The Electoral College - the way America pick their president and vice president - was put into place in 1789. It was to give slaveholders a greater national voice - part of a compromise with the slave states to keep them in the union. So back then, it was all about cheap labor - slavery. It was all about preserving the power of slave-owners. The Electoral College was never created to protect "small states." It was created to protect "slave states." The political problem slave states were facing at the onset of America: There were very few white males - the legal voters of the day - living in those states. Slaves made up large portions of the population in the South - but they weren't allowed to vote. If the president was elected simply by the majority of the votes in the country, the South wouldn't have that many voters, because they had such large populations of slaves who couldn't vote. Therefore, very few votes would be coming out of slave states to determine who the President of the United States would be - meaning the southern slave-owners would be marginalized during Presidential elections.
Rather than just having a popular vote choose the winner - like nearly every single other election on every level in America - the President is chosen by electors representing the states. The number of electors each state gets is determined by how much representation each state has in Congress: the number of Representatives plus Senators. For example, Florida has 27 Members of the House of Representatives and 2 Senators, thus the state gets 29 Electoral College votes.
When it came to representation in Congress, the slave states found a work-around to this "problem" with the so-called Three-Fifths Compromise, that would have three-fifths of the slaves in a state counted toward the state's population used to calculate how many members in the House of Representatives a state would have. The goal - and effect - of this was to give the slave states more representation in the House of Representatives than they would have had if only their small population of legal white voters was counted. When it came to electing a new president, the Three-Fifths Compromise also helped slave states, who had more members of congress per white voter than did the northern non-slave states.
So, slave states with small voting populations were given a louder voice in Congress, thanks to the Three-Fifths Compromise. Then, these slave states were given a louder voice in Presidential elections, too, because the Electoral College is based on that same inflated Congressional representation.
It is still all about preserving slavery in America. Chattel slavery may be gone but the Electoral College still serves as a system to protect the new "slave owners" and their "more humane" form of servitude that we now call it wage-slavery, and it's still all about giving them more power.
The slave states of yesterday have been replaced by the so-called Right-to-Work-for-less states of today. The Right-to-work-for-less Taft-Hartley law was put into place in 1947 by Republicans in Congress. President Harry Truman vetoed this very anti-worker legislation, but the Republicans overrode his veto, and it's stuck to this day. In Right-to-Work-for-less states, workers can opt-out of unions and stop paying union dues, but continue to collect all the benefits of a union like better wages and safer working conditions. What this does is starve unions of revenue, fracture organized labor movements, and ultimately assist the big corporate bosses who want to bust up unions. As a result, the average worker in a Right-to-Work for less state makes about $5,000 a year LESS than his or her counterpart in other states. Also, 21% more workers lack employee provided health insurance in Right-to-Work for less states. And workplace injuries and deaths are 51% higher in Right-to-work for less states.
If you were to lay a map of slave states from 1850, over a map of so-called Right-to-Work for less states today, they would be nearly identical, with the only exceptions being Kentucky and Missouri, which were slave states but are not yet Right-to-Work-for-less states. And just like the slave states of old, the Right-to-Work states of today receive a disproportionate boost in the Electoral College. Again, since the Electoral College factors in the number of Senators each state has, and since each state, regardless of population, gets two Senators, then these smaller, Right-to-Work-for-less states - the former slave states - have an inflated representation in our presidential elections. 139,000 eligible voters in Wyoming get one Electoral College vote. But it takes nearly 478,000 eligible voters in Pennsylvania to get an Electoral College vote. Wyoming is a Right-to-Work for less state, and Pennsylvania is not.
Isn't it time to end this. Nine states have passed National Popular Vote laws, which commit their electors to vote for whichever candidate wins the national popular vote, even if that candidate lost the state Electoral College vote. Those nine states that have passed national popular vote laws - including California, Maryland, and Illinois - account for 132 electoral votes among them, nearly half of the 270 needed in the Electoral College to win the White House. If this trend continues, and enough states sign up that their combined Electoral College votes adds up to 270, then the Electoral College dies just like that.
Adapted from an article here
Rather than just having a popular vote choose the winner - like nearly every single other election on every level in America - the President is chosen by electors representing the states. The number of electors each state gets is determined by how much representation each state has in Congress: the number of Representatives plus Senators. For example, Florida has 27 Members of the House of Representatives and 2 Senators, thus the state gets 29 Electoral College votes.
When it came to representation in Congress, the slave states found a work-around to this "problem" with the so-called Three-Fifths Compromise, that would have three-fifths of the slaves in a state counted toward the state's population used to calculate how many members in the House of Representatives a state would have. The goal - and effect - of this was to give the slave states more representation in the House of Representatives than they would have had if only their small population of legal white voters was counted. When it came to electing a new president, the Three-Fifths Compromise also helped slave states, who had more members of congress per white voter than did the northern non-slave states.
So, slave states with small voting populations were given a louder voice in Congress, thanks to the Three-Fifths Compromise. Then, these slave states were given a louder voice in Presidential elections, too, because the Electoral College is based on that same inflated Congressional representation.
It is still all about preserving slavery in America. Chattel slavery may be gone but the Electoral College still serves as a system to protect the new "slave owners" and their "more humane" form of servitude that we now call it wage-slavery, and it's still all about giving them more power.
The slave states of yesterday have been replaced by the so-called Right-to-Work-for-less states of today. The Right-to-work-for-less Taft-Hartley law was put into place in 1947 by Republicans in Congress. President Harry Truman vetoed this very anti-worker legislation, but the Republicans overrode his veto, and it's stuck to this day. In Right-to-Work-for-less states, workers can opt-out of unions and stop paying union dues, but continue to collect all the benefits of a union like better wages and safer working conditions. What this does is starve unions of revenue, fracture organized labor movements, and ultimately assist the big corporate bosses who want to bust up unions. As a result, the average worker in a Right-to-Work for less state makes about $5,000 a year LESS than his or her counterpart in other states. Also, 21% more workers lack employee provided health insurance in Right-to-Work for less states. And workplace injuries and deaths are 51% higher in Right-to-work for less states.
If you were to lay a map of slave states from 1850, over a map of so-called Right-to-Work for less states today, they would be nearly identical, with the only exceptions being Kentucky and Missouri, which were slave states but are not yet Right-to-Work-for-less states. And just like the slave states of old, the Right-to-Work states of today receive a disproportionate boost in the Electoral College. Again, since the Electoral College factors in the number of Senators each state has, and since each state, regardless of population, gets two Senators, then these smaller, Right-to-Work-for-less states - the former slave states - have an inflated representation in our presidential elections. 139,000 eligible voters in Wyoming get one Electoral College vote. But it takes nearly 478,000 eligible voters in Pennsylvania to get an Electoral College vote. Wyoming is a Right-to-Work for less state, and Pennsylvania is not.
Isn't it time to end this. Nine states have passed National Popular Vote laws, which commit their electors to vote for whichever candidate wins the national popular vote, even if that candidate lost the state Electoral College vote. Those nine states that have passed national popular vote laws - including California, Maryland, and Illinois - account for 132 electoral votes among them, nearly half of the 270 needed in the Electoral College to win the White House. If this trend continues, and enough states sign up that their combined Electoral College votes adds up to 270, then the Electoral College dies just like that.
Adapted from an article here
1 comment:
this article just proves how ignorant you are and your attempt to use propaganda to dumb down people, JUST like the union bosses do! Union bosses don't do anything, but they do STEAL BILLIONS from hard working people. I guess you didn't know that "delegates" are elected by "the people" to represent their vote in the electoral college. The problem with the electoral college is when the STATE demands the delegates to cast their vote for their party, INSTEAD of the actual popular vote winner.
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