Except it doesn’t check out when you break down the numbers.
Right from the get-go, the Electoral College has produced no shortage of lessons about the impact of racial entitlement in selecting the president. History buffs and Hamilton fans are aware that in its first major failure, the Electoral College produced a tie between Thomas Jefferson and his putative running mate, Aaron Burr.
The EC in the 1800 election was 73/65 in favor of Jefferson. The popular vote was 60% in Jefferson’s favor, but he got 53% of the EC. If anything, the EC put him at a disadvantage.
The tie spoken of above was a technical issue between Jefferson and his intended Vice President, Aaron Burr. It doesn’t have much to do with slavery at all. They were trying to hack around the system of setting the second place winner as Vice President, and it blew up in their face. Burr was always intended by the Democratic-Republicans to be Vice President.
The 12th amendment was passed before the next election to do away with that means of selecting the Vice President. It was ratified by both slave and free states. It was rejected by Delaware and Connecticut, both of which had <10% of their population as slaves in the 1800 Census (only three states had zero slaves by then).
Adams was by far more consistently against slavery compared to Jefferson. You can find writings where Jefferson was against it, but his actions plainly speak otherwise. Adams never owned a slave and even avoided employing them secondhand. Which is about as difficult as avoiding products from tobacco industry subsidiaries today.
Adams lost, but he would have lost with or without the EC.
Anything that happens later (which is where the article goes after the above) isn’t particularly relevant to how the EC was intended to work. The population dynamics and entry of new states couldn’t have been predicted at the time.
The three-fifths compromise, though? Absolute fucking evil. Adams maybe wins the EC in 1800 without that, and (more importantly) Congress would certainly look very different. The EC was, if anything, a counterbalance to the three-fifths compromise, though not a very strong one.
The EC should go away because it’s antidemocratic. The argument that it was for slavery, though, just doesn’t add up.
Except it doesn’t check out when you break down the numbers.
The EC in the 1800 election was 73/65 in favor of Jefferson. The popular vote was 60% in Jefferson’s favor, but he got 53% of the EC. If anything, the EC put him at a disadvantage.
The tie spoken of above was a technical issue between Jefferson and his intended Vice President, Aaron Burr. It doesn’t have much to do with slavery at all. They were trying to hack around the system of setting the second place winner as Vice President, and it blew up in their face. Burr was always intended by the Democratic-Republicans to be Vice President.
The 12th amendment was passed before the next election to do away with that means of selecting the Vice President. It was ratified by both slave and free states. It was rejected by Delaware and Connecticut, both of which had <10% of their population as slaves in the 1800 Census (only three states had zero slaves by then).
Adams was by far more consistently against slavery compared to Jefferson. You can find writings where Jefferson was against it, but his actions plainly speak otherwise. Adams never owned a slave and even avoided employing them secondhand. Which is about as difficult as avoiding products from tobacco industry subsidiaries today.
Adams lost, but he would have lost with or without the EC.
Anything that happens later (which is where the article goes after the above) isn’t particularly relevant to how the EC was intended to work. The population dynamics and entry of new states couldn’t have been predicted at the time.
The three-fifths compromise, though? Absolute fucking evil. Adams maybe wins the EC in 1800 without that, and (more importantly) Congress would certainly look very different. The EC was, if anything, a counterbalance to the three-fifths compromise, though not a very strong one.
The EC should go away because it’s antidemocratic. The argument that it was for slavery, though, just doesn’t add up.