Electoral College was all about slavery

The candidate with the most votes should win. It is as simple as that.

Al Gore beat George W. Bush by over half a million votes; Hillary Clinton beat Trump by almost 2.9 million votes.

The Republicans have raised a number of specious arguments in support of the electoral college. One is that the brilliant Founding Fathers gave us our Constitution along with the electoral college and "does anyone writing negatively about the electoral college think that they are smarter than the Founding Fathers?"

To anyone who knows American history, this assertion is laughable. When the Constitution was written, 40% of the population of the southern states consisted of slaves. The southern delegates demanded slaves be counted in determining how many representatives each state elected. The delegates arrived at a compromise - three-fifths of the enslaved would be counted. The "Three Fifths Compromise" defied both logic and morality, but was necessary to obtain Southern support for the constitution.

When James Wilson of Pennsylvania later proposed the direct national election of the president, Virginian James Madison responded such a system would not be acceptable to the South, because they "could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes."

So Madison proposed the electoral college. Each state gets one electoral vote for each senator and congressman. Because the three-fifths clause increased each slave state's representation, it also increased the number of electors by a third more than their white population warranted.

Thus, a slaveholder who raped and impregnated one of his slaves (a common practice) not only added to his wealth, but to his state's political power as well.

The Founding Fathers left us stuck with the electoral college - a vestigial artifact of slavery. Brilliant.

Wiley Edmondson

Geneva