The Why and Wherefore

One of the etymological tidbits I’ve gleaned from The History of English podcast is that the redundant nature of several common phrases (fair and equal, right and proper, null and void, chase after …) stems from folks in post-1066 England using both the French and the English word for a thing or concept or whatevs in order to be understood by French and English speakers alike, especially in courts of law.

Regarding the title of this post, that linguistic nugget of knowledge is irrelevant entirely. Both “why” and “wherefore” are rooted in Old English and, as separate words, have been in our lexicon for ages. They became a twosome when Victorian-era dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan paired them for a jaunty trio, “Never Mind the Why and Wherefore,” in Act II of HMS Pinafore. (The link takes you to the Lamplighters in performance (a San Francisco institution, bringing G&S to Bay Area audiences since 1952), with scenic design by my friend, the inestimable Peter Crompton.)

I figured I’d kick things off with today’s digression, get it out of the way. As we’re just 30 days and 23 hours away from Election Day (but who’s counting?), this political rant is basically a baton-exchange, picking up where the last rant left off. What I’m actually referencing in the title above is the Why and Why-on-Earth of the Electoral College.

Not long ago, and on this very site, I defined the Electoral College as a group of intermediaries designated by the Constitution to select the president and vice-president of the United States.

Let’s think about that for a sec. The philosophically egalitarian framers of the Constitution – who, one would think, still held with the self-evident truth touted in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” – didn’t think all men equally capable of choosing the right person to preside over the nation?

Pretty much.

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia from the end of May to mid-September 1787 were well-to-do, experienced, highly-educated men. White men, naturally. And young men, mostly. Their average age was 42; some of the more influential among them (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton) were in their 30s. The delegates’ occupations ranged from Public Security Interests to Public Security Interests/Lending & Investments, to Public Security Interests/Real Estate & Land Speculation, to Public Security Interests/Mercantile, Manufacturing & Shipping, to Public Security Interests/Planter, to various combinations of the above. Eight were signatories of the Declaration of Independence. More than half were college graduates, with 9 holding degrees from Princeton and 6 having attended British Universities. Twenty-five served in the Continental Congress, 40 in the Confederation Congress, and 15 had helped draft State Constitutions.

Not exactly a cross-section of American society – but how could it be? The only Americans fluent enough in constitutional legal-ese to create the paperwork of a new nation were the fraternal crème de la crème of society’s privileged, entrepreneurial, socio-political elite.

“How to Pick the Prez” was a hard nut for the delegates to crack. Some supported a direct, nationwide popular vote (bravo, you guys). Others, contending that We the People were too ignorant and limited in scope to understand the true needs of the country, held that presidents should be chosen by Congress.

For me, either of these methods would be preferable to what we have now. A popular vote honors the two foundational tenets of free and fair elections I lauded in my recent posts: one person, one vote and majority rules. Leaving it up to Congress honors the critical tenets of a functional indirect democracy. We the Electorate cast direct votes for Congressional candidates. The elected Congress-people then select the next president, the majority party inevitably choosing one of their own. With 2 out of the 3 branches of government in sync – executive and legislative – we get a government that can actually get things done. If it fails to get things done or does things we don’t like, we can vote the lot of them out next round.

Begs the question, doesn’t it – with two perfectly equitable alternatives available, why and wherefore did the founding fathers (do I need to capitalize that? I’d rather not …) – why did they go with a bonkers third option?

Perhaps because, as an astute reader recently commented, in 1787, “America was MUCH less unified than we think.” Were the conventioneers committed to squeezing some Enlightenment-inspired, anti-monarchist, Scottish Moral Philosophy-based ideals into the document? Unquestionably. But their primary challenge was getting the 13 newly-minted states to firmly commit to consolidating into a Republic. (Or 12 states, anyway. Against the idea of a stronger federal government, Rhode Island bailed on the convention, and it was July before the New Hampshire delegates showed up in Philly.) Common ground between the states was uncommonly hard to find. Lest rumbling resentments widen the substantial rifts already dividing the delegations and put the kibosh on the whole optimistic notion of a United States, compromise was the convention’s order of the day.

The compromise that has rightly received the most attention settled the issue of how many seats each state would be allotted in the proposed House of Representatives. Had this issue not been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, the Southern delegates would have gone home early and angry, bringing the convention to an abrupt end.

At the time, the populations of the Northern and Southern states were roughly equal – IF the enslaved 1/3 of the southern population was included in the tally. This put the Southern delegates in a bind. If they omitted their slaves from the count, their population numbers would be so low, Southern states would be allotted less Representatives, and, consequently, would have less say in the government. If they included their slaves in the count, they’d be admitting slaves were people. No way they were doing that, so they did the math instead, and calculated that including 3 out of every 5 slaves in the population count would give the South as many House seats as the North.

This shameful blot forever staining the beauty of the original United States Constitution is known as “the three-fifths compromise.” Probably goes without saying, but counted, partially-counted, or uncounted – enslaved people could not vote. An incredible injustice that the institution of slavery was made inviolable for so long by weighting the votes of Southern Congressmen with the lives of the people they oppressed.

The Pick-the-Prez issue wasn’t resolved until near the end of the convention, and not by Hamilton or Madison, but by the Committee on Unfinished Parts. By then, the three-fifths abomination had been inked in. Still at an impasse as to whether presidents should be elected by popular vote or selected by Congress (the latter being the preference of the Southern delegates who had just secured their states an undeservedly loud voice in the House), they came up with another compromise – The Electoral College.

As my loyal readers are aware, the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to appoint electors. How many? Each state gets the same number of electors as it has representatives and senators in Congress.

Ay, there’s the rub. Already awarded more than its fair share of representatives in the House, the slave-holding South gained that same disproportionate advantage in the Electoral College. Our antiquated, elitist system for picking a president is the racist spawn of the three-fifths compromise. (For a deep dive into the origins of the Electoral College and its continuing racist legacy, click HERE.

The forevermore skewed EC enabled the 19^th century’s nearly continuous succession of presidential wins by Southern slaveholders or their Northern sympathizers, Abraham Lincoln being the obvious exception … and the axe that split the nation. By 1860, the South was lagging far behind the North in population numbers, and so in House seats and electors. Though he didn’t receive a single Southern (electoral) vote, Lincoln – the one and only candidate with a free-the-slaves agenda – handily won the 1860 Electoral College. About a month and a half after the November election, South Carolina seceded from the Union. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated in January, another 6 states were gone. A few months after that, the brand-new Confederate Army fired on Fort Sumter, and the War Between the States was on.

Post-Lincoln, conciliatory policy-makers in the North saw to it that the South suffered no real political consequences for seceding or for firing the shots that started the Civil War. With a full contingent of ex-Dixie faithful in Congress, the Electoral College was likewise restored to its pre-war imbalance. Both Congress and the College played their parts in the furiously contested presidential election of 1876.

Frederick Douglass spoke up at the Republican Convention that year. (Back then, remember, the Democrat/Republican poles were reversed; the Republican party was the party of Lincoln.) He asked whether the delegates would continue to uphold the constitutional rights of Blacks, or if they intended to “get along without the vote of the black man in the South.” When a filibuster and threats of political violence blocked certification of the Electoral College results (hmm … sound familiar?), Mr. Douglass got his answer in the Compromise of 1877. (History buffs click HERE for a more detailed discussion of this wildly complex election.)

Known as the Wormley Agreement, the Bargain of 1877, or The Corrupt Bargain, this verbal, backroom, paperless, wink-and-a-handshake deal resolved the disputed election by means of a “compromise” that put Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House – with the understanding that he would return the favor by withdrawing all Yankee troops from ex-Rebel states and end federal Reconstruction. As he had long since abandoned his once-staunch stance on abolition and aligned himself with the Make-Nice-with-the-South segment of his party, Hayes abandoned the people he’d fought to free from slavery – fought on the battlefield, I’m saying, led charges, held positions, 4 times wounded – and withdrew the troops without hesitation, thereby setting the stage for racial segregation under Jim Crow laws.

Today, despite Black voting patterns to the contrary, 5 out of the 6 states where the population is 25% or more Black swing reliably Red in presidential elections. Modern versions of the Jim Crow laws – gerrymandering (drawing voting districts along racial lines), voter I.D. laws, voter intimidation, purging voter rolls, etc. – keep the legacy of the three-fifth’s compromise alive. Though the nation’s highest concentration of Black people is in the South, their preferred presidential candidates are almost guaranteed to lose their home states’ electoral votes, because the Electoral College was specifically designed to magnify the impact of the Southern white vote and silence Southern Black voices.

The electoral advantage engineered to buoy the political power of the South in 1787 is now enjoyed by a huge swath of America’s less populous, more agrarian states. It’s in the far-Right’s interest to kindle and stoke fires of racism and xenophobia in the hearts of the people who live in those states. It’s in their interest to fuel those voters’ unwarranted fears of insane, sub-human, “illegal” immigrants committing heinous crimes, taking their jobs, and eating their cats. It’s in their interest to spread false conspiracy theories about the Radical-Left Deep State and blame Kamala for any attempts on Don the Dweeb’s life.

It is absolutely in their interest to lie about their Project 2025 agenda, preemptively sow doubts about the results of the upcoming election, and booby-trap the electoral playing field. Most Americans don’t like Dodgy Don, like Vance even less, and abhor their “concepts” of policies. The GOP isn’t bothered. The neglected child within DJT may crave our love, but his excuse for a party doesn’t need it. Republicans plan to win by misleading voters in states where their votes are weighted, suppressing the votes of those likely to vote against them, screwing with the vote counts and contesting the outcome of the election (if Harris wins) until the decision goes to the Republican-held House or the MAGA-stacked Supreme Court, and – if push comes to shove – mounting another armed insurrection.

Don’t dismiss that last sentence as hyperbole. While Tweedle-Dumb may have been referring to the international car industry when he promised, “it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country” if he fails to win election, the white-supremacist militia arm of his cult following took his words at face value and as their orders. Even it the Electoral College vote ends up reflecting the current, encouraging trends in the national polls and picks Harris-Walz for the White House, this political hell we’re living in won’t freeze over come November 5^th. If anything, it’ll get hotter.

Why and wherefore? Because America is bleeding through the compromissorial bandages politicos have been plastering over her festering wounds since 1787. Compromise is essential to good government, sure – but that doesn’t mean compromise is the right answer to every controversial legislative question. Calling a bad bargain, bad policy, bad law, or bad institution a “compromise” doesn’t make the bad thing any better. Sometimes in the short-term, always in the long-term, it just makes things worse.

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