Electoral College’s slavery roots

Many of us remember the arguments over the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment in the Bush v. Gore case 16 years ago. The problem was that each Florida county was allowed to determine whether a given ballot was acceptable. There were no statewide standards for interpreting ambiguous markings on the ballot cards.

Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the constitutional deadline, Dec. 12, did not afford enough time for implementation of statewide standards. So, they ordered Florida to stop its recount. That was an extreme solution to say the least.

The debasing effect of the Electoral College was not at issue in Bush v. Gore but maybe it should have been. This peculiar system allows state politicians to inflate the votes of some voters at the expense of other voters by awarding their Electoral College votes by the-winner-take-all method.

That’s not fair, but it’s constitutional, due to a desperate compromise with the slave-state politicians many years ago.

Our Founders named their compromise the Electoral College but it was really the Slave Masters’ College. Then, it became the Jim Crow College.

This story was originally published December 14, 2016 at 6:48 PM with the headline "Electoral College’s slavery roots."