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Electoral College & Slavery

Is Electoral College a product of Slavery and should it be abolished?

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  • Poll closed .
calamity

calamity

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Here's the take:

During slavery, the North had more voters than the South. The South didn’t want slaves to vote, but wanted to count them in their population totals towards the number of electors.

The Electoral College was their solution.

It is past time to get rid of it.

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Agree or Disagree?
 
I’d like to see the Blues win the electoral college and lose the popular vote before the Reds call for change.
 
Linc said:
I’d like to see the Blues win the electoral college and lose the popular vote before the Reds call for change.
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Imagine the outrage if Obama had won like that. :)
 
calamity said:
Here's the take:



Agree or Disagree?
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Disagree.

Regardless whether slavery figured into the reasoning for creating the Electoral College, the EC is still needed because of population disparities throughout the country. That disparity was the fundamental reason for the EC.
 
calamity said:
Here's the take:



Agree or Disagree?
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Disagree. The EC, much like the makeup of Congress, was a fight over what should be dominate, the State or the People. We compromised, the Congress was split into the HR for the People, representation decided on population, and the Senate for the States, representation being equal for all the States.

The EC reflected the make up of the total Congress and that compromise between purely Popular and purely State. It's a Republic, not a direct democracy.

The policy that was born out of the North/South conflict for the slavers was the 3/5's Compromise, which has long been ended.
 
Mycroft said:
Disagree.

Regardless whether slavery figured into the reasoning for creating the Electoral College, the EC is still needed because of population disparities throughout the country. That disparity was the fundamental reason for the EC.
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Why should living in a low population state increase the power of your vote?
 
lwf said:
Why should living in a low population state increase the power of your vote?
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That is my thought on it as well. Why should living in an empty state offer advantages over those living in more populous ones? Land is not worthy of voting rights.
 
calamity said:
Here's the take:

Agree or Disagree?
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The Electoral College was created out of compromise and giving everybody something they wanted. You had the Virginia Plan (proportional representation in the house and senate) vs. the New Jersey Plan (each state gets the same number of representatives, regardless of size). You had the federalist/Hamilton vs. anti-federalist/Jefferson. Their debate centered about whether or not, we can trust the American public to select their own leaders. Hamilton feared the public would pick a tyrant, demagogue, or a foreign agent as President. He stressed on the concept of wise men picking the President.

Slavery was part of the discussion, but not the entire story.

There's no way, we're getting rid of the electoral college. Even with the National Popular Vote Compact, electors still pick the President and Vice President.

I am open to the idea of electors being divided out based on the popular vote of the state, and have multiple rounds, if no candidate gets to 270.

After reading into the issue more, I am now under the belief that electors should be free to pick anybody they want.
 
calamity said:
That is my thought on it as well. Why should living in an empty state offer advantages over those living in more populous ones? Land is not worthy of voting rights.
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Part of the design was to create a balance between big state America and small state America.

The larger the state, the more electoral college votes and more power in the congress.

The smaller the state, the higher the vote per capita.

If you want both sides to play ball, you have to give the minority states something to grasp.

National Popular Vote would create a 1:1 ratio regardless of residency. The EC rejects that concept and wants to give the small communities a little more power.
 
The analysis in post #1 is not relevant. The electoral college was created not due to slavery, but due to the wide variety of state sizes. Small states of the North also had a chance using the electoral college. Nothing has changed as to variety of state size populations.
 
Robertinfremont said:
The analysis in post #1 is not relevant. The electoral college was created not due to slavery, but due to the wide variety of state sizes. Small states of the North also had a chance using the electoral college. Nothing has changed as to variety of state size populations.
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That was only part of the story. You also had the concept of whether or not, we can really trust the American public to vote for their President. Electors were created in order to counter the issue of the public falling prey to a demagogue or foreign agent as President.
 
lwf said:
Why should living in a low population state increase the power of your vote?
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Because that's the way the Founders designed it.
 
lwf said:
Why should living in a low population state increase the power of your vote?
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Because otherwise, people living in small states (especially rural people) would get zero say in the election. The entire election would be decided by people living in the largest metro areas. And anyone who could coerce New Yorkers into voting a certain way could sway the entire election.

The electoral college is designed so that everyone's interests are represented in the vote, not just the interests of the people living in the largest cities

Yes, large cities have more people, but all these people tend to have similar interests.

For example, if workers in Kansas were experiencing 20% unemployment, they would have no recourse to fix the situation, since their vote would be meaningless due to the fact that they were so outnumbered in population
 
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lwf said:
Why should living in a low population state increase the power of your vote?
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To decrease the power of larger states that would occur over smaller states.
 
lwf said:
Why should living in a low population state increase the power of your vote?
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It doesn’t increase the power of your vote, small states have fewer electors than large states, they still get less power of the election results

But the winner-take-all system, if that’s what you mean, is in place so that if 99% of the people in New York could care less about unemployment in Kansas, the interests of the people in Kansas aren’t completely wiped out
 
ReubenSherr said:
It doesn’t increase the power of your vote, small states have fewer electors than large states, they still get less power of the election results

But the winner-take-all system, if that’s what you mean, is in place so that if 99% of the people in New York could care less about unemployment in Kansas, the interests of the people in Kansas aren’t completely wiped out
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Voters in low population states still get multiple times the voting power of voters in high population states.

Shouldn't electoral votes be divided? If Trump wins MO, which has 10 electoral votes, with 60% of the vote, shouldn't he get 6 electoral votes? If Biden gets 40%, shouldn't he get 4?
 
The poll asks two questions but only provides for one answer. Fortunately I answered "No" to both.
 
ReubenSherr said:
Because otherwise, people living in small states (especially rural people) would get zero say in the election. The entire election would be decided by people living in the largest metro areas. And anyone who could coerce New Yorkers into voting a certain way could sway the entire election.

The electoral college is designed so that everyone's interests are represented in the vote, not just the interests of the people living in the largest cities

Yes, large cities have more people, but all these people tend to have similar interests.

For example, if workers in Kansas were experiencing 20% unemployment, they would have no recourse to fix the situation, since their vote would be meaningless due to the fact that they were so outnumbered in population
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Please explain to me how the interests of 5 million rural voters are more important than the votes of 5 million urban voters.
 
calamity said:
That is my thought on it as well. Why should living in an empty state offer advantages over those living in more populous ones? Land is not worthy of voting rights.
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Here is the actual question: Why would a low-population sovereign entity such a state or a country (which is what states originally were post-independence from Great Britain) and its citizens, want to join a union where they would always be out-voted and their interests always overturned by the more populated states?
 
lwf said:
Voters in low population states still get multiple times the voting power of voters in high population states.

Shouldn't electoral votes be divided? If Trump wins MO, which has 10 electoral votes, with 60% of the vote, shouldn't he get 6 electoral votes? If Biden gets 40%, shouldn't he get 4?
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Voters in small states have just as much power as voters in large states, large states have more electors.

What you’re talking about is the fact that voters in deep blue states, like New York, don’t matter if 51% of the voters have already decided on a candidate

Changing the winner-take-all system is a separate issue from dismantling the Electoral College- Voters in large states have the same issue here as voters in small states.
 
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