LWVUS
In the previous installment of this blog series on the Electoral College, we discussed how it translates our votes into electoral votes for the President. This second installment will discuss the racist origins of the Electoral College and why it still hurts Black Americans and other communities of color to this day.
The Origin of the Three-Fifths Compromise
In 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention found themselves confronted with the question of slavery and how hundreds of thousands of enslaved Black people in the new republic would affect the Constitution. The humanity and rights of these enslaved Americans were not a priority of the delegates as they debated this issue. Rather, their debates centered on if and how the enslaved persons would be counted when allocating seats in the new House of Representatives.
On June 11, 1787, Roger Sherman of Connecticut proposed that only the free inhabitants of each state should count towards apportionment (distribution by state) of the House of Representatives. Edward Rutledge and Pierce Butler of South Carolina then proposed what became the Three-Fifths Compromise, suggesting that House seats be apportioned “in proportion to the whole number of white & other free Citizens & inhabitants of every age sex & condition including those bound to servitude for a term of years and three fifths [sic] of all other persons not comprehended in the foregoing description, except Indians not paying taxes, in each State.”
In other words, every white citizen, including indentured servants, would be counted as whole people, while Black citizens would be counted as three-fifths of a person.
Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts (and later namesake of the term “gerrymandering”), criticized the proposal, pointing out that because they were legally considered “property,” enslaved persons had no more reason to be counted for apportionment than cattle or horses, as “property” should not be represented in the legislature.
About a month later, after the issue of apportionment was delegated to a committee for further discussion, the Three-Fifths Compromise resurfaced. Several delegates from the “slave states” (southern states in which slavery was legal before the Civil War), led by Pierce Butler of South Carolina, proposed counting enslaved persons as equivalent to free inhabitants of the states. This would mean enslaved persons would be added to each state’s population as though they were free citizens, despite having no voting rights or civil liberties. This would allow slave states to have more power in the House of Representatives without granting enslaved people any rights. This proposal was voted down.
After further discussion, the delegates adopted the Three-Fifths Compromise and moved on to other business. Thus, enslaved Americans would be counted toward the electoral population of those states without the right to participate in society or be recognized as citizens.
Effects of the Three-Fifths Compromise
The immediate effect of the Three-Fifths Compromise was to inflate the power of the Southern states in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. These were the states in which the vast majority of enslaved persons lived.
The first Census, taken in 1790 after the Constitution’s ratification, is illustrative. 25.5% of North Carolina’s population was enslaved, as were 35.4% of Georgia’s, 39.1% of Virginia’s, and 43% of South Carolina’s. Importantly, this inflated power did nothing to advance the power of the enslaved people who made it possible.
Under the Three-Fifths Compromise, these states would receive far more representation than what they would have been entitled to if only free inhabitants were counted. Through manipulating the electoral system, the slave states interfered with national politics and diluted the power of the majority of voters while further exploiting enslaved people.
Akhil Amar, a constitutional law scholar at Yale University, provides a stark example. After the 1800 Census, Pennsylvania's free population was 10% larger than Virginia’s but received 20% fewer electoral votes because Virginia’s population was augmented by the Three-Fifths Compromise.
During a debate on the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution in 1803, Representative Samuel Thatcher of Massachusetts pointed out that counting enslaved persons under the compromise added an additional 13 members from “slave states” to the House and eighteen additional electors. It’s no coincidence that for 32 of the first 36 years after the Constitution’s ratification, a white slaveholder from Virginia held the presidency.
While it’s impossible to determine exactly how politics would have been different without the compromise, it is unlikely that, without the extra electoral votes and House seats given to slave states, politicians would have repeatedly enacted laws in slaveholders’ interest.
Among these was the Compromise of 1820, in which Missouri’s admission as a slave state was balanced by Maine’s admission as a free state, with slavery permitted south of Missouri’s border. There was also the Compromise of 1850 which allowed California’s admission as a free state but also enacted the Fugitive Slave Act, allowing for the kidnapping and re-enslavement of people who escaped slavery from free states under the protection of law.
In each of these compromises, politicians from free states were compelled to negotiate with slave states and preserve slavery, even though the South’s voting population was a minority. In this way, an artificial majority built on the mathematical inclusion of enslaved Black Americans both preserved and expanded slavery against the will of the majority of voters.
While the Civil War ended the Three-Fifths Compromise, the Electoral College continues to hurt Black Americans and communities of color in the ways described below.
Post Three-Fifths Compromise: How The Electoral College Continued to Overlook Voters
After the Union’s victory in the Civil War, Congress explicitly abolished the Three-Fifths Compromise through the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment required that seats in the House of Representatives must be apportioned among the several states by counting the “whole number of persons” in each state, excluding Native Americans who were not taxed at that time because they were considered to be part of sovereign nations.
This meant that newly freed people would be included as “full persons” in the Census, ending the Three-Fifths Compromise. The Fifteenth Amendment also required states to grant formerly enslaved people the right to vote, theoretically ending the disenfranchisement of Black citizens to increase “slave state” representation.
Notably, the Black vote was still heavily suppressed through so-called “Jim Crow” laws; it wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that many restrictions targeting Black Americans were deemed illegal, and several key provisions of that Act were rolled back in 2013’s Supreme Court decision Shelby v. Holder.
The end of the Three-Fifths Compromise did not end the Electoral College’s negative impact on people of color.
The current structure of the Electoral College incentivizes politicians of all parties to ignore the majority of voters and instead focus on the states that happen to be closely divided and contested in each Presidential election. Prioritizing “swing states” over the total population is undemocratic. It conflicts with the duty of federal elected officials, which requires them to consider the needs and welfare of the whole nation, not just a few swing states.
In many instances, the Electoral College incentivizes parties to ignore large swathes of Black, Asian, and Native American voters because the states they live in reliably vote for a certain party.
For example, New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC, are Democratic Party bastions — they're also in three of the five metropolitan areas with the largest Black populations in the US. Nationally, there is no political incentive for the Republican Party to ever appeal to voters there, as they can win the presidency without earning a single vote from these cities. Likewise, Democrats don’t prioritize voter outreach in those areas, as they consider them safely “won.” Thus, many Black metropolitan voters are overlooked.
Likewise, as of 2022, 56% of Black Americans lived in the South. States like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana have large populations of Black voters that are not a priority for national parties. Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi have populations that are 27.2%, 33.1%, and 37.9% Black, respectively. In 2024, these same states gave President Trump 64.6%, 60.2%, and 60.9%, respectively.
Because of the Electoral College, and the limited time and resources of presidential campaigns, Black voters in these states will likely not be targeted for organizing or appeals for their vote. Republicans win these states by massive margins and are effectively guaranteed to win every single electoral vote from these states, while Democrats conversely lose these states by such convincing margins that campaigning there would be an inefficient use of campaign time and resources.
Asian voters also suffer from the Electoral College’s distortions. Forty-six percent of Asian Americans live in California, New York, and Texas. The first two states are strongly Democratic, meaning that, again, neither major party feels the urgency to invest resources in reaching out to these communities in presidential elections.
And it is not simply these groups that the Electoral College excludes. Native American voters in North and South Dakota are similarly deprioritized in presidential elections. The two states are safely Republican, and even if one party won 100% of the Native vote there, it would not alter the results of the presidential election, as the state’s six electoral votes would be safely allocated to the Republican candidate. The same applies to Democratic voters in West Virginia and Kentucky and Republican voters in Hawaii and California.
Put simply, the Electoral College does not protect small states or democracy. Instead, it incentivizes candidates and political parties to ignore states safely in their respective camps and focus on more divided “swing” states. This leaves vast swathes of Americans, especially people of color, excluded from having a meaningful effect on the presidential election and, thus, the attention of both parties.
An America Without the Electoral College
Our country is closely divided. The table below highlights the margin for the last seven presidential elections.
| Year |
Margin of Victory
in Popular Vote (%) |
| 2000 |
0.51 |
| 2004 |
2.47 |
| 2008 |
7.26 |
| 2012 |
3.86 |
| 2016 |
2.09 |
| 2020 |
4.45 |
| 2024 |
1.47 |
Source: Dave Leip's Atlas of US Presidential Elections
If there were no Electoral College, given such small margins, candidates from all parties would be incentivized to campaign in every region of the country, as every vote would count towards victory with a national popular vote.
These close margins of victory should encourage candidates to connect with and appeal to all voters, not just those in swing states. That’s why we support a national popular vote, in which every person’s vote would count equally toward electing the president.
With a national popular vote, parties would be forced to change their behavior to win. Every vote in every state would matter with such close margins.
Republicans could no longer ignore the state of California, for example, with its millions of Republican voters. The same might prove true in New York City, where Republicans would need to invest in campaign infrastructure. Having meaningful political opposition in urban areas could also inspire greater accountability from local city governments in these states, which have repeatedly failed to address homelessness, transportation, and other critical issues.
Conversely, Democrats would be incentivized to invest in areas like the Black Belt in Alabama or the Mississippi Delta region, which contain millions of Black voters who vote for the party's candidates but are otherwise ignored since they reside in states that will certainly vote for Republicans in the presidential elections.
Given the morally compromised and racist foundation of the Electoral College and its continued effects of allowing political exclusion, particularly of many voters of color, from presidential elections, it's clear we should abolish it. That’s why we launched our One Person One Vote campaign to engage and activate voters around this issue and move our country to a more representative system.
The Framers of the Constitution were imperfect human beings attempting to fashion a constitution to keep our newly independent republic united and functional. The Three-Fifths Compromise and Electoral College were flawed results, built on the backs of enslaved people and prioritizing politicians’ interests over the voters’ will. Faced with retaining this constitutional workaround, which once empowered slaveholders and continues to exclude people of color, or furthering full democracy with a national popular vote, the choice is clear: the Electoral College must go.
For more information on how to abolish the Electoral College, please join our One Person One Vote campaign today!
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