s rmk.: Republicans have realized that the Electoral College has been for the last 20 years or so, and will continue to be, their only chance of putting a minority supported candidate in the WH. The horrible results of that should be obvious to anyone, even Republicans.

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