The August 13 program may be unique in having begun with an in-depth examination of race and the Electoral College. This was made possible in part because two remarkable books  published in 2020 address this topic in depth, and because the authors were able to join the program. In addition, since 2018, co-host and co-organizer Making Every Vote Count has made it a part of its educational mission to bring the topic of Race and the Electoral College to the attention of the American people.

The first two links are to the two outstanding books mentioned above.

The third link is to the video replay of the August 13 program, with notations of start/stop times for the discussion of race. The remaining links are to some thirty-nine (39) additional items on the Making Every Vote Count blog that address Race and the Electoral College.   

Alexander Keysaar, Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College (2020), purchase here or through your favorite bookstore. You can also find excellent reviews and on-line interviews, including most recently a September 22, 2020 article in The Nation and a lead “Talk of the Town” piece in the September 21, 2020 New Yorker.

Jesse Wegman, Let the People Pick the President: the case for abolishing the Electoral College (2020), purchase here or through your favorite bookstore.

August 13 virtual conference: Presidential Election Reform: 2020 and Beyond. Full video replay. Session 1: Race and the Electoral College. Discussions of race and the electoral college are at: Jesse Wegman, 19:40-25:10; 26:10-27:07; 29:40-33:45; Alexander Keyssar, 35:30-48:30; Reed Hundt, 49:00-57:15; James Glassman, slide at 1:03:20; Concluding Remarks, 3:16-3:20.

Making Every Vote Count Blog Posts (most recent first)(some links may be broken; for those, please find the entry on the chronological listing of blog posts on the right side of the MEVC blog)

June 14, 2020  The Electoral Explanation: How only the Electoral College permits  a political calculation that it is better to stand by the Confederate flag, generals and statues rather than to moderate views.

February 19, 2020  The Electoral College System is what makes this Politics Work: Link to New York Times opinion piece: The Audacity of Hate. 

August 30, 2019  Our Presidential Election System is Biased and Broken: How the Electoral College system favors white voters.

August 9, 2019 The Electoral College at Work: The view that Democratic Party charges that Trump is a white supremacist might actually benefit Trump is possible only because of the Electoral College.

August 6, 2019  Demography is Destiny: Swing state black/white demographics are hugely different from the other states.

August 2, 2019  The Electoral College Causes This: Divisive campaign centered on the white working class is possibly only because of the Electoral College.

July 18, 2019  Thanks, Electoral College: Comparing 1860s slave population map with current map of low income households, the Electoral College has long ignored the votes of low income households of all races.

July 8, 2019  The Electoral College Encourages Racism: Racism can be a key to winning the presidency only because of the Electoral College.

June 16, 2019  Impossible: Only because Black votes are concentrated in states that are “safely red” could a President block the printing of the Harriett Tubman twenty dollar bill.

May 9, 2019  The National Urban League Endorses the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact: The Urban League included the national popular vote Interstate Compact in recommended policies to combat inequality and attacks on voting rights. 

May 2, 2019  Mark Bohnhorst on the History and Future of the Electoral College: Video conversation; Race and the Electoral College is discussed at minutes 10:48 - 21:35, with brief mention at 2:00 - 2:15, 23:30- 23:43, 41:25 - 41:35, and 44:45 - 45:00

April 18, 2019  The History of the Electoral College and the Modern Case for Reform: At the Founding the Electoral College was an unholy but necessary compromise with slavery; for almost a century following the Electoral College crisis of 1876, it contributed to ongoing racial subjugation.

April 8, 2019  YES!: Link to an opinion piece by Yale Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar, “Actually, the Electoral College was a Pro-Slavery Ploy.”

April 3, 2019  Electoral College System Divides, Gives Unequal [less] Voting Power to Native Americans: Much like Blacks in the South, Native  Americans are concentrated in reliably red states.

March 25, 2019  Losing Argument: The Electoral College perpetuated white supremacy for two centuries.

March 16, 2019  White Supremacy’s Anvil: Link to article in Medium; the Electoral College was conceived to protect slavery and it functioned to create and protect Jim Crow.

March 14, 2019  Demography and Democracy: Southern delegates to Constitutional Convention hoped to control the Presidency and the House of Representatives through the 3/5 compromise and an expected population boom in the South. Today the House is full of representatives who oppose racism; only the Electoral College allows the emergence of a racially divisive candidate.

March 8, 2019  ICYWTK: Item 2 in a list of faults in the Electoral College: The Electoral College is bad for Blacks.

March 7, 2019  Right, Professor, Right: The Electoral College may have been the most decisive triumph for slavery at the Constitutional Convention. Even today, over 200 years later, Black voters in the South typically play little to no role in the general election for the president.

February 28, 2019  Former Gov. LePage’s Racist Attack on the National Popular Vote: “White people will become a ‘forgotten people.’”

February 27, 2019  A History of the Electoral College: Video of presentation featuring Prof. Richard Teslow. Race and the Electoral College are discussed at minutes 7:20-9:10, 10:55-15:00, 18:30-19:40, and 27:00-28:20.

February 23, 2019  The Electoral College Harms African Americans: In 8 states of the Old Confederacy, African Americans voted overwhelmingly for President Obama, yet no electoral votes from those states were cast for him.

February 19, 2019  Slavery Shaped the Electoral College: Link to article by African-American journalist Reggie Jackson in the Milwaukee Independent: “The Roles Racism and Slavery Played in the Creation of our Electoral College System.” 

February 19, 2019  The Civil Rights Case for the National Vote: Across the Old Confederacy, African-American votes for president are not only “diluted.” they are effectively discarded.

February 13, 2019  Blast from the Past: Between 1960 and 1968, the pernicious effects of the Electoral College system drove the Republican Party to align with white voters in the South.

January 24, 2019  Big Tents: The Electoral College engenders “small tent” politics, where the Republican Party can be “willingly insensitive to the desires of black people and immigrants.”

January 22, 2019  The Electoral College will become Increasingly Undemocratic: “The Framers designed the College, inter alia, to placate the slave-holding states.”

January 17, 2019  Black History Misstated: The winner-take-all system effectively rendered (and renders) Black votes in the Old Confederacy meaningless in 1876 and 1880 (and today).

January 9, 2019  Founders Misinterpreted Again: Small states and slave states won inequitable, anti-democratic power in the House and Senate and wanted that unfairness to apply to selecting the president.

December 19, 2018  A Half-Century Ago: Fifty years ago, a filibuster led by Southern Senators blocked passage of a resolution for a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College.

December 18, 2018  The Disappointment of the Reconstruction Amendments: Ironically, the elimination of the 3/5 rule in the Fourteenth Amendment served only to increase white southerners’ power, as they received more representatives and electoral votes and, by repressing the Black vote, took all the enhanced power to themselves. 

December 3, 2018  The History of America is the History of Race: Slavery was one of the main reasons southern delegates to the Constitutional Convention opposed direct election of the President. The 3/5 compromise agreed at the Constitutional Convention was intended to assure that presidents would be sympathetic to slavery.

November 11, 2018  Veterans Day: The 100 year anniversary of the end of World War I is memorialized with a quotation from W.E.B. Dubois: “Make way for Democracy. We saved it in France. . .we will save it in the United States of America.” 

October 25, 2018  Who is Gary Abernathy and How did he get Published in the WAPO: Item 5 of a multi-part critique: “Slave states did not want a chief executive who would oppose expansion and maintenance of slavery. What was ‘valued’ was, principally, slavery.” 

October 23, 2018  Blast from the Past: re C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow: from 1908 to 1948, 44% of the popular vote cast by minority voters was not represented by a single electoral vote.

September 26, 2018  Essential Reading on Democracy: Dr. Carol Anderson’s One Person, No Vote: One Person, No Vote examines the discriminatory practices that have been implemented with shocking impunity since the 2013 Shelby ruling; The earlier book, White Rage, chronicled the near-century of disenfranchisement that preceded the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

 September 17, 2018  The Fifteenth Amendment: The rights under the Amendment were “violently suppressed for nearly a century.”

August 28, 2018  Current Election Rules Incentivize Voter Suppression: Because razor thin margins can determine how all of a state’s electoral votes will be cast, Republicans have an incentive to suppress the Black vote, as has happened in Georgia.

August 9, 2018  Parties Need More, not Fewer, Voters to Survive:  The winner-take-all rule has led the Republican Party to take up a short-term strategy of appealing to white voters without a college degree. These perverse incentives created by the Electoral College run counter to the long-term interests of both parties.