Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
by javagram on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @05:48PM
(#20762200)
The slave states wanted population based representation.
For instance the 3/5 compromise was because the slave states wanted 5/5 and the free states wanted 0/5.
Virginia had the most Representatives in the first US congress because they had the largest population. It was small states like New Hampshire and Rhode Island that benefited from the 2 senators per state rule.
Re:15 states are trying to make the electoral college obselete
by dragonwriter on Wednesday August 21, 2019 @07:11PM
(#20762916)
> The slave states wanted population based representation
No states wanted population-based representation, or all did, depending on how you look at it: that is, no one wanted to count non-assimilated Native American population, all of them wanted to count the remaining free population, and there was a dispute about how to count the people that the slave states weren't going to treat as people and, particularly, certainly weren't going to let vote.
Well, it had a reason: like the per-state represt in the Senate which was locked in against amendment, like the 3/5 compromise, like the prohibition locked against amendment protecting the slave trade for a set time period, and probably like a handful of other things I'm probably not remembering off the top of my head, it was a mechanism of politically securing slavery and reassuring the slave states that the more populace free states, where ethical objections to slavery were already common, would not be able to band together and demand that all people be treated as people rather than some being treated as property.
(Before anyone starts quoting the Federalist Papers, I'll point out that those weren't working documents that the Constitutional Convention made decisions based on, but campaign literature to sell ratification particularly in New York. So they weren't going to say “A lot of this document is about mollifying the slave states to get them to stay by giving them as much assurance as possible that it will never be structurally possible to abolish slavery.” But, not saying it when selling the document in New York doesn't stop it from being true.)