Defending the Truth

What reason do you have to hold this belief?

As I had explained earlier, the Federalist Papers, written by the authors of the Constitution, clearly state that the Electoral College was created so that the men most informed, most qualified, and most able to deliberate be the ones who decide the president. This is a very different reason from the one you have stated.

Even though you have educated elctoral college members voting it doesn't mean that the general public doesn't vote. This is where the slave vote comes into play. The southern states got more electoral votes because of the slave owners in the south.

That is the reason I feel that the electoral college was created. Slaves.

The point of the electoral college was never to prevent the general public from voting and influencing the election; it was to make a different kind of candidate get elected: one who appeals to people who really know about politics and have time to think about the issues. Besides, it isn't necessary to create a special body of elected people just to make the votes slave-holding states count for more.

I do not understand why you do not trust the words of the authors of the Constitution in The Federalist Papers. They do not say the electoral college was created because of slaveholding states; they say this:

"the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations."

Without the electoral college they wouldn't have been able to account for the slave population in the south. If 5 slaves counted for 3 actual votes, who would get to vote with those 3 extra votes without the electoral college?

The electoral college was formed out of racism. Now it is just a manner manipulate the popular vote.

The north was very opposed to slavery. Would northerners like Hamilton and Madison have made themselves the primary supporters and authors of the Constitution if it was designed to preserve slavery and make the votes of slaveholding states worth more than the votes of non-slaveholding states?

And why would they have decided that individuals must be elected to a college, just to make the votes of slaveholding states count for more? Why not just have states vote, and the value of each state's vote is based on the number of citizens and slaves in that state? That seems both the most obvious and simple solution. But that's not what they did. They said that each state would elect individual college members, and those college members would use their own intelligence and their own reasoning ability to decide which candidate to vote for.

And what is your response to the Federalist Papers? The Federalist Papers were written by the authors of the Constitution in an effort to explain why each part of the Constitution is a good thing. These Papers agree with what I've said, and make no mention of what you said. So are you suggesting that Madison and Hamilton were lying, and they really wanted slavery to continue forever? Do you think they used the Federalist Papers to deceive people? How do you explain this?

I know what you think the electoral college is for. But how do you justify that belief?

That is exactly what happened. Because of the electoral college each state got to represent not only the number of citizens but also the number of slaves. The answer is in your question. My question is how in the hell would they count those slave votes without the electoral college? I think it was a compromise the North would have made to remain united and at peace.

Of course they would have said it was because of X or Y. Who in the hell would want to come out and say "I support the electoral college because I am racist". Without the electoral college there would be no way to fairly allocate the votes the slaves represent.

Instead of saying, "Virginia gets 20 electoral college members", they would have said, "Viriginia gets 20 votes toward the president." Those 20 votes could either be split up depending on the percentage of the voters who voted each way, or they could all go to the candidate with the most votes, similar to our current system. This process is far simpler because individual people do not have to be elected. It would also be considered more purely "democratic."

Furthermore, you look at it the wrong way. The 3/5 of all other persons was a compromise. Those from the southern states wanted slaves to count as a full person, for that truly reflects the number of people in the state. Those opposed to slavery wanted slaves not to count, in order to discourage slavery. The 3/5 of a person decision did have to do with race, but it is a seperate decision from the electoral college.

That's not what they'd say at all. Slavery was very popular among many states at the time the Constitution was written. Why should they hide their desire to retain it? The founders publically denounced slavery over and over. These links show only a few of the numerous times the authors of the Constitution spoke against slavery:

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/econo...s/slavery.html
http://www.vindicatingthefounders.co...asp?document=9
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/found...v1ch15s24.html

Abraham Lincoln said Alexander Hamilton, the guy who actually wrote Federalist Paper #68, was among "the most noted anti-slavery men of those times".

So they must have been darn good liars, then; they left a legacy of opposing slavery and working against it. They professed that blacks had equal thinking capacity and deserved freedom. But secretly they were racist? That doesn't make a lot of sense.

Besides, the explanation for the Electoral College listed in the Federalst Papers would have been incredibly unpopular: it is basically what I have said, that having the majority elect the president won't be as good as having a small group of informed people elect the president. It's an unpopular reason to have the college, but they wrote it anyway.

I really do not see how you can come to the conclusion that Hamilton, Madison, and Jay were even a little racist, or that the electoral college was created to preserve slavery.

But where did your belief originate? There is little evidence that the founders were racist, and the concept of electing a group of people to decide the president does not appear to be linked to race at all. So how did you ever get the belief that the Electoral College was established for race reasons in the first place?

I find your view interesting Jaxian. I will have to do more reading about the Federalist Papers and get back to you.

It's great to see IRV doing well, but I am a little pesimistic as to the future of it. It is a great idea, but thinking realistically... It will never happen. I love the concept of getting other parties in the mix, I just hope you're not riding all your hopes on this, Hev.

My only hope for American democracy is to end the two party strangle hold. If IRV can achieve it, great! If not we must look for another means.