Virginia Professor Wants Vote Reparations
Black people make up about 13% of our population according to the U.S. Census, while white people including Hispanics make up about 75% of the population. So elections are still largely determined by the white people in this country since they are the majority. But Washington and Lee University School of Law Assistant Professor Brandon Hasbrouck claims that this is instead because of the electoral college which he feels is racist. So he wants to level the playing field by counting black people's votes twice as a vote reparation. Sounds more like he wants to give more power to 13% of the country...
Hasbrouck claims the electoral college dilutes the votes of black people.
"One core problem is the Electoral College. Wyoming, which has just 580,000 residents and is 93 percent white, gets three electors because of its two senators and one representative in the House. By comparison, Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District—which includes Atlanta, has 710,000 residents, and is 58 percent Black—has no dedicated electors or senators and can only occasionally overcome the mostly white and conservative votes from elsewhere in the state. This devaluation of Black votes allows our political system to ignore Black lives, and the consequences are devastating. Unequal representation has led to unequal health care outcomes, which the Covid-19 pandemic has only worsened. Without sufficient voting power, Black communities receive substandard education, and politicians are free to appoint judges who sanction mass incarceration, abusive policing, and electoral disenfranchisement.
This is all by design. The Constitution’s framers set up the Electoral College to protect the interests of slave states. Along with the Senate, the Electoral College was critical in the endurance of slavery and its continuation by other means. Abolishing this system would mean that ballots cast by Black voters—or any voters, for that matter—would count the same."
"The professor offers a solution: “We can implement vote reparations by double-counting ballots cast by all Black residents.”
Hasbrouck notes that the idea isn’t entirely new. A 2015 plan by Theodore Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, called for making black Americans’ votes worth five-thirds, which Hasbrouck said “has a poetic symmetry with the three-fifths clause of the Constitution,” which said that enslaved blacks in a state would be counted as three-fifths of the number of white inhabitants of that state.
But he says: “Counting Black votes twice keeps the point clear and provides redress for myriad forms of disenfranchisement deployed against Black voters.”
“Because white votes currently count more than Black ones, double-counting Black votes would restore electoral balance. Vote reparations would be a giant step toward remedying our nation’s long history of denying and devaluing Black votes. To address systemic racism, we must transform how we choose our government. Even if vote reparations aren’t instituted, Black voters will keep tirelessly dragging our states toward a more perfect union. But just imagine our country if our votes counted twice,” he writes."
First off, Georgia gets 16 electoral votes compared to Wyoming's three, so Georgia gets far more votes due to its massive population. Hasbrouck also discounts the fact that Georgia is comprised of 60% white people and about 32% black people so it's not this close race that he is talking about when it comes to overcoming the white conservatives. Historically Georgia is a purple state and votes Red nationally and blue for local politics. It is only in recent years that that has changed.
Black people largely vote for Democrats and so Hasbrouck's plan to double black votes would give Democrats a huge advantage in the popular vote and alter all future elections. But it is not by any means a fair standard making the votes of one race of people worth double any other population of Americans. That is not what America is about.
His argument is flawed and really it sounds like he should be arguing that Georgia get more representation in the Senate and electors for its people in general rather than just the black folks. His divisive argument draws attention away from the real issue that Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District deserves better representation. That's all he had to say instead of this divisive racial nonsense.