For media, Donald Trump’s Nov. 8 victory is final proof that the Electoral College is an antiquated relic that needs to go.
But it’s more than just an antiquated relic from America’s past, anguished newsrooms have argued in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s stunning defeat. The Electoral College is also racist and possibly sexist, some have claimed.
Slate, for example, published a story not long after Election Day titled, “The Electoral College is an instrument of white supremacy – and sexism.”
The New York Times also got in on the action this week with an editorial titled, “Time to End the Electoral College.”
Like Slate, but slightly less feverish, the Times posited that the Electoral College is kind of racist.
“The Electoral College, which is written into the Constitution, is more than just a vestige of the founding era; it is a living symbol of America’s original sin,” they wrote. “When slavery was the law of the land, a direct popular vote would have disadvantaged the Southern states, with their large disenfranchised populations. Counting those men and women as three-fifths of a white person, as the Constitution originally did, gave the slave states more electoral votes.”
“Yes, Mr. Trump won under the rules, but the rules should change so that a presidential election reflects the will of Americans and promotes a more participatory democracy,” the board added.
Additional media voices have weighed in with likeminded arguments.
“Yes, it is ironic that this racist idea, the Electoral College, 225 years later ended up benefiting the candidate who spewed racism hate,” said filmmaker and frequent cable news commentator Michael Moore.
National Public Radio contributor Samuel Black said, “The electoral college is not only racist historically, but concretely devalues the votes of non-white citizens today.”
The Detroit Free Press’ Stephen Henderson also wrote an op-ed titled, “The electoral college and its racist roots.”
The far-left website Daily Kos ran the none-too-subtle headline, “From slave states to whose vote counts, the Electoral College has protected white power.”
You get the picture.
The funny thing is, certain newsrooms that have published handwringing denunciations of the mechanism by which U.S. presidents are chosen, seem to forget they defended this very same system in the past.
The New York Times in particular once mounted a smart defense of the Electoral College back in December 2000 – just after George W. Bush beat Al Gore for the White House.
In an editorial published 16 years ago, the Time’s board argued quite vigorously that the case for keeping the system are, “compelling, and in our view, outweigh the majoritarian case” that their state’s new Senator-elect, Hillary Clinton, was then advancing.
“The system has survived earlier instances in which the winner of the popular vote was denied the presidency,” they added at the time. “Wise voters and legislators will want to make sure that it survives this one as well.”
Interestingly enough, the Times’ editorial board forgot all about this 16-year-old defense, and admitted as much in a correction added to its editorial this week. (They wrote: “An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that the editorial board has been opposed to the Electoral College going back 80 years. It failed to note an exception: in 2000, the board defended the college after the election of George W. Bush.”)
There is a lot going on here, and it’s probably not the best use of one’s time going through and trying to unpack arguments made in bad faith. For now, let’s just say that there are ways to have a good-faith debate about the Electoral College, and that the above do not represent anyone’s best efforts.
Further, there’s something strange about waiting until after a certain party’s shellacking to sound the alarm on a supposedly sexist and racist political mechanism.
