Posted on 12/23/2016 4:38:48 AM PST by Kaslin
The New York Times endorsed the election of presidents by popular vote in the 50 states plus the District of Columbia. The Times resorts to playing the race card by arguing that the original reason for the Electoral College was to favor the Southern slave states:
The Electoral College, which is written into the Constitution, is more than just a vestige of the founding era; it is a living symbol of America's original sin. When slavery was the law of the land, a direct popular vote would have disadvantaged the Southern states, with their large disenfranchised populations. Counting those men and women as three-fifths of a white person, as the Constitution originally did gave the slave states more electoral votes.
This race argument is based on the essays by attorney Donald Applestein and Yale law professor, Aklhil Amar, who argue that counting each slave as three fifths of a person added to the population of the slave states, thereby giving the slave states more representatives in the House and therefore more electoral votes than it would have if slaves were not counted.
The Times is linking the argument for a popular vote election to labeling the Electoral College as a living symbol of slavery that must be abolished. We fought a civil war to end slavery, but the Times dredges up slavery as reason to endorse the popular vote.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
:: counting each slave as three fifths of a person added to the population of the slave states ::
Yet, now the descendants of slaves count as 5-5ths of a person and are accounted for in the total population of the South’ren States.
And Hillary carried how many precincts/counties in the South? Electoral College vote in the South seems to skew toward DJT.
The Electoral College is the glue to holds our Republic together in liberty and equality (too Francais?)
[Sorry for the length of my responses, but the topic of the electoral college versus national popular vote deserves more than a superficial glance.]
> More small states empowered by the Electoral College were in the North...
Yes. The New York Times has it backwards, probably on purpose. The Southern states with the most slaves, or that had hopes of expanding to the west, were the ones that wanted representation based on population. Has The Times never heard of the Virginia Plan and New Jersey Plan?
The main reason to have an electoral college is to have a country. The small states wouldn’t have joined the Union in the first place if the legislature and presidency had been based entirely on population. Likewise the United Nations (which has much less power over the people than a country does) wouldn’t exist if China and India could outvote us all. People won’t willingly give up their right to self determination and place their trust (and their fate) in large populations in distant places. That was true when the Constitution was ratified, and it’s true now.
The Constitution says, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress...” That formula represents a compromise between the large and small states, with the Representatives being based on population and the Senators based on equal representation for each state.
Race, race, race
Slavery, slavery, slavery
Whitie, whitie, whitie
Articles like this go to show the shallowness of their intellect. the race card has been played soooooo much this past year its a wonder they think it will do any good. its wore out and discredited at many levels. but then when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail
An understanding of the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan would invalidate the Times thesis that the power disproportionate to population given to the smaller states in the electoral college was for the purpose of protecting slavery. The electoral college is a reflection of the bicameral legislature with equal power being given to the Senate, which is not based on population. (If the electoral college isn’t fair, then why aren’t they calling for abolishment of the Senate too?)
It was the Virginia Plan, from representatives of what was then the most populous state (and a slave state) that proposed a legislature based entirely on population, with the Senate likewise reflecting the proportional population of the House. The plan from the northern state of New Jersey advocated the position of the small states.
“The New Jersey Plan (also widely known as the Small State Plan or the Paterson Plan) was a proposal for the structure of the United States Government presented by William Paterson at the Constitutional Convention on June 15, 1787.[1] The plan was created in response to the Virginia Plan, which called for two houses of Congress, both elected with apportionment according to population.[2] The less populous states were adamantly opposed to giving most of the control of the national government to the more populous states, and so proposed an alternative plan that would have kept the one-vote-per-state representation under one legislative body from the Articles of Confederation.” [Wikipedia] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Plan
“At the time of the convention, the South was growing more quickly than the North, and Southern states had the most extensive Western claims. South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia were small in the 1780s, but they expected growth, and thus favored proportional representation. New York was one of the largest states at the time, but two of its three representatives (Hamilton being the exception) favored an equal representation per state, as part of their desire to see maximum autonomy for the states.” [Wikipedia] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise
Cotton is “a living symbol of slavery that must be abolished”!
NYT staff & readership MUST stop wearing Evil Cotton or using it in washcloths or bath towels!
So are Watermelons and Fried Chicken and Hush Puppies. None for you, NYT crowd!
/s
Funny that there are no “circles in or around the Permian Basin...
Locked and loaded.
Easy peasy.
If we could only “scrap” the NYT.
:: Articles like this go to show the shallowness of their intellect ::
Nash, they are just too damn lazy to be critical.
> The Electoral College is the glue to holds our Republic together in liberty and equality (too Francais?)
Yes. We wouldn’t have a country if it weren’t for the Connecticut Compromise, which combined the large-state supported House (based on population) and the small-state supported Senate (with equal representation for each state). The electoral college reflects that compromise.
It was the Southern slave states that favored representation on the basis of population, and the Northern states that wanted equal representation for each state. This is well-known history to persons with a serious interest in the subject. I have to believe that some people at The New York Times know that, but have slanted their accounts to reflect political biases.
I’m considering composing a short-text based on my “glue that holds the Republic together” statement. Input is appreciated.
My first question is (and I truly am perplexed on this):
Do the electors ONLY confirm the POTUS race or do they not also, confirm the federal HoR and Senate race votes?
Might I use your post as partial fodder for mt text regarding the EC?
Scrap the Electoral College and they can enslave the whole nation under corrupt government then what ever the powers that be dream up for us to do for them.
There is no reason to get rid of the electoral college; any attempt to do so should force many more rural states to band together so they’d still have a voice - so the old Dixie could become one giant California-like state, the Midwest another, a third in the Southwest, and then they’d be heard.
On a more practical level, the imported Third Worlders (Hispanics, Middle Eastern Muslims, and Asians) are being trafficked to dying areas to create a false economy based on wealth re-distribution of taxpayer dollars. In nearby Newark NJ they had to import Third Worlders just to prepare the 24-hour fast food for the local black population that didn’t want the jobs doing it themselves.
Scrap the New York Times. It is a worthless rag.
If the large population areas were allowed to control the country, it would all be like, ..., Detroit.
It is only when Democrats lose the Electoral Vote that they put out the word through their propaganda organs that the Electoral College needs to be abolished. When they manage to steal an election, everything works as designed. The Democrat Party is a cancer upon the body of the United States of America. And if not excised, it will do to the United States of America as cancer does to all hosts it infects, kill it. Your choice, America. Either the Democrat Party dies or you do.
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