• Snowclone@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    It’s The USA! The answer is always racism. This time, it’s because slave owners didn’t want their low level of white male land owners to mean they wouldn’t have any say in the government, so low population areas get more voting power and significance than high population areas

    • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I don’t know if that is actually factual. When the system was created it took a long time to communicate with everyone and having a centralized place such as an electoral college made logistical sense. The US is pretty spread out even today. 200 years ago the technology needed to get all of those states to vote was not as easy as calling someone.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        It was definitely part racism.

        The Three-fifths Compromise was an agreement reached during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention over the inclusion of slavesin a state’s total population. This count would determine: the number of seatsin the House of Representatives; the number of electoral votes each state would be allocated; and how much money the states would pay in taxes. Slave holding states wanted their entire population to be counted to determine the number of Representatives those states could elect and send to Congress. Free states wanted to exclude the counting of slave populations in slave states, since those slaves had no voting rights. A compromise was struck to resolve this impasse.

        Emphasis mine, but the electoral college was originally disproportionate for more than one reason.