Colorlines magazine - Brief Article

Fighting to change the nation's current system of electing a president should top any social justice agenda, writes Executive Editor Bob Wing in the Spring issue of Colorlines magazine. "The tyranny of the white majority is still institutionalized in the winner-take-all, two-party, Electoral College system," he notes. The system "ensures, even requires, that voters of color be marginalized or totally ignored," Wing writes. "It's a dirty little secret that the Electoral College was rigged up for the express purpose of translating the disproportionate Congressional power of the slaveholders." He adds, since slavery, the new justification for the Electoral College "allows smaller states to retain some impact on elections. And so it does-to the benefit of conservative white Republican states." A failure to change the system, Wing notes, will leave people of color disenfranchised.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Community Renewal Society
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group