Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College

by Jesse Wegman

The distorting mechanism in both cases was the same: the Constitution’s three-fifths clause. Under the clause, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a free white person for the purposes of representation. This gave the slaveholding states more representatives in Congress than they would have had if they were only counting their eligible voting population. And it gave them more influence in picking the president, because a state got as many presidential electors as it had representatives and senators in Congress. In 1790, for example, Virginia and Pennsylvania had nearly the same number of free white men, but thanks to its almost 300,000 slaves, Virginia had six more House seats—and thus six more presidential electors.2 Over time, this disproportionate weight was given a name: the Slave Power. And the slaveholding states’ bonus votes in the Electoral College were often referred to metaphorically as their “Negro electors.” It wasn’t a small bonus, either. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the slave population in several southern states approached 50 percent of the total population. The Slave Power made itself felt almost immediately, in the third presidential election, in 1800, which ended up sending Thomas Jefferson to the White House. That election is remembered today for its chaotic resolution in the House of Representatives, but Jefferson was only able to push it that far in the first place because of the extra, slave-based electoral votes he received from th...

December 26, 2020. Page 106.