Why the Electoral College Really Matters

by Matthew Cannelora

The Electoral College was founded in slavery, and persists because of systemic racism. And the influence of the Electoral College extends far beyond the Presidential Elections every four years. Just ask anyone who watches the Supreme Court.

I’m sure by now that readers have heard about the Electoral College. In essence, what everyone has figured out, is that it keeps voices from being heard individually. But it has greater ramifications. The Electoral College was born from the slavery-centered Great Compromise, and the racial effects of that political reasoning resonate down to our present day.

And the Electoral College, founded on racial discrimination, has held hostage every other political reform our country has tried to tackle, from healthcare, to drugs, to criminal justice. The time has come to end the Electoral College . Because if we don’t end it, the College will end every Progressive Cause.

How the College Came to Be

Most history textbooks are written in a style that doesn’t really spark debate. Lists of names and dates and events, and not a whole lot of wiggle room on causes. Perhaps that is in part what has led some people to believe that the education system in this country is indoctrinating our youth.

But when a student of history digs beyond the history books, a whole world of WTF opens up before us. For instance, many people have heard the phrase “Great Compromise,” and perhaps may even know the context of the “Three-Fifths” compromise. What I’m about to say is not indoctrination, and is not open for debate—both of those apparatus were rooted in slavery.

To take us back, at the time of the writing of the Constitution, the Founders debated how to represent each state at the national level. Obviously, the more populous states wanted direct representation—the more people living in each state, the more representatives it got. Just as obviously, the states with smaller populations wanted each state to get the same number of legislators. The compromise was the bicameral legislature. That is, every state gets the same number of Senators in one chamber of Congress, two, and then the House of Representatives would be allotted by population.

And this is where race comes in. (And where some people now are falsely claiming that Critical Race Theory is indoctrinating our youth to hate America.) What cannot be disputed is that Southern Colonies, with disproportionately large slave populations, thought that their slaves should count toward their population when tallying Representatives in Congress. The Three-Fifths Compromise was an ugly work-around. Northern States agreed to count each slave as three-fifths of a person when taking the census, so Southern States got more representatives.

The white men in the South had more representation in Congress because they counted their enslaved populations. And Northern white men went along with it, for the sake of cohesion.

And this leads us to the Electoral College. Because the Electoral College votes are allocated based on how many total representatives a state has in both chambers, Southern States were not only able to elect more Congressmen based on their enslaved population, they also got a larger say in who would be president.

How the College is Still Race-Based

The political reasoning behind the Electoral College is still race-based. As respected historian Joseph Ellis noted last year, the Republican strategy is to maintain the Electoral College because they won’t ever win another straight-up popular election. After all, since 1992, Republicans have only one the popular vote one time—but they have managed to take the White House in three elections.

Because the demographics of the country are changing, according to everyone from Pew Research to PBS, the share of the white vote will continue to shrink in upcoming elections. And the Republican party does not think it can compete, based on its current platform, with the People of Color that will start showing up at the polls. The answer, they believe, is to maintain the Electoral College at all costs.

For as long as POC and larger population areas trend Democrat, the Republicans will ply their fear- and grievance-politics in rural areas in the middle of the country. Because as long as each state has two Senators, they’ll always have that edge in the Electoral College.

And this is no conspiracy theory. In 2019, the files of a deceased Republican operative named Thomas Hofeller were released. Those documents show a clear and deliberate strategy in the Republican party to redistrict states based on race, to make sure that the votes tallied would support ends favoring Conservatives. Race is being used to prop up the Electoral College in an organized, systemic fashion.

How the Electoral College becomes a Sharper, more Racist Tool

I wrote in a recent article about how the Texas voting bill has real implications for vote suppression. It’s easy to see that how votes are counted can affect who gets elected, and how those elected write bills. So we should be wary, at the outset, when those in power try to change how their power is challenged.

But on the national stage, we must be more vigilant, because the threats to our political efficacy can take more insidious forms. As we discuss how the Electoral College was founded by racist, slavery-driven motives, we can also see how the College is still being used to secure the voting power of white people—at the direct expense of People of Color.

With the passage of so many restrictive voting bills at the state level, we shouldn’t lose sight of the challenges to voter protections at the national level. In a recent decision, the United States Supreme Court took the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark Civil Rights bill passed decades ago. Writing for the majority, Justice Alito wrote, “the mere fact that there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or that it does not give everyone an equal opportunity to vote.”

We’ll leave it to the reader’s conscience and critical reading skills to decide if Justice Alito contradicted himself. I quote him to show the impact of the Electoral College on all other voting. Here’s the real tight circle of life on this: the Electoral College, founded in racist ideology, helps get Republican Presidents into office; those Republican Presidents have stacked the court with a super-majority that then votes in lock-step to eviscerate a law written to protect us from racist voting restrictions. End of circle.

In effect, the Electoral College is a means by which whiter, less-populated states get to have an out-sized voice in who is President. And then the Presidents so elected—not by popular vote, but by a shadowy mechanism of antiquity—put conservative Justices on the bench. Which Justices further rule in favor of yet more racially motivated voting laws.

Through-line—Electoral College, to Voting Laws, to Guns, to Everything Else

The Electoral College is playing a role far larger than it was intended to play. In fact, it was never even meant to keep playing the role it was written for. According to Joseph Ellis, again, “Even the Founders Hated the Electoral College.” It was never meant as the final word in electoral politics in our Republic.

And now it’s being used to settle debates that should be left to us, the voters. In our fractured political climate, more and more things are being settled by the Supreme Courts and by Presidential Executive Order. Congress is deadlocked on every issue. Even the Wall Street Journal is calling on Biden to literally and figuratively bridge the gap, because our lawmakers can’t come together on building roads and, yes, bridges. The one job every American can agree the government should do, and they can’t get it done.

So everything from abortion to gun control, voting rights to the environment, healthcare to drug reform—it all ends up in the lap of the President or the Supreme Court. And for as long as this current court rules along ideological lines, it’ll be 6-3 in favor of Conservatives. And no matter how the demographics shift—younger, more urban, less white, whatever—as long as the Electoral College is around, the rural white vote will continue to count more than it should. And those votes will continue to find their way into the Supreme Court—separation of powers, it seems, be damned.

If we’re not careful, we may be damned right along with them.