Electoral College has shameful history and should be ditched

To The Daily Sun,

At the time the framers of the U.S. Constitution were devising the Electoral College as the mechanism for electing presidents, the only eligible voters were landowning white men. White men who did not own property could not vote. Although the Constitution gave states the right to decide who could vote, for the most part, wealthy white males retained the voting power.

One important factor, being talked about more in recent years, was crucial in the decision to vote indirectly through the Electoral College rather than by direct popular vote. Standard textbooks rarely mention “the real demon dooming direct national election….” (Yale constitutional law specialist A.R. Amar). That demon was slavery.

Southern white slave owners were disadvantaged because of a lack of eligible voters. Since the majority of their population was slaves, southerners complained that they would never win a presidential election by direct vote. James Madison proposed using the “three-fifths clause” as applied to the House of Representatives. Each southern state would be permitted to count slaves in their population with a two-fifths discount per slave because slaves’ worth was “debased by servitude below the equal level of free inhabitants” (Madison). Although controversial, the North gave in and the Electoral College was born.

The Electoral College has remained controversial — there have been 700 proposed constitutional amendments in 200 years. Yet it survives, despite the fact that it has never worked the way it was intended, slavery was abolished long ago, and all citizens have held the franchise for a long time. It defies the democratic principle of one person, one vote; it counts votes unequally; voters feel their vote is meaningless unless they live in a “swing” state; and it encourages voter suppression.

For many years we have elected our legislators and governors through direct voting. Why should we not do the same with presidents? Unfortunately, Republicans have favored the Electoral College since at least 2016, when Donald Trump was elected with almost 3,000,000 fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. The number of Republicans favoring the national popular vote fell from 54 percent in 2011 to 19 percent in December 2016.

The Electoral College has no basis in today’s world. Every reason it was created has become irrelevant. And why should we continue to support an immoral system that used black slaves to give political power to an already privileged white male class?

Jane Westlake

Barnstead