If the United States was a real democracy, Hillary Clinton would be president-elect right now.

So far she has nearly 2 million more votes than Donald Trump, and when all the votes are counted it's expected she'll have won by well over 2 million.

Similarly, Al Gore got a half-million more votes than George W. Bush in 2000.

This is an outcome that was fine by the Framers of the constitution, who didn't totally trust "We The People" - particularly when it came to selecting senators or a president.

Many of them represented slaveholding states that, while large and populous, had a relatively small population of white men - the only people who could vote at that time.

Those slaveholders, though, like Jefferson and Madison, wanted to make sure that their slave states had a large influence on the fate and future of the republic, which is why they wrote into the constitution that 3/5ths of the slaves in each slave state would be counted for purposes of determining the number of members of Congress from each state, and, in part, why they put in the Electoral College, which grants votes to states based on the total number of their US Senators and members of the House of Representatives.

Because smaller states and slave states had two senators just like more populous non-slave states like New York and Massachusetts, they had a disproportionate influence in determining who runs the country, from the Senate to the White House.

At the end of the day, it was all about keeping slavery intact.

Slavery, at least explicit slavery, is over in the United States outside of prison walls, but the Electoral College is still with us.

Is it time to end it?

-Thom


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