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Fact Check: No, Democrats — The Electoral College Was Not Created Because of Slavery


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2019 Mar 20, 3:44pm   650 views  2 comments

by WillPowers   ➕follow (3)   💰tip   ignore  

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who is running for president, told a CNN town hall on Monday night in Mississippi that she wanted to abolish it because it meant that candidates avoided states that were not “battleground states.” Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) followed suit on Tuesday, telling CNN the Electoral College was “conceived in sin” to “perpetuat[e] slavery.”

The primary purpose of the Electoral College was to serve as a brake on populism. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 68: “A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment” necessary to select a person with “the requisite qualifications,” who would not use “low intrigue” or “little arts of popularity” to sway the masses of the people to support him.

Then there is Cohen’s argument about slavery. He claims that the Electoral College was preferred by southern states because it allowed them greater clout than a national popular vote. Northern states could, theoretically, allow all of their adult residents to vote (though few did at the time). Southern states denied slaves the right to vote — but were allowed to count them, due to the infamous three-fifths compromise, in the size of their congressional delegations.

That is part of the history of the Electoral College — even after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, when Democrats in the South continued to restrict the right of blacks to vote until the latter half of the twentieth century.

The Electoral College is clumsy and archaic. But its replacement would likely be worse. The simple reason Democrats want to abolish the Electoral College is to rig the system so that they cannot lose. It is self-interest masquerading as civic virtue.
Source: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/20/fact-check-no-democrats-the-electoral-college-was-not-created-because-of-slavery/

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2   🎂 Rin   2019 Mar 22, 5:47am  

Let's see ... Vermont has 626K residents. That's 626K out of 328M in the United States or ~0.2% of the nation's population but yet, this small rural, blue leaning, non-slave owning state has 3 electoral votes which is 3/538 total or ~0.55% of the electoral college.

In other words, a minor, insignificant state has more than doubled its output in the national election.

All it tells me is that the electoral system, even in its current configuration, gives small states a bigger voice in the national elections so that high urban density places like Boston, NYC, DC, Chicago, SF, and LA don't determine the entire outcome.

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