Fearful of being outnumbered, Madison pushed for the electoral college,
and championed representative government by state as a solution.

Seats in the House of Representatives would be based on population size,
and delegates from slave-holding states sought to have slaves included in the count for total population.

Those opposed recognized this would mean fewer seats from the smaller states.

And so the states made several compromises.
The first, known as the #Three-#Fifths Compromise, was a racist, manipulative policy that outlined the rules for legislative representation and taxation of the states.
It read, “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”

Enslaved black people, ordinarily only regarded as property,
were declared three fifths of a person in order to strengthen the power of the white men who kept them in bondage.
It would remain that way until the 14th Amendment granted citizenship to slaves in 1868.

The second compromise was the advent of the #electoral #college in deciding the general election. Instead of popular votes, electors would make selections on behalf of their states.

The way electors were chosen varied by state, but they were usually elected officials and party leaders, as is true today.
The number of electors for each state was set to equal its total number of congressional representatives:
two senators and however many representatives it had in the house. (In 1961, the District of Columbia would be awarded three electoral votes as well.)

There is no federal law that governs how electors cast their vote
— this, too, is determined by state law, both now and then.
Candidates had to receive a majority of electoral votes to win an election.
So in deciding how to elect the leaders of government, slaveholding states were advantaged by the size of their slaveholding populations.

Virginia, which boasted the largest total population, saw manp ty of its own occupy the White House in the early years of presidency, including Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Madison.
The impact of the electoral college and the dominance of southern electors is even clearer when considering how many presidents were slave owners themselves
— 12 in all, including eight who owned slaves while in office.

Still, many others endorsed “states rights,” coded language that’s still used today with the introduction of emerging voter suppression laws, designed to alienate and disenfranchise voters.

Since its creation, there have been four elections where the electoral college winner did not receive the popular vote.
Two have come this century:
the 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush and the 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Both of these instances have drawn the ire of electoral college critics, who say the system is outdated and should be replaced with “one person, one vote” direct elections that truly represent American democracy

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/electoral-college-slavery-three-fifths-compromise-history

American democracy is in a fragile place.

If you haven’t figured that out by this point, you haven’t been paying attention.

The dangers are coming from all sides.

Donald Trump has just survived his second apparent assassination attempt.
The governor of Ohio has had to call in the state police to monitor a spate of bomb threats to local schools after falsehoods about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in the area began circulating.
That’s aside from all the usual mass shootings, Proud Boy marches and the rest of it.

️But inside this fomenting turmoil,
the most dangerous spot in the whole country,
the rock on which the American state may well founder, is the quiet congressional district of #Omaha, Nebraska, the very heart of the American heartland.

Omaha is dangerous, not in itself, but due to the entirely weird position it inhabits inside the #electoral #college.

In one of those strange freaks of American politics, Nebraska has a split electoral college vote,

and for the past few elections the city of Omaha has reliably voted Democrat.

The other two electoral districts vote solidly Republican.

Ordinarily, this little hiccup in the system wouldn’t matter much.

But 2024 represents a uniquely precarious moment.

As it stands -- once you remove the settled Democrat and Republican states -- the most direct path to a Kamala Harris victory is by way of #Wisconsin, #Michigan and #Pennsylvania.

With those three states, she would receive
exactly 270 electoral college seats, the number she needs to win.

In that case, she would win if, and only if,
she holds that one electoral college vote in the congressional district of Omaha, Nebraska.

The Omaha congressional district hasn’t mattered much due to a kind of bipartisan #detente, a balance of power.

Nebraska is not the only state that splits its electoral system by district.

So does Maine.

And Maine, while mostly Democratic, has a similarly reliable Republican constituency,
which will almost certainly give its electoral college seat to Trump.

If Nebraska changes its system to give Trump an advantage, Maine has said it will reciprocate in order to cancel out any attempt to shift the balance of power.

Largely for this reason, the inclination to change the law has been muted in Nebraska -- even though Republicans control the statehouse.

Having a contested electoral college seat also makes Nebraska slightly more worthy of attention from both national parties,
meaning the current division is, to some small degree, in the interests of Nebraskans on the whole.

Yet that state of detente may be set to unravel.

The Maine legislature has now gone out of session

And last Friday, #Jim #Pillen, the governor of Nebraska, made a public statement:

“I strongly support statewide unity and joining 48 other states by awarding all five of our electoral college votes to the presidential candidate who wins the majority of Nebraskans’ votes,” he said.

“As I have also made clear, I am willing to convene the Legislature for a special session to fix this 30-year-old problem before the 2024 election. However, I must receive clear and public indication that 33 senators are willing to vote in such a session to restore winner-take-all.”

Pillen is effectively deflecting the electoral college question onto the state senators,
but he is also opening the door to the possibility of the switch, which could alter the course of the election.

Republicans would not even need to switch the electoral college seat to win. ️

They only need to muddy the waters.

If, for example,
the Nebraska legislature ensured that their electoral college votes were in dispute,
and the courts had not decided the matter by 6 January,
and no one had reached the threshold of 270,
that state of affairs would automatically trigger a #contingent #election.

In a contingent election, another abstruse mechanism of the US electoral system,
each state delegation
-- whether it’s California or Wyoming
-- gets a #single #vote, which means that the Republicans would always win.
(This possibility is the subject of a book I wrote with Andrew Yang, "The Last Election".)

The sheer boredom of what I’m describing here -- the banal technicalities of the complex legal structures in place -- may, on the surface, seem less frightening than assassination attempts and bomb threats and cooked pets and armed militias.

But don’t misunderstand:
this is the real danger America faces.

The complexity is the trap.

The complexity makes it easy for people to believe that somehow they haven’t been tricked
-- that a functioning democratic system, however bizarre, is still in place
--even when it clearly isn’t anymore.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/19/nebraska-electoral-system-trump-win-election?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Every four years, Americans endure an absurd method of selecting our president that is so counterintuitive and unappealing that no other country follows our model.

Rather than electing our chief executive by popular vote
—the way we choose virtually every other federal, state, and local elected official in the country
—the #Electoral #College chooses our president.

Americans still vote for their preferred candidate on the ballot, but the candidate with the most votes does not necessarily become president.

The litany of problems caused by the Electoral College are obvious.

Five times, the candidate who won the popular vote did not win the Electoral College.

Most recently, in 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton even though she received nearly 2.9 million more votes.

In 2020, Americans narrowly avoided an even more undemocratic outcome.

Joe Biden resoundingly defeated Trump by over 7 million votes nationwide but only squeaked by in the Electoral College due to 115,012 votes across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia.  
Rather than give every voter equal weight, the Electoral College
distorts the voting power of Americans based on where they live.

The importance of votes in #swing states like Wisconsin, Nevada, or Georgia is wildly enhanced,
while the value of votes in #safe states like Oklahoma or Vermont is artificially diminished.

No wonder seven swing states dominate the discourse: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina.

The Trump and Harris campaigns will court these voters like they’re the prettiest girl at the dance. -- Their campaigns will not waste resources in safe states like Idaho or Maryland.

Of course, voters in swing states are no more intelligent, decent, or deserving of influence than voters in safe states.

The distortion is simply the unfair, arbitrary consequence of a poorly designed system and proof that the Electoral College
—which also puts the thumb on the scale for low-population states, thanks to the U.S. Senate
—has outlived its usefulness.

Voters in safe states seem to understand that their presidential vote matters little.

On average, safe states have lower voter turnout than swing states.

Despite its flaws, the Electoral College has supporters, who are almost always Republicans.

Since a Republican presidential candidate has only won the national popular vote once in the past 32 years (George W. Bush in 2004),
the GOP has a strong incentive to keep the Electoral College.

That explains the oft-repeated, feeble arguments that the status quo prevents small states from being ignored.

Or that a system that weighs votes equally would somehow “silence” rural voters.

Or that the Electoral College stops “New York and California from imposing their will on the rest of the country.”

I’ve addressed most of those claims before.

-- And the Electoral College’s defenders can never explain why, if it’s such a great system, no other state or country has copied it.

Most Americans understand that the Electoral College is fundamentally flawed.

That’s why a majority have supported the national popular vote for decades,
and 65 percent are supportive today.

“Whoever gets the most votes wins” is as fair as it gets.

So how, despite Republicans’ self-interested obstinance, can the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact cross the finish line?

When Minnesota joined the Compact under Tim Walz’s leadership, it broke a four-year drought.

Five states joined the Compact in 2018 and 2019, but none did until Minnesota in 2023.

But with Minnesota and, more recently, Maine bringing the Compact within just 61 electoral votes of success, there is a path to 270 within the next four years.

The Compact has passed through both house committees in Michigan.

If it is signed into law, it will add another 15 electoral votes to the Compact’s ranks.

Compact legislation has also made progress in Virginia and Nevada, which would add another 29 electoral votes and leave just 27 to go.

️At that point, some combination of three purple states like Wisconsin, North Carolina & Arizona would be enough to surpass 270.

Either electoral outcome this autumn could give the Compact the final boost it needs.

If Trump wins, he will most likely do it while losing the popular vote,
-- which would motivate even more Americans to push for the Compact.

If Harris wins, Walz could become a key advocate for the Compact -- speaking to governors and legislators in states that have yet to join.

Regardless of how the 2024 election goes, the #National #Popular #Vote #Interstate #Compact offers hope that in the not-too-distant future,
vice presidential nominees may be chosen based on their qualifications rather than their swing-state appeal.

And Americans may finally have a system in which the candidate who wins the most votes always wins the presidency. 
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/08/30/tim-walz-took-a-big-step-toward-scrapping-the-electoral-college/