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Civics lesson

A brief tutorial for pig-ignorant shitlibs. Not that they’re listening, or care.

No, the Electoral College Is Not a Relic of Slavery
Consistent with federalist principles, the Constitution gives the states control over our presidential elections, providing a check on majoritarianism.

Since the 2000 presidential election, the left has worked to undermine the legitimacy of the Electoral College, labeling it a relic of slavery. No doubt, if Donald Trump returns to the White House while again losing the popular vote, these attacks will be renewed with fervor. In fact, it has already begun as commentators denounce the undemocratic nature of the system. Just last month, the New York Times published a piece trashing the Constitution and asserting that the Electoral College’s only purpose was to protect slavery. These critiques are based on misconceptions and hostility toward the very structure of our Constitution.

The History
Our method of electing the president came about through compromise. The framers agreed upon a system that ensured the states had a say in choosing the president. The Constitution gives each state a share of electors, and the states decide for themselves how to select those electors.

At the time of the constitutional convention, popular elections would have favored the North because the North’s population of free persons would have outstripped the South’s. This dynamic is why the South pushed for a system that proportioned the electoral vote based on population, including slaves.

But nothing in the Electoral College system inherently favored slavery. You could have had an Electoral College system that did not count slaves as part of the population for the purpose of distributing electors. Thus, it was the counting of slaves in proportioning electors via the infamous “three-fifths clause” that protected slavery.

In fact, even if slavery had never existed, the states would never have agreed to a method of electing the president that stripped them of having a say in the matter. Protecting state sovereignty and ensuring less populous states had influence were key features of the compromise. Therefore, slavery may have been one of several reasons for the compromise, but it certainly was not the reason.

The Merits
The way state delegations elect the chief executive may have been the product of compromise, but that does not detract from the merits of the system, which include geographic representation and respect for state sovereignty. This is true even if you believe the Electoral College is a part of slavery’s legacy.

In a national election, in a country as large and diverse as ours, representation based on geographic segments of the population is far superior to the mob rule of a purely popular vote. We are not a monolithic society. Life and perspectives vary based on location. This is especially true when you consider the differences between state governments, which attract different types of people.

America is an enormous nation, and a system based solely on the popular vote would allow densely populated cities to dominate. This dynamic is particularly problematic when one considers that urban populations often want to impose their culture and policy preferences on others, whereas rural populations generally want to be left alone. Just think about how Democrats want virtually everything to be regulated nationally by the feds.

But regardless of this left-versus-right paradigm, it is simply better to give the different geographic elements of the nation and the states a voice on national matters to somewhat lessen the ability of the majority to steamroll political minorities.

Of course, “The Merits” are precisely why the Goosesteppin’ Left wants the EC—one of the most meritorious and ingenious innovations devised by the Founders to help stave off the rise of the “democracy” they correctly abjured as “mob rule”—tossed onto the ash-heap of History. With the lamentable 17th Amendment fully and firmly in place, the Electoral College is effectively the (former) Republic’s last desperate, flickering hope; once it’s been done away with, the disassembling of America That Was (ie, America as Founded) will be achieved, and its “fundamental transformation” into a tyrrannous shitrapy will be complete at last.

Lots more yet at the link, every last syllable of it fine, fine stuff. CF Lifers will be quite familiar with the subject material, no doubt, but you’ll enjoy reading the whole thing nonetheless, if only as a refresher-course. Lord knows they ain’t teaching this stuff in government schools anymore, and there’s a reason for it—a nefarious, unlovely, disturbing reason, to be sure.

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