The Real Reason the Electoral College Exists

/electoral-college-history-slavery

  • The Troubling Reason the Electoral College Exists | TIME
    http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery
    https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/constitution.jpeg?quality=85&w=1012

    The Founding Fathers had something particular in mind when they set up the U.S. presidential election system: slavery

    As Americans await the quadrennial running of the presidential obstacle course now known as the Electoral College, it’s worth remembering why we have this odd political contraption in the first place. After all, state governors in all 50 states are elected by popular vote; why not do the same for the governor of all states, a.k.a. the president? The quirks of the Electoral College system were exposed this week when Donald Trump secured the presidency with an Electoral College majority, even as Hillary Clinton took a narrow lead in the popular vote.

    #états-unis #trump #collège_électoral #élections #système_électoral

    • Akhil Reed Amar teaches constitutional law at Yale University. This essay borrows from his recently published book, The Constitution Today.

      At the Philadelphia convention, the visionary Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.

      (...) If the system’s pro-slavery tilt was not overwhelmingly obvious when the Constitution was ratified, it quickly became so. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency.

      #pouvoir_de_vote #États-Unis #histoire #esclavage