The Electoral School kinds an instrumental a part of the US election course of. Established in 1787, it has its roots in slavery and the political methods of Southern states. The system was created to steadiness energy between massive and small states, but it surely allowed the South to enlarge its political affect by counting enslaved individuals as a part of the inhabitants.
The Compromise of 1787
Through the Constitutional Conference, delegates debated methods to elect the president. Northern delegates, usually against slavery, argued for a system based mostly solely on the inhabitants of free people. However the Southern delegates sought to extend their political clout by counting enslaved individuals as a part of their inhabitants. This want led to a compromise often called the “three-fifths compromise,” the place every enslaved individual can be counted as three-fifths of an individual for functions of illustration in Congress.
The Electoral School Construction
The construction of the Electoral School is straight influenced by this compromise. Every state is allotted electors based mostly on the entire variety of its congressional representatives – each senators and representatives – which is set by its inhabitants. By counting three-fifths of the enslaved inhabitants, Southern states have been capable of inflate their illustration, granting them disproportionate energy within the collection of the president.
Virginia, as an example, with a considerable inhabitants of enslaved people, managed a major share of electoral votes. This association not solely benefited slaveholding states in presidential elections but in addition strengthened their political dominance in Congress.
Penalties
The implications of this political construction was large. It helped keep the ability of slaveholding states and contributed to the situations that led to the Civil Warfare. When Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the growth of slavery, gained the presidency in 1860, Southern states felt their energy was diminishing and selected to secede from the Union.
Since its inception, the Electoral School has resulted in 4 presidential candidates profitable the favored vote however dropping the election, with Al Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in 2000 being essentially the most important occasion. This has led to requires reform through the years, with ten Democratic states becoming a member of a well-liked vote motion to make sure that the candidate with essentially the most votes wins.
In 1969, the Home handed a constitutional modification to exchange it with a nationwide fashionable vote, however Southern senators blocked it to protect their political benefits.