Attorney and election expert Tara Ross said the electoral college has nothing to do with slavery during an interview with “Fox & Friends” Wednesday.
“You hear today that it’s just about slavery and the southern slave-owning states wanted to have an electoral college. Nothing could be further from the truth,” she said.
“If you look at the discussions, it was large versus small. Some of the large were northern states. Some of the large were southern states. And vice versa. It was about the size of the states. It was not about slavery at all. It was about, let’s have a presidential candidate who addresses the needs of the whole country.”
Ross said small states were concerned about being left out of the fold, which led to a compromise and the current system we have today.
“The small states were terrified that they would be run over by the large state delegates if anything like that were to happen,” she said earlier in the interview.
“There are so many memorable quotes of small state delegates sitting on the floor of the constitutional convention, thundering at the large state delegates next to them, ‘we do not trust you’ … The small states were very scared,” Ross added. “And so, of course, we ended up with this compromise, a constitution that blends many kinds of principles together so that we can balance power between the large and the small states.”
She also criticized the idea of awarding electoral votes to the popular vote winner and specifically highlighted states like New York and Illinois.
“It’s crazy. And Illinois has to do that by the way even if the candidate did not appear on Illinois’s ballot at all. They would agree that the will of the nation trumps what Illinois voters say,” Ross said.
“Now 12 states, plus D.C. have signed on to this compact. That’s 181 electors. There are two other states, New Mexico, Delaware, that have legislative approval there but the governors have not yet signed. That would be 189 electors on board. They need 270 to put their compact into effect.”