Even given the crazy things protestors these days are demanding in the name of social justice, this one stood out as especially bizarre. In fact, when I saw the headline I thought it was some kind of Onion parody. But no, it’s in The Nation, and it’s by an academic and writer named Brandon Hasbrouck, who is not a Titania McGrath clone but an assistant professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. (Curiously, and unlike most other professors in his school, he doesn’t have a webpage of his own, but you can get more info about him here.)
Hasbrouck is black, and suggests in this article, well, you can read the thesis for yourself (click on the screenshot):
Hasbrouck sees the electoral college as racist, an institution whose structure disenfranchises black people, ergo making “black votes in this country worth less than white votes”:
Black votes in this country are worth less than white votes. Joe Biden won the Electoral College because Black voters in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia turned out in significant numbers. But even with overwhelming Black support—94 percent of Detroit voted for Biden!—the outcomes in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were worryingly close.
I think his view is that if black votes counted twice, Biden (and all Democrats) would win more often, and racial justice would be imminent. He doesn’t say that explicitly, but his claim that black people gave Joe Biden the Presidency is a little extreme. In fact, Phil Zuckerman, in another piece I’ll discuss this week, argues that it’s the “nones” (the nonreligious) who may have handed the presidency to Biden. Actually, any group who would have changed the election had they voted the other way could be deemed responsible (or “praiseworthy,” in the case of Biden).
But back to the Electoral College. I do oppose it, for there’s simply no good reason to retain an antiquated system designed to effect a compromise between the popular vote and the Congressional vote (i.e., the “smart folk” in Congress should have more of a say) . Those days are gone now, and everyone’s vote should count the same as everyone else’s. Governmental elections on every level should be determined by majority vote. That said, I’m not sure Hasbrouck is right when he says this:
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.
And the statement below is certainly contentious, with only one reference to back it up, with that reference not really backing Hasbrouck’s implication that the Electoral College was set solely to favor slave states. Many would argue that, as I said, the Electoral College was set up by the Founders to allow Congress to have a say in the election along with the people.
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.
Yes, the system should be abolished because it no longer makes sense; we’re a democracy, and privileging “electors” is wrong. But in fact ballots cast by black voters do count the same as ballots cast by white voters: nobody knows the race of anybody who voted when those votes are counted.
At any rate, Hasbrouck wants the ballots of black people to count double, as a form of reparations:
But there’s another way to undo the damage of the Electoral College and other structurally racist political institutions: We can implement vote reparations by double-counting ballots cast by all Black residents. The poisonous legacy of slavery applies to Black people regardless of when we or our ancestors arrived in this country. Vote reparations should also extend to Native Americans.
. . . . One of the largest objections to monetary reparations is the impracticality of implementing them on a scale that would meaningfully address the injustices. Vote reparations, in contrast, would be a simple, low-cost way to begin to make amends.
The salutary results—racial justice:
Vote reparations would create possibilities to build what W.E.B. Du Bois called “abolition democracy,” or the practice of achieving a racially just society. Abolition democracy invites us to engage with abolition not as a finite goal but as a radical process of challenging injustices wherever and in whatever form they might appear. Vote reparations would empower us to replace oppressive institutions with life-affirming structures of economic, social, and political equality. And if our elected representatives did not prioritize this transformational work, we could vote them out.
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.
Again, I deny the contention that white votes currently count more than black ones. A black resident of Chicago or Atlanta or Detroit has a vote that counts as much as a white one. The Electoral College, as we saw in the penultimate election, can allow someone to be elected President who hasn’t won the popular vote, but that doesn’t mean that black votes count less than white ones. It means the Electoral College needs to be abolished.
But this suggestion brings up far, far more problems than it solves, even if it did solve any:
1.) Having some people’s votes count more than others is fundamentally inimical to a democracy, and people wouldn’t stand for it. This is especially true when you count black and Native American votes twice as much as “white” votes. That is a huge differential between people who are supposed to be equal. If you want to exacerbate friction between races, this is the way to do it. But you want to fix the problem of representation, get rid of the Electoral College, which is much easier.
2.) How long are these “vote reparations” supposed to last? Forever, or for a finite time? If the latter, what criteria do we use to determine when to stop counting votes differentially on a racial basis?
3.) What about Hispanic votes? I suppose you can make the same case for these, so should their votes count twice?
4.) Most people counted as “black” in America have an average of 20% genes from whites, and many are half black or have an even a smaller fraction of African ancestry. How do you determine who counts as “black” under this system so that they get two votes instead of one? And, to be a bit snarky, does Elizabeth Warren get two votes?
I suspect that what Hasbrouck really wants is what Titania McGrath suggested when she put up the tweet that called this ludicrous proposal to my attention:
Double-counting black votes is the ONLY way to overcome racism.
So long as this doesn’t apply to those black people who voted for Trump, who are clearly white-adjacent scumbags that won’t do what they’re told.https://t.co/fSa73XS8FI
— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) December 20, 2020
There are good ways and bad ways to make reparations for the shameful history of blacks in America. Affirmative action is one, and, even better, we should invest a lot of money and effort in the infrastructure of black communities, in particular schools. Although I favor affirmative action, it’s a deeply imperfect way to make up for inequalities that begin a long time before students ever get to college. And it does nothing to fix the problem of unequal starting lines.
Giving out checks as reparations, as some have suggested, won’t do squat to bring equality. But the worst suggestion of all is counting votes differently based on the voter’s race. I’m actually surprised that The Nation published this piece. Quite frankly, it’s not only unworkable, but unhinged.
But why be surprised at *any* Woke hallucination that The Nation publishes? It’s been in the advance guard of social justice virtue braying for years now. I’d be a lot more surprised if they’d *rejected* this particular piece.
I saw this. smh. It brings up a question that seems to be almost universally ignored when reporting these issues: how does the past treatment of blacks (the worst of which happened before any currently living people were born) justify the compensatory mistreatment of currently living people who have done nothing wrong? Racial determinism is nothing but racism.
Sure, assuming by “worst” you mean chattel slavery itself. But the Jim Crow era was no bowl of cherries, and it was still around during my youth — the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing; the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; the firehoses, police dogs, and beatdowns of civil-rights protestors by Bull Connor’s thugs; the White Citizens’ Councils; the acquittals of lynch mobs by “all-white juries”; the poll taxes and literacy tests; the whole megillah — and it didn’t come to some magical screeching halt on July 2, 1964, the day LBJ put his John Hancock on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took another decade or more to achieve the de facto end (and the echoes of it are with us still, especially when it comes to disparities in housing and income and education and healthcare, among other things).
And there are still a bunch of people around who were on the shit end of that stick who remember it a whole lot better than I (for whom it was essentially a television spectacle on the nightly news).
“…the echoes of it are with us still, especially when it comes to disparities in housing and income and education and healthcare, among other things”
Income. All the other disparities follow from that one. There is today residiuum of Jim Crow here and there, but income is where all class privilege lies.
If the non-religious played a big part in getting Biden elected, I think the way is now clear: Nones should get two votes each!
“Universal suffrage is the counter-revolution” 😬
Who is going to be standing at the polling stations deciding if you’re black enough for your vote to count twice?
P.S. I love this site’s new “Jump to the top” feature!
Yes, I just noticed that on the last “Hili” post. Now all that’s missing is the answer notification, which encourages dialogue.
What a horrible state must exist in parts of academia that an assistant professor of law would suggest such a solution. Surely Hasbrouck knows it has no chance of actually happening. This makes me wonder about his motives. Perhaps the plan is to offer something so outrageous that a one-time monetary reparation will start to look good. Or perhaps it’s merely a Trump-like attempt at causing chaos with the hope that things settle back down into a position more favorable for Black America. It is significant that there are only 10 comments and all are negative. Virtually no one is going to take this seriously.
I’m not an American, so excuse my ignorance, but…
1) isn’t a lot of education and at least some policing under the control of local authorities who are elected by local populations, in some (many?) cases majority African-American?
2) I followed the link about abusive policing and found one, detailed example of judge-sanctioned abusive policing and at the very end of the article, this note: “The full Sixth Circuit decided not to rehear the case in June, 2020, despite a strong dissent from George W. Bush nominee Julia Smith Gibbons, joined by Bush nominee Helene White and Judge Cole.” So, two of the three judges who wanted to challenge the abusive policing/qualified immunity were appointed by a white politician. Rather undermines his argument.
Same old SJW bullshit. I hear lots of hand-waving here. No specifics.
Show me draft laws or regulations. Tell me what you actually mean to do.
Un-hinged is right. We wouldn’t stand for that here in Australia either. Why aren’t we pulling together rather constantly apart?
I still have not figured out why I cannot seem to leave a comment but will click on a reply to accomplish something. This fellows idea is wrong in many ways so just to name a few. He attempts to compare a state (Wyoming) with a section of another state. That is nuts. The electoral system is junk because it is based on the 2 senators per state system we have. It is very undemocratic based on that alone. It was a big win for small states back in 1787. Representation should always be based on population, not by state. This country is and always has been “state happy” and never got over it. Blame it on Jefferson, the first party for the state and not the country. But the electoral mess was first imagined by Hamilton and others who did not like the idea of the people voting for president. Hell, people didn’t vote for senators either. But the other idea was people were on foot or at best horse back. To vote all across the country at one time for one office was a logistics problem in those days. No phones, no TV, no trains…..holding a national election by the people was simply a big problem. Hell, look how much trouble we have today in the 21st century. You can make everything racial I suppose but how the electoral college had anything to do with it is nuts.
It’s such a non-starter on its face that surely it’s just meant to encourage people to talk about non-monetary forms of reparation. The political goals would be better (and less controversially) served by eliminating the EC and making redistricting a non-partisan activity like it is in just about every other modern democracy.
I agree with PCC that investing in schools and education, so that less affluent neighborhoods aren’t saddled with crappy schools, is a far better form of reparation.
How does he know that twice is sufficient? Why not the sqr rt of 5? Or Pi? I wonder how he views anyone who can’t be bothered to trouble themselves to vote (but who for sure will show up for the next “sneaker drop” or digital demigod release)? (I contemplate his position on The Dalton School kerfuffle, per PCC (E)’s recent posting.)
square root of five or pi would be totally irrational.
😀 Good one.
I read the piece as a bit of (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) outrageousness for controversy’s sake, as a polemic against the inequities of the electoral college, rather than as a serious proposal.
It was not a serious proposal in the practical sense, but we can be sure it was SERIOUS. Every
word in The Nation magazine is not merely serious, but grave, solemn, portentous. This applied to a
serious, solemn etc. 2015 article on the virtues of abolishing policing. Back in 1999, I recall The Nation had a solemn retrospective on Great Events of the 20th century. It of course included the October Revolution in 1917—for its dazzling hopefulness—but omitted mention of anything that happened
later in that part of the world, no doubt for lack of the expected hopefulness.
Lord knows, The Nation can take itself too seriously, as has been the case since its founding in the middle of the 19th century. It’s been the platform for all manner of snits and beefs among the Left — large and small — ever since.
But during that long history, it’s also had its share of writers who could approach a topic with wit and humor. It is, after all, where I first encountered the writing of The Hitch, back when he had his regular, weekly “Minority Report” column there, beginning in the Eighties and continuing until his falling out with his colleagues over the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Well, I did forget that Hitch wrote for the Nation, a rather untypical association. But he must have been one of very few Nation contributors in its history capable of wit and humor. Actually, I will also concede that Victor Navasky, the old fellow-traveler who ran the magazine for years, did also show occasional thin traces of humor.
The Nation was founded in 1865 by former abolitionists. In its early days it was concerned with the plight of the freedmen. After that it advocated for “good government.” So, it was far from radical,maybe even conservative . Over the decades it has been sold many times and, perhaps surprisingly, it has managed to survive. One constant it seems is that has always been serious. I think that under current ownership it is the most leftist in its history.
One of the replies to Titania’s tweet had the best idea: have a 2x multiplier for being part of any oppressed group. That way a black lesbian trans woman gets 16 votes.
Do we old cis white blokes get any vote at all in this Utopia? Thought not.
Chicago Mayor Daley thought of this decades ago.
By other means, I do think it important to put in place a political leadership that sets a high priority to social progress and to science (i.e., to global warming especially).
To do that, we do need to elect democrats early and often.
To do that, we do need to give Washington D.C. and/or Puerto Rico statehood. It would be nice to fix the damn electoral college. But that is not the only solution.
Putting forward such a suggestion is pure frivolity in a country that is 60-something percent white and has a considerable share of Latinos who are de facto white and identify as such. Is the clear majority of the population really going to be onboard with their vote being made to count for less because of skin color?
Hasbrouck is really abetting structural racism when he proposes such worthless cures for it.
First, split the population into different victim groups.
Second, provoke each separate victim group to feel especially hard done by.
Third, defund the police.
Who benefits?