On the Electoral College

Yes, it sucks. Yes it skews politics in the US. No, it isn't ever going to be removed for a straight majority vote.

An argument I see often in my near daily reading of politics news and threads on various venues is that the Electoral College (EC) is bad, and it needs to be removed, and the president needs to be elected by a simple majority.

Of course, most people I see making this point are left of center (or really fucking far left) and lament that it is grossly unfair.

Of course it is fucking unfair. It was agreed to by the founders to get the Slave states on board with the constitution. And the original text of the constitution assigning 3/5 of a “person” to each slave within a state for apportioning allocations, and representation, is also a sop to those scumbags of the Slaveholding South¹.

Fast forward to today, slavery has been relegated to the dustbin of history in this country (although there remains a lot of hangover from the nearly 100 years of repression post Civil War, that’s a topic for a different day) and the mechanisms that helped codify slavery are still with us, particularly the EC.

Originally, the EC was a way to prevent the growing abolitionist tendencies in the north from quashing the “Peculiar Southern Institution” by guaranteeing a certain level of contribution to the national discourse. You see, in a representative democracy, you do not vote directly for your leaders. You vote for representatives² who then vote for the President. And the South’s demographics were skewed. There were few major landholders, more white people who scratched out a living, and a fuck-ton of slaves. They wanted the slaves to be part of the apportioning for representation without granting them any of those pesky rights.

So, the 3/5ths compromise and the EC were the bones offered up to keep the slaves states in the fold.

That is the back story. Slavery is the reason why we have the EC. So, why is it that the EC hangs on today, even 150 years after the end of chattel slavery?

Small States Like the Power the EC gives them

The US is a huge federal system, 50 states, all different sizes, and many sub demographics all in one big country. If we had open, popular vote national elections, clearly the will of the people would be heard.

This sounds desirable. Hell, it almost sounds noble.

But the fly in the ointment is the distribution of the population. People like to show the US as a map of counties that looks basically Red (as in Republican leaning, or locked in) with a handful of bright blue beacons. Hell, they use this to say that Democrats are an endangered breed.

Truth is, the population density in the Red areas is small. There are plenty of states that only get one or two representatives. That means Montana, a state with 1.1M people gets two senators, and one representative, whereas California with 41.7M people has 52 representatives. Hell, my city, San José has almost as many people as Montana.

Thus, the way the federal government is apportioned definitely favors the small states.

That, coupled with the skew of the senate (Montana has 1 senator for each 505K people, California has one for each 20.5M people, thus Montana has about 40 times the representation in the senate as California) makes it very unlikely that they would participate in ratifying any amendment to remove the EC.

Nope, not gonna happen.

The stupid argument I heard twice

A nominal Dem replied to one of my comments that the Republicans would be all in on eliminating the EC once Texas turned firmly blue³.

What the actual fuck? Are Republicans, the party of the White, Christian, Men demographic going to suddenly gain more members?

Uh, no. Ruy Texiera was prescient in his thesis in the early aughts that demographics are going to undo the Conservative quasi majority. He was just wrong that it was a short term proposition, and that the Republicans would work the edges to keep their electoral advantage alive.

Only one election in the last 25 years have the Republicans won a majority of the votes, the second GWB term. All the others they have been on the losing side of the popular vote.

No, Texas flipping would not change their mind. They would still be a minority unless they can figure out how to grow their cohort of the population as the Hispanic, Black, and other PoC grow to more than 50% of the population. And frankly, what they are selling by and large doesn’t map to those demos very well at all.

The Dems are NEVER⁴ going to advocate for the EC as a good thing. Because the electorate is moving to a mix that will be beneficial to them, and the EC will be the strategy for the ever shrinking Republican electorate to cling to for their Minority rule strategy.

I will say it unequivocally: The Electoral College is a holdover from the formation of the country that is rooted in the racism and slavery to keep the Southern slaveholding states to agree to form the union. It is a shitty compromise, and it should have been fired into the sun at the end of the Civil War. The fact that it is with us today is part of our shame.

The fact that increasingly it looks like the Republicans are relying on it to win the presidency even though they consistently lose the popular vote is a fucking disgrace.

1. Yes, there were plenty of slaves owned by wealthy people in the north, but the industrializing north never relied on the chattel slavery for their economy like the south.

2. It wasn’t always like this. Regardless of what the Declaration of Independence states, some people were more equal than others. Only landholding white men were originally granted the franchise to vote. Yeah, “All men are created equal” never was meant to mean Blacks, women, and “workers” without land. Fuck the founders is all I can say from 250 years out.

3. I was good, I didn’t laugh at this, but I did facepalm hard enough to need concussion protocols

4. A’ight, never is a strong word, and in the large tent of the Democrat coalition, there are likely some who will be hesitant to jettison history. That is a pretty fucking stupid position, but I can almost see it being valid.