Call your mom.
Call your dad.
Call your uncle.
Call your aunt.
Call your cousin.
Call your friend.
Call your enemy.
Call your grandma.
Call your grandpa.
Tell ‘em the Florida Gators are back.
The Electoral College decides who becomes president, not the popular vote. No matter who individual voters in places like Louisiana choose, the candidate with the majority wins all the state's electoral votes.
When the Electoral College was created, it included the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted enslaved Black people as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of determining a state’s total population. This gave extra electoral votes to states with slavery, which made a big difference.
In the Election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson (a slaveholder) beat John Adams (an abolitionist) largely because of the additional electoral votes Southern states gained through the three-fifths clause.
“Donald Trump won the presidency because of two artifacts of slavery: the electoral college and our post-Reconstruction legacy of state voter suppression and disenfranchisement efforts. The electoral college was created in the Constitution to protect the interests of slave owners. And current voter suppression efforts are a direct legacy of white efforts to prevent Blacks from voting after the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited race discrimination in voting.“ — Perea (2018)
Besides Donald Trump, George Bush, Benjamin Harrison, and Rutherford B. Hayes all became president without winning the majority of the popular vote. This system is anti-democratic and continues to empower white Southerners at the expense of Black Southerners.
It is terrible. That’s why Ida B Wells, who witnessed the rise of Jim Crow said “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Civil rights are never permanently won. Each generation must do their part.
Today's Supreme Court decision is a direct assault on the promise of the Voting Rights Act. It risks disenfranchising millions of Americans along racial lines and weakening the very foundation of our democracy.
Democracy is not self-sustaining. We must build, preserve, and defend it together.
Here in New York City, we will always lead a government of, by, and for the people — all of the people.