Electoral College linked to slave ownership

History reveals that a primary motivation for allocating electoral votes was to appease slave-owning states.

In response to an article about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (“More states consider working around the Electoral College,” Dec. 26), your reader Joan Liska applauds the founding fathers’ brilliance in creating the Electoral College. She claims they did so to avoid large states and cities “dominating the nation’s politics to the detriment of the rest of the country’s voters.”

Ms. Liska is wrong on the origins of the Electoral College as well as its contemporary impact. That is why we support the legislation introduced to the Connecticut General Assembly to have our state join with 11 others in pledging our electoral votes to the nationwide winner of the popular vote. History reveals that a primary motivation for allocating electoral votes according to the size of each state’s congressional delegation was to appease slaveowning states.

A direct election of the president would have disadvantaged southern states whose slaves could not vote. As said Virginian James Madison, “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive (extensive) in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.”

However, because slaves accounted for three-fifths of a person for purposes of assigning U.S. representatives, the Electoral College gave southern states more influence relative to northern states than under a popular vote. The scheme worked; slave owners from Virginia won the presidency in eight of the nine elections following ratification of the Constitution. Ms. Liska celebrates the Electoral College because it takes power away from large states and populous cities. But it is a myth that large cities could sway the election under a national popular vote. There are fewer than 50 cities with a population of more than 500,000. It’s the 87 percent of the population living outside large cities that would have voting power in a direct election. In the current winner-take-all system, candidates ignore most small states in favor of large battleground states.

The attraction of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is that it doesn’t matter where you live. Every voter has equal power whether they live in a large city or rural town, in a populous state or not. One person, one vote is the democratic way to elect the president of the United States. — Evelyn Farbman, Middletown; Lisa Loomis-Davern, Middletown; and Jonathan Perloe, Cos Cob. The writers are part of a grassroots network advocating for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.