Nathan and Florida

[Nathan Newman]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marco Anglesio" <mpa at the-wire.com>
To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>IIRC, on my autumn vacation through Virginia and Maryland, it was
>emphasized at least a half-dozen times that the electoral college was set
>up as a compromise to prevent the direct rule of the mob.

It's also worth remembering that the electoral college institutionalized the
voting power of slaveholding states, since a one person-one vote system
would have given the slave states much less control of the Presidency.  With
the electoral college, slave states were assigned state vote totals based on
the addition of 3/5 of each slave, while only white property holders got to
vote those electors.

So the electoral college was one of the fundamental pillars of racism and
slavery in America.

As well, as some scholars have pointed out, it helped discourage womens
suffrage, since in a one person-one vote system, any state enfranchising
women would have instantly doubled its voting power for President.  This
points to the general problem that the electoral college discourages states
from mounting voter turnout campaigns, since they get the same number of
electoral votes whether ten or ten million people vote in a particular
election.

-- Nathan Newman