How the Electoral College Protects White Power
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The Electoral College isn’t just undemocratic, as watching the second-place candidate in the popular vote become president-elect has reminded us. It’s also racially biased. Not just in the historical sense that it was founded on slavery, but concretely in the present day, as the graph above shows. Lara Merling and Dean Baker lay it out: The Electoral College, like the Senate, is biased toward small states. And guess what?Â
The states that are overrepresented in the Electoral College also happen to be less diverse than the country as a whole. Wyoming is 84 percent white, North Dakota is 86 percent white, and Rhode Island is 74 percent white, while in California only 38 percent of the population is white, in Florida 55 percent, and in Texas 43 percent. [...]
African American votes on average have a weight that is 95 percent as much as white votes, Hispanic votes are on average 91 percent, and Asian American votes, 93 percent as much of a white vote. In the Electoral College, white votes matter more.Â
And that’s one more reason for Republicans to defend the Electoral College.
