How does the electoral college give small states any power? I think the last time a presidential candidate visited North Dakota was in the 1960s. Presidential candidates don't visit small states more than large states, they visit swing states. Something like 80% of both trump and Clinton's campaigning after they had the nomination was in 6 states. The electoral college gives massive attention to a handful of swing states, not small states. They spent a huge amount of time in states like Pennsylvania and Florida, which are no small states. People in Idaho are just as meaningless in the EC as someone in California. There are way more states that are ignored due to the EC than states that get anything out of it.

Electoral college votes are determined by adding the number of house and senate reps a state has. Since each state has 2 senators small states get proportionally more electoral college votes than large ones. The reason many states don't get visited is because they reliably swing one way or another. But just because a state reliably swings one way or another does not mean they would be willing to give up whatever increased influence they have in the process..

But what influence do they have if no candidates visit them? Do you think they will get LESS attention with if popular vote is used? Less than 0? They would give up no influence when your influence right now is 0. Seriously, can you give me an example of the influence North Dakota gets from the EC that they wouldn't have with the popular vote. Presidential candidates don't care about the votes in North Dakota, because they are not worth anything to them, so why propose policies that would be good for those voters?

At least with popular vote there is reason for both parties to visit a small state. For example, there is no reason for a Republican or a Democrat to visit Nebraska with the EC. The Republican has no incentive since they are going to win the EC votes anyway, no reason to waste time getting more votes. A Democrat has no reason, since they won't win the EC there and time is better spent other places. But with the popular vote, each vote is equal. So getting one more vote in Nebraska is worth as much as one more vote in Florida. Now instead of visiting Florida 20 times or Pennsylvania 15 times, they have time and reason to visit Nebraska. Then presidential candidates in both parties have reason to appeal to voters in Nebraska, which gives Nebraska more influence than it currently has.

The fact is that popular vote will increase the influence of more than 40 states. Only few swing states will lose influence.

Haha, now that is funny. You really don't know anything about history.

Seriously, learn some history this is well documented. Slave owners wanted slaves to be counted as property, but that was when representation was going to be determined by wealth. Once representation was going to due to population, slave owners immediately wanted slaves to be counted as people. Your argument makes no sense, since non-slave owners were arguing that slaves should not count towards representation, hence the compromise of 3/5.

Not to mention that the constitution specifically called out taxing of slaves as property! So the 3/5 compromise did not stop that.

Where are you getting these ideas from?

"Do you think the good people of Wyoming who likely swing Republican will be happy going from 3 votes to one."


One?

Why would they go to one vote?

So slave states wanted slaves to be counted for representation purposes in totality i.e. 5.00 per 5.00 slaves yet the Constitution results in 3.00 per 5.00 slaves. Please explain how the 3/5 compromise increased slave state representation?

Originally slave states pushed for not counting slaves at all for taxation, AND counting them representation. That was ludicrous. They were willing to have them count fully as people for both purposes (though they were property). Conversely non-slave states said that slaves were property, so they shouldn't be counted for taxation or representation. from the viewpoint of non-slave states, the compromise increased representation for slave states. At the time, both viewpoints had validity (The intransigence of the Southern states, and their steadfast willingness to walk away, gave them a negotiating upper hand).

However, that was then and there, we are here and now. Hindsight and history and impartiality would side with non-slave states. Slaves were porperty, and had none of the rights afforded to humans (or guaranteed later by the Constitution), and thus had no reason to be counted as population for tax purposes OR representation.

Slave states won an unreasonable negotiation, precisely because they were so dependent on the "peculiar institution", that there was no possiblity of impartial arbitration on the issue.

So slave states wanted slaves to be counted for representation purposes in totality i.e. 5.00 per 5.00 slaves yet the Constitution results in 3.00 per 5.00 slaves. Please explain how the 3/5 compromise increased slave state representation?

Your whole statement is just nonsense.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei

Yes, it increased their representation. It is a very simple concept. Lets say a state had 10,000 free people and 10,000 slaves. The non-slave states said that state had a population of 10,000 because you can't count slaves because they are property (if they are people, how do you justify buying and selling them). The slave states wanted the state's population to be 20,000, because it gave them more representation. So them compromised and agreed the state would have a population of 16,000. Since 16,000 is more than 10,000, the slave states got more represention. Unless you think 10,000 is more than 16,000? It is not hard math. You simply don't get to count them as people AND property.

How else do you explain the James Madison quote? He specifically says the EC is good because it helps states with slaves get more power.

You do also understand that increasing the population of state did not directly increase it taxes to the federal government? The federal governments revenue was based on excise taxes that were not based on the population. I don't know where you got that idea.

So 16K > 20K?

Read the text of the Constitution

I understand the point you're attempting to make, I just think your interpretation is wrong without taking into account the monetary reasons why the compromise came to be

You literally just regurgitated my previous that was allegedly incomprehensible



It wasn't an unreasonable negotiation from their perspective since having slaves count fully for tax purposes but not at all for representation would be unfair from their perspective.

At that time while slavery was important economically it was not the cornerstone of the economies as it was in the 1840 and 1850's.