September 4, 2024 • 51 mins
The electoral college is such a weird and convoluted concept that only the American political system employs, and it's only used for electing a president. Imma tell you the racist history behind it and make it make sense.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
As media. All right, teacher prop here, listen, we're a
couple months away from one of the most terrifying novembers.
You we just there's just no way to know what's
gonna happen. Either we gonna make history with the first
(00:23):
female president, the first biracial, Indian and black. Either that
or we're gonna get Trumpetmania. And if we get the
first sister, we probably gonna get another January sixth and
then but if we get the Trumpster we're gonna get,
we might still get like celebratory riots. We ain't even
got to the October surprise yet, Like it is wild
(00:45):
in these streets. But also this means we're all gonna
participate in one of the most bizarre convoluted up the
street round the Corona Rigamaro Way to vote for a leader,
and that is the electoral College. Like why is it
even politics, y'all? All right, First, it's like a d
(01:26):
bull look is like this bullook is like this all right, y'all,
it's like this so uh, Usually the end of Labor
Day marks the like final stretch of campaigning. Now the
(01:48):
it's as as if it hasn't got weird. I believe
it's probably gonna get weirder. And I don't even know
you know, like I I'm I giggle because I'm in
this with you. It's just gonna get weirder. Now. Why
it's gonna get weirder is this and this is the
(02:09):
season we're in now, And what's going on in the
news is you have to ratchet up because the race
is so close. No matter what anybody is saying, uh,
as far as the campaigns are concerned, like or what
you may feel like, Dan, there's so much momentum here.
There's so much momentum there. The race at the end
(02:30):
of the day is pretty even, which means the only
way to win is to get people to actually come
to the show. You have to come vote because you
can have this stuff. But if y'all don't care, if y'all,
if you don't show up, you startin't gonna win. So
right now, that means that foods is gonna be They
gonna be in your inboxes, They're gonna be on your TV,
(02:51):
they gonna be in your your text messages. Somebody don't
leak your number, and you getting text from people from
one of these campaigns and both of these campaigns you
ain't lying to me. I know what's happening. So and
it's because they just need people to come through. Like
you can have whatever feeling you want, you gotta come through.
And that's where where where that is right now. I
(03:13):
am currently about to record an episode on the two
Economic Plans because they've kind of been released. Uh and
you know we we we uh were going through these things.
You know what I'm saying, like like white parents looking
for lights in their hair because I don't know if
you know about black people, like they lights don't be
(03:35):
living in our hair greases, So like I did, I didn't.
I didn't know lights was a thing anyway. Uh what else? Oh,
Disney pulled the plug on ESPN if you had Direct
TV and you was watching the US Open Yoll scream
with black because Disney was like, y'all not paying us
(03:59):
brad TV broke, Like I don't like broke is in
not not having money, but broke is in broken for
like what is going on? So Disney got to deal
with ESPN. And Disney last year was beefing with Charter
because they was like, you're not paying us, right and
(04:19):
Charter was like nah, fam, Like we got to figure
out how to sell this product. They was like, nigga, no,
you're not gonna do it with our channel. So Disney
and Direct TV beefing, and we one week before the
NFL starts. So, uh, if y'all don't want these white
people to riot, boy white people Mexican's from Texas and
(04:44):
and black Raider fans, they they for the burdens, cutry down,
y'all figure out ESPN. Y'all worried about the you worried
about the election. You better get this, you better get
this football back on. In some personal news, I am
on a show in PBS called Reconnecting Roots. It's season four.
(05:09):
I'm on the episode about journalism. I don't know which
episode that is, but the show called Reconnecting Roots. They
want to em me last year. I'm on the show.
It's safe for the whole family. It's a little like
kind of fun take on just like history and and
just Americana, So please tune in. It was a super
honor to be a part of Reconnecting Roots. It's on PBS.
(05:34):
And also, you know RFK bent the knee, y'all, so
if it were me, if I were an RFK fan,
this is literally selling This is what selling out means.
I just don't understand. This is what's selling out means. Right,
(05:59):
you're the anti establishment, You're the like you're that dude, right,
like you're the anti establishment. The system's broken. Both these
parties are flawed. I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna
bring a new way to do it unless you give
me a job. I like, wait, ain't that okay? I
(06:23):
will end my principles if you pay me. Is that's
what selling out means. So I'm just at least that's
what I thought. Now what do I know? Either way?
I think I think JD. Van's better watch his back.
(06:45):
He about to be drew bledzel. You know what I'm saying.
All right, let's do the news is like this, Okay,
So words we throw around all the time, direct, democracy, republic,
democratic republic, all these different terms for which we organize
(07:09):
our government. Sometimes they're thrown around so much. And seventh
grade was so long ago. It's like, what is when
you do Americans? You do America eleventh grade? So seventh
grade is American history and then eleventh grades, at least
in California, that's oh, it was what it lost The
terms become they stop meaning stuff, because it's like that's
why by the time you get radicalized in your twenties
(07:33):
and then disillusioned in your thirties, you like, I don't
care about none of this. I'm not voting like voting
over because what difference is a vate the country don't
match the marketing content. So you're just like, I don't
know what idiot is mean? Is why am I even
what am I even doing? You told me to go
pick a guy, and then on the day of the election,
you talking about this state gave you this much, and
(07:55):
you change in the colors on the screen, and it's like, then,
what did I even what did I? What are we doing?
You like for I voted for Jill sty I voted
for Like You're like, I didn't vote for either of
these fools and they're not even on the screen. I
get it. What does it even mean? You talk about
electoral votes, then people talk about popular vote and electoral vote,
(08:18):
and then how many times if you anywhere within a
ten mile radius of my age, hell yeah, even a
fifteen mile radius of my age, how many times the
president didn't win a popular vote? You mean to tell
me more of us voted more Americans voted for that dude,
and he lost. What does any of this mean? I
(08:43):
feel you today. I'm gonna try to help Okay. Now,
we did an episode last season in season two called
the End of the Year Pizza Party. I'm trying to
help you understand the difference between a direct democracy and
a democratic republic. Okay, you could go back in there
and listen to that. Now, every other person we vote
for in our country, for every other elected position, is
(09:06):
a direct democracy, meaning the people who got the most
votes wins. Except for our president. That's the only office
that we do the way that we do that has
this sort of representative electoral college situation. So today I'm
gonna talk about how it works, the history of it,
and arguments for and against because it's it's it's weird. Okay. Now,
(09:30):
some of y'all may notice already. If you do, that's dope.
If you don't, we only you won't learn today. All right,
let's do this, all right, So when your original for
(10:00):
aims of the Constitution, we're putting together the Constitution, membor,
this is a draft, right, so they have to write
the thing. Then they got to go back home and
make sure that people from their colony would actually be
down with this doc. Now it's Philadelphia, it's in the summer,
it's in the seventeen hundred. Y'all wearing powder, y'all got wigs.
It is hot as hell in them rooms. I just
(10:23):
went like, like, let's not romanticize, Like it's just man sweat,
and you got marrying Europeans. They ain't believe in bathing.
Let me tell you a little bit about black people.
Oh man, I was just on the my Mama told
me podcasts with the with the hoies over there, man Langston,
(10:43):
and like we discussed how we're talking about washing chicken
and that despite the science that is probably provable, I'm
still gonna keep washing my chicken because that's nasty. And
the thing is like cleanliness. I think it's it's the unsung.
It's like the black thought of blackness, Like it's really
(11:05):
the goat. It's like musty is almost sinful to black people,
Like we don't be ashy. You don't be musty. It's
like you're disrespecting your ancestors if you not clean, like
one understand, like the peturely smelling rampits. Ooh, seriously, yo,
(11:39):
that was a straight up, real deal, holy feel earthquake. Man.
That's why I was like serious. I had to hit
stop real quick because I was like this a lot
got dug. Listen, man, this is oh man, that this
this is making me channel all my old folks from
the church, like, oh Lord, I mean, Jesus is coming soon.
The thing is it was in the epicenter was Pasadena,
(12:01):
and I was just a four point seven. But because
it was so close you, like anybody from anybody, I
bet you everybody from here is all talked about where
they were during the north Ridge or the Wittyo or
the Silmar earthquake because it was so may once but
six six or seven or something like that that like,
I mean it took out the five freeway, yo, Like ah,
that earthquake was crazy. And listen, I'll be sleeping through
(12:23):
them like natives like if don't wake me up under
a four point zero, well, nigga, it is a four
point seven, so you get up, yup, Oh man, I
ain't an calm down. Don't cut this out, Matt, this
is fun. I cut We really out here lost scandalous anyway,
but truly smelling armpits. We listened black people washed like
(12:43):
we believe in that. So I'm just imagining a room
for the seventeen hundreds white people in Philly just hot,
ass nasty, just Satan's boogers, just hot. So just imagine
a work retreat with no air conditioner and a bunch
(13:04):
of alphas who all believe that they got a vision
for the future. And you making up not a job description,
not a project. You're making up a country. You're making
up a government like you're making it up. So you
got to take pieces from here and from here. It
just try to cobble the thing together. Now, just like
every other job that you got, you break off into subcommittees,
(13:27):
and each little subcommittee is supposed to figure out a
certain part of building this particular government. That's why you
got all the articles and just trying to figure it out,
like what are okay, what are we doing here? We
have this dope idea, but of like you know, no
taxation was out ready to say okay, cool, okay, now,
so like you gotta make a or we're gonna so
we're just gonna make a country. Yeah. So now you
(13:49):
got these subcommittees. Now, there was one committee that was
called the Committee of Unfinished Parts. Oh my god, this
for everything we've forgot. You have to remember at this point,
every colony don't even use the same dialog. So like,
wait a minute, So how do you buy something in
(14:10):
Philadelphia if you come it from Virginia? What we posted?
How do we we need a tran How you do that?
Matter of fact, we talked about it so many times
in the other things, about the other episodes about the
Supreme Court to where the foolsbuses got tired, because it
just say America has a Supreme Court. It don't say
(14:33):
no other rules besides that. Look, we tied. We're gonna
lead that for the Look, look we'll lead that for
the night staff. You know what I'm saying. That's the
next gen. You know you feel we'll lead that for them.
Y'all figure that out. We can't tell the future. Dog
the Committee of the Unfinished Parts, and it was led
(14:53):
by a brother from New Jersey named David Brarely, right,
And they had figured out everything except for how do
we elect the president. Why was that so important was
because like again, they're inventing the internet in their time,
like the equivalent of like you're making up the internet
(15:15):
and you're trying to explain email to somebody, like you're
trying to explain like it's just it has not been
seen before. This concept of the president that they had
in the head was like, okay, so it's not a monarch,
but it's also it's not a dictator. It's not a
like what like how are well how do they become it?
And how do we protect this person from becoming like
(15:38):
a monarch? Like what who gets to choose it? And
and like how do how do we figure out? We
know we want this separation of powers, we don't want one,
So like, okay, you take the power, you break it
into three, but you still need a dude. But how
does that do? Is that dude in charge of everybody else?
Like how do we make sure? What do we what
are we even doing here? So we need to figure
(16:00):
out a way to elect this particular office. So the
concept was at first the Congress would choose because you
can't just trust it to be a direct democracy, because
don't everybody can't read right, So they were like and
again you remember they were so they were so afraid
of this person having too much power, So what's the
(16:23):
compromise Because it's like if it's if it's chosen by
the Congress, then like, how do you protect from corruption
from there? Like so then, now, so that means that
the Congress and the and the executive branch get to
be in cahoots and they can make their plans. Do
they payola and everything? So they was like, okay, well
that can't. So somebody had to come up with some
sort of compromise that would not be perfect, but at
(16:46):
least would be like, all right, a middle ground. Now
what a lot of historians suggest, which is the part
that really is interesting to me, is Okay, here's what
you're balancing between. You're balancing between the power of small
states and large states, right, and then the power of
slave states and free states. Which is why a lot
(17:11):
of sort of activists in my world that are just like,
hey man, it's origins are racist, and its origins are
really more around slavery, and it ain't really around fairness.
It's around making sure that the slave states feel happy.
But I'm gonna get to that a little bit later.
So they was like, Okay, we know it's not perfect,
but we know some certain states are bigger than others.
So I'm going to have more population than others. And
(17:32):
we know that, Like, there's got to be a way
to make sure that everybody gets a fair say. And
it can't just be to Congress, because y'all can make
deals separate from what the people want, and then you
can't really trust the people because the people don't a
lot of times they don't know what they talk about,
and they'll just mess around. Just make this person a king.
So this is what we came up with. Now, remember
(17:54):
since they just writing a draft and these people got
to go back home to convince they folks, you have, like,
these colonies evolved in so many different ways. Some are cities,
some are agriculturals, some are slave states, some are free states.
They all have different interests and they all want to
protect their own interests. So how you're going to get
everybody to agree on anything is like almost an insurmount
(18:17):
or hill. Let alone, who won't be the dog on president? Now,
how it's supposed to work on paper is like this.
So the electoral college are the electorates that actually vote
for the president. So states select these representatives, and each
state has a certain amount of delegates that are supposed
(18:37):
to vote in alignment of the popular vote for the states.
So we go, we basically tell our selected electors. Now
you remember this drama in that Trump going through where
he picked what's called fake electors, which apparently he gonna
be immune from. But so the state selects these electors
(18:58):
and they say, based on the popular vote of the
state that they represent, this is what our state votes.
Every four years, we just make a Congress, a separate congress.
That was the idea of Congress is supposed to be
choosing the president. We can't trust this cong and we
just make one every four years. We're just going to
call them electors. Their only job is to cast the
(19:19):
votes for the president of the minor states. How each
state gets electors is like this. You take the number
of House of Representatives right and the number of Senators,
and you add that up. That's how many electors you get.
Since these numbers are based on population, right, Texas gets
a lot more electoral votes right then, like Maryland. So
(19:43):
that's why Cali has so many electoral votes. Now, what
they want to do is try to make sure that
this is also set up so it's not so proportional
to where big states still get all the power just
because they big states, which is like, well, if that's
the case, well that's stupid. It's you'll just it's still
if it's just population, then why are we going through
(20:03):
all this? So even though like a smaller state has
less votes, they count for more. I know, it don't
make no sense, it really don't, but it's the weight
of their vote. So how that works is like this, like, okay,
so the amount of representatives plus the senators. Right, every
state only has two senators, and your members of the
(20:24):
House represent particular districts. So let's just say your state
has four districts and that state has four districts. So
if that's the case, you both still only have four
representatives in the House. Now, the size of my district
might be four times the amount of your district, but
(20:47):
just because your district small shouldn't mean that your vote
don't matter as much. So that's why you go by that. Now,
California has fifty five votes because we just have that
many districts. But if one district has one hundred thousand people,
that's one representative and your district only got five thousand people,
that's still one representative. So that's what we mean by
(21:09):
the vote weighs more. All right, Yeah, everybody gets heard
and that the big states don't always win. That's the concept,
which is how someone could win the popular vote, meaning
more people voted for them, but they lost the electoral college.
So your district of five hundred thousand people that voted
(21:30):
for candidate A, it's still just one electoral vote as
compared to the person with only five thousand people they
voted for candidate B. It's still just one vote. So
that's what we mean by smaller states votes way more
than bigger states because less people can move a needle
as long as one the electors do what the voters say.
(21:56):
And two, conceptually, what they trying to say is it's like, yo,
if you got a concentrated fan base, like if you
like like remember I talked about with what's the Florida today,
Ron de Santis, if you got like a concentrated fan
base where you really popping in one area, that means
percentage wise for the country, you may, if there's enough
(22:18):
people there, you may be able to get enough votes.
But the problem is if the rest of the country
don't really care about you, who cares about the percentage
that you have in that one spot. What the electoral
college was supposed to do is to make sure that
your fan base is spread across the whole country, because
you got to govern the whole country, so you still
got to earn points. You can't just concentrate. You can't
(22:39):
just focus on Cali and be like I'm gonna win Cali,
therefore I'm gonna win the country like this. So it's
supposed to protect you in concept. So again, the first
thought was Congress, just choose the guy. Then they thought
maybe governors could choose the guy. But then they were like,
it's just just don't feel right. And then they was like,
what can't be a direct it can't be a dire choice,
(23:01):
And it was like, not just because you just don't
have faith in the people, but it's because of one
word slavery. Next, so obviously, since this is seventeen hundred,
(23:42):
slavery is still legal and there is still a push.
Even back then, there was a push to outlaws lavery.
Matter of fact, it was in one of the drafts
of the Constitution, the outlost lavery. I don't know if
you notice. It was in one of the drafts, and
they was like, ah, we'll deal with it later. Just God,
I can't stand these Thomas Jefferson, he was the one
to put it in there. He was like, Yo, we
(24:04):
should probably I don't know, guys, we should probably deal
with this weird though. But the simplest answer is the
Southern states are like, we have more people that live
in our states. The only problem is they so racist
that you don't think your people is people. So when
(24:24):
you counting delegate, you counting votes. We like full a
full third fourth half of our population can't vote, and
far beard for them to enfranchise they slaves. Hell, y'all
know already when we talk about or when they talk
about the people, they don't mean the people. They mean
(24:48):
land owning, tax paying white men. Specifically. They ain't trust
them either. They was like, I don't know, y'all. This
mob like, y'all don't be knowing what you're talking about saying.
The South is saying we will always lose because the
big chunk of our population can't vote. This was the
South's argument against a direct democracy. So the North, most
(25:13):
of them were like, man, we just don't hold to
like moborol. We believe in democracy. We believe like it
should be a government by the people for the people.
But the people be dumb, so let's just put it
to the people. And then as we add up the states,
the South was like, no matter how you slice it,
(25:34):
you know whether the Congress chooses it. And if the
Congress chooses it, again, we don't have enough representatives there
because half of our population that would be a part
of that representation thing, they don't vote or they can't vote.
If it was a direct democracy, again, half of our
population can't vote. So like, we're never gonna win. We'll
(25:57):
never get our way. You guys, the North will always
get what it wants because there's no way for us
to be, according to them, fairly represented. James Madison just
said it out loud. It's like we y'all like, we
gonna want laws and people that's gonna help us get
our bread. But I know y'all don't like the way
(26:19):
we move. Y'all show you like our product, but y'all
don't like the way we move, So you're gonna keep
making laws that's gonna make the way we move not work.
So like and remember again, this is a draft. You
gotta go home and get this signed. Madison was like,
nobody's gonna go nobody in Souse is gonna go for this.
We can't do a direct amount. You have to come
(26:40):
up with something else. So what they came up with
was the three fist compromise. This is why I be
mad when people say that they no such thing as
systemic racism or that like we've never had a problem.
Like it was in their interest, Like I don't understand
what you It was in your interest to enfranchise black
people like you could have this would have helped, It
(27:03):
would have helped you. So it was like, aw, we
can't accept that, so we're gonna do three fits. Now
how it worked is this, remember delegate votes or electric Yeah, no, no, no,
go to say representative votes are based on population. So
they're like, well, technically we do have this population. So
the bigger the states population, the more money you'd receive
(27:24):
for your federal budget, and the more representation in Congress.
So like they want to be able to send more
representatives to Congress so we can have more political power, right,
And the Northern States was like, now, wait a damn minute.
You just told me they're not humans. You want to
treat them like cattle, and now you want to count
them towards your population. Nah, fam, bring that same energy.
(27:44):
This ain't gonna work for us. The Southern States was like,
I don't care, it will work for you. You want
us to stay in this union, this is what we'
finna do. We need our enslaved people to be counted.
North was like, this is absolutely ridiculous, man. You can't
have it both ways. And they was like, you want
us to state this what we demand. So they said, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,
this is what we're gonna do. Here's the deal, y'all
(28:05):
stick around. We still need to make a country. But
the enslaved people need to count as three fifths towards
your population. So three fifths of a human does that?
I so each person is three fifths of a person.
So you got to understand fractions. Each black person is
counts as three fists of person. So you need for
(28:26):
it to get to five fifths to be one person,
you need two black people and then you get kind
of half a person because they three out of five, right,
it was two point five out of five. Then you
need two black people with equal one white dude, So
now you need are you following me? This? How absurd?
This is this is racism, do to your braining. State
(28:46):
of Massachusetts was like, so, so let's make the math. Math.
What you're saying is for the three fits compromise, then
two black people is six fifths, So that's one in
one fish. You're telling me two black people equals one
in one fifth white dude. So then you add a
third black dude, right, and that's one in four fifths.
(29:12):
So then you add a third black dude. Right now,
that's two and two fifths. Okay, got it? What are
y'all serious? What is even? What are we talking about?
Hell no, now, remember it's hot as hell. Fools is
(29:34):
getting tied. I'm tired of talking about this. You stink
your breath steak and this is ridiculous. And so what
do you do when you at work and y'all can't
come up with something? You know what y'all do? Y'all
take a break, everybody. Okay, everybody, take a break. Y'all
go home. We're gonna leave this for the night staff. Now,
you folks in relationships, I'm gonna say you married folks
straight or have sid generally, there's one of y'all in
(29:57):
this relationship that can't make no decisions when ain't hungry
or when they hot, you have a mess? Might just
they just pissy when they hot. I'm up my wife
to refer to her by her prefix. Listen, we got
a scale of one to my homeboy Holding's wedding. How
(30:20):
hungry are you? Obviously there's a story behind Holden's wedding.
I now know when she gets to about a seven,
I just need to make the call. She can't decide
what she want to eat. She's past she's past it,
So I just need to make sure food gets in
her body because she Nothing she gonna say is logical.
(30:41):
I'm like that when I'm tired. Some people, when they hot,
they're just mad at the world. When they hot, you
can't make no. We can't make no decision when I'm hot.
Like my mom was like that, leave me alone boys hot.
She used to listen. You know how many times I
got in trouble just because it was hot, Like, you
don't ask for no, Mama, let me long son is hot. Oh,
(31:02):
just can't make those decisions when you hot. I'm like
that when I'm tired. When I'm tired, or when I'm
worried about money, don't ask me no. Questions. I'll be
snapping at my children, just saying the most absurd I
hear them. Stop all that giggle it why because I'm tired. Okay,
(31:23):
so you gotta put yourself in these men shoes. They liket.
It's hot, y'all being dumb as a bag of rocks.
Just look, I'm okay, I'm just gonna go home. They
left it for the night staff, and that entered the
Committee of the Unresolved People, and they was like, okay, word,
here we go. That's what we're gonna do. Y'all don't
want the Congress to do it. Y'all feel like the
(31:44):
director ain't gonna work because your population don't work. And
so we're gonna take this three fists compromise. That means
you're gonna have more state representatives inside the House. So
we're gonna add up your state representatives with your little
three fists weird old stuff. Okay, connect it to do
your senators because every state only gets two senators, and
then that's the amount of electors you get, and then
(32:09):
how you choose your electors is up to you. But
at the end of the day, listen to the point
I'm telling you. This was created to make the slave
states feel better. So who ends up winning are states
with lower populations and states that have slaves. That's who
ends up winning in this situation, in the state that
(32:30):
it's in. Now, now that's one point oh. Remember so
a version one point Oh, you voted and number one
got the president, a number two got the vice president.
That's how it worked at first. But then check this out.
In eighteen hundreds the run between Jefferson and Burr, they
both got majorities. It was a tie seventy three electoral votes. Well,
(32:54):
who's the president? Like a tie? So now what do
you have to do? Well, now you've got to go
to the the House of Representatives. The problem is the
House of Representatives was full of Federalists, which is what
John Adams was who lost. Enter the third body problem.
It's like the three body problem is space. Fam. This
(33:18):
is why it's hard for us to get our brain
around because we are stuck in this two party system.
It used to not be like that. You know, you
had the Whigs, the Federalists, the Democratic republic Then you
had the Democrats themselves and the Republicans themselves. These fools
didn't know what to do because you remember The Framers
hated the idea of political parties. It sounded too much
(33:41):
like just sounds too britishy, you feel me, But so
they didn't put anything in the Constitution about it. Nobody
thought it would ever turn into this. The Federalists, who
they just thought the other fools was traders. We're gonna
have to choose one of your all, and we all
(34:01):
like neither one of you. So in that position, right,
Alexander Hamilton, you know, the famed Alexander Hampton, a Federalist,
like lobby this party to choose Thomas Jefferson. Like. So
that's eventually what happened. And they was like, okay, listen,
we can't let this happen again. We thought we had,
(34:21):
We thought we had something going here with this electoral college.
Everybody think you think it was ever going to I
don't think it was ever gonna have no tie, right,
So out of that came the Twelfth Amendment, Right, So,
electoral college two point zero, which is the type that
we have today, which basically says, now you have to
put in one vote for the president and one vote
(34:42):
for the vice Now, obviously, the way we lobby, we
lobbied president and vice president as a ticketed pair. But
in theory, it's not written on our on our ballots anymore.
But in theory, you could vote for one president on
one party and the vice president all the electors could
(35:05):
if they so choose to. Now, let me bring in
the three fists compromise back in. If it wasn't for
the three fists compromise, Thomas Jefferson would have never had
enough electoral votes anyway. Remember, because they're adding them. Adding
us black people made the district bigger, even though we
(35:29):
didn't we didn't vote for the man, like, we didn't
vote at all, but just our presence added to the
size of the Southern States. It gave them more electoral
votes because they counted us as slaves into their population
(35:50):
to grow their districts. Which means that Thomas Jefferson got
electoral votes based on people that ain't vote for him,
not only people didn't vote, and people didn't vote at
all because remember we couldn't vote. So I mean, is
that a democracy? Like what are we doing here? This
(36:13):
is what I mean by it works for the Southern
States like it worked for the slave It worked for
pro slavery people worked they were you had this cover
of small states. But y'all, y'all was cheating. I don't
know how it was to explain it. So then finally
(36:34):
you just just just like, since slavery not only is evil,
three fish compromise is absurd, teared about the country, you
got the Civil War, and then the thirteenth Amendment essentially
ended the three fix compromise because we're citizens. But then
you know, we could vote for a little bit. And
what we do after we started voting, we started electing
black people that ain't like that started the black codes
(36:56):
and all of the ways to disenfranchise it as voters,
and you know, all the voting registration and all these
different things that were made to make sure that black
people could have vote. Because once we started voting food,
we started winning all the way into the codifying of
the Jim Crow laws. This happened obviously from we talk
eighteen sixty five to the nineteen sixties, so for one
hundred years. This was going on until the Civil Rights
(37:19):
movement and us given getting our rights to vote without
all of the other Jim Crow stuff, which as a conclusion,
going back to the beginning part should tell you this
this how important voting is. You'd like, think about all
the rigamarole these people has went through to make sure
(37:43):
we vote, don't do it. So I'm just saying now
I'm with I stand with the rest of cools on
media to be like, you need to vote, and you
need to vote, and voting's not enough. So don't get
me wrong, I'm just saying, Yo, bananas moothie needs to
(38:06):
have bananas in it. What a metaphor. Now, it's the
(38:42):
system we have. Of course, it's got flaws, and I
personally think it was made for the seventeen hundreds, and
I think that there's some changes that need to be made.
Having said that, like I say before, even about capitalism,
you in the ocean, you might as well swim. I'm
obviously selling y'all a podcast, and I need y'all to
listen to these ads because I have yet to recoup.
(39:02):
I have yet to make a royalty from this show,
so I need most streams and I need y'all to
listen to the ads. So that I mean, at some
point I got to I still this third fourth season,
whatever I fourth year doing this, I still ain't made
no money from it except for the original contract, which
is great. But I love it make some extra money
for that. Anyway, I'm in the ocean, I need to swim.
(39:23):
But since you in the ocean, since you in this system,
you might as well swim. So now you fast forward
to now with all the ups and downs of how
to twist and turn and the wheeling and the dealing,
and then the fake electors that happened, you know, with
the twenty twenty election when Trump ain't liked the thing,
so we hired a whole new set of electors. Because
remember again, it's up to the state to choose electors
(39:43):
and how they choose it. The government or the constitution
don't really mention. It's up to the state. That's what
the state says, that's what the concert say. It's up
to stay how you choose your electors. These are just
the amount that you get. Now in our country, the
system is it's a winner take all. Let's just say
your electors vote three to two for Kamala in this
(40:04):
upcoming So your state had five electors, you voted three
to two for Kamala. So that means that a big
portion of y'all's population actually voted for Trump. But it
don't matter because since three out of the two voted
for Kamala, all of the electoral points go to her.
(40:26):
It don't matter what percentage of the population actually chose
the other person. You get the whole pot, even though
you may have barely won a little over half the pot.
You get the whole pot. Which again is how a
person could win a popular vote and lose the electoral
college is because you get the whole pot despite you
know whatever amount of the population actually chose that person,
(40:48):
because it's still it might have been more actual humans
in that particular state than the other state, but since
that state's electoral votes doesn't weigh as much as the
or weighs more than the other, and they got all
the points, that's how they win. You could scroll back
to what I mean by weight of their vote if
you need a quick refresher. Again, the volume of humans
(41:11):
inside of your district that that representative represents doesn't matter.
You still have one that still goes towards one electoral
college vote. So if I am a district of one
and you're a district of a thousand, right, if a
thousand of y'all voted for Kamala and I voted for Trump,
(41:33):
my vote weighs just as much as a thousand of
y'all y'all vote is one one thousandth the weight of mind.
That's what I mean by that. And it's again, so
that my one vote doesn't get drowned out. Is at
least what is sold to us, which is where you
get stuff like jerrymandering and all that stuff that we've
talked about before. It's and this was in the spirit
(41:57):
of being fair. Now, what that tells a candidate is,
you're not so concerned about what the people think per se.
You're concerned about the electoral college map, which one of
these states have the most points. That's when you hear
(42:20):
these things called swing states, purple states, the big Blue Wall,
like these are things that have not necessarily anything to
do with the amount of humans in the state. It's
the amount of electoral college points you get from it.
So what that tells the candidate is, since it's a
winner take all, I don't even need to try in
(42:45):
states that I know I'm not even gonna win. You
win by being the first one to get to two
hundred and seventy electoral college votes. So you look at
the map and you try to figure out looking at
that map, all fifty states where the delegates are broken
up from, and you just go, how can I That's
how you make the math work. How do I get
to two hundred and seventy? Which states do I need
(43:06):
to win? Right to get to that? Which states do
I already know? Like forget it throughout the map. I'm
never gonna win that, So I don't even calculate that.
I'll fight for the ones that could help my math math.
That's the strategy. This is where the term battleground state
comes from, because it's like, Yo, this is a toss up.
(43:28):
I might possibly, I could possibly grab up all these points.
So if you are being smart about your energy, you
being smart about your budget, you being smart about your ads,
where your voters are, and which one do you have
a better chance of snatching up all the points? That's
where you put your money in. You put your money,
(43:50):
your interest in where you think you could find people
that's gonna get you the whole pot. So you take
California for example. I think this is the best example.
California is a blue state, Are you sure? Because it's
blue because of the Bay Area in LA there's just
a lot of people there. Bru You Kaipa, Orange County,
(44:12):
Kerrent County. The middle is I mean, it's the middle's rule.
Like they're farmers in there. You go up north to
Wayrika up in the mountains, they trump folk. It's very conservative.
Remember they they even thought about seceding. There was gonna
be Jefferson, the little spot in between and that little
(44:33):
land that might as well be Oregon at the top
of California and in the bottom of Oregon. In the
top of California, they was gonna be their own state.
And then Pearl Harbor happens. So that's why they do it.
But like that's it's It may seem like California is
this bastion of progressivism, but when you think about the
fact that like dog somebody in Visalia or you know
(44:56):
why Rika got to pay the same gas prices as
us in San Francisco, that's diabolical. They should not have
to pay the same people. They should not have to
pay the same price. Like that's crazy, you know, But
that's just how it is. Because it's one state and
California is worth fifty five points, California worth fifty five
points towards your electoral map. You have to ask yourself
(45:18):
is the juice worth to squeeze? And if you like,
ain't no way in the world I'm gonna win California.
Why would you even try? Like, I'm not even gonna
try to convince them, because even if because let's just
say I win half of the half of the points,
if I get half of the votes at California or
right under half, it don't matter because all the points
gonna go to the other. So I just wasted my time.
If I'm running and I know I'm not gonna win,
(45:39):
why would I waste my time trying to convince these
people that there's not enough there's not enough people in
that state that would choose me in relation to those
that wouldn't. And you already got them, Like if you
like so obviously using this one, if you Donald Trump,
like the Republication here is, you already got them. You
know what I'm saying, Like what, oh, I'll do a
(46:01):
rally here just because I can feel good, you know
what I'm saying. But like you're way in California. I
mean you might be able to pluck off some people,
but like you wasting your money here. No, you need
to right now, you need to focus on Arizona. You
need to focus on, you know, Wisconsin, fam like you
got a chance there if you him, so, why would
(46:23):
I even try? So? What it does is that incentivizes
the candidate to just drill down into their partisans because
I'm not gonna win that state anyway. I'm not gonna
get none of those points. So why should I try
to get a piece of a pie that if I lose,
I don't even get to keep the peace. That don't
make no sense, do it. You're teaching me to just
(46:46):
govern the people that will vote for me, that's what
you're teaching them. Why would you? Are you following what
I'm trying to say here? Our system as it stands today,
which was made to placate the slave States, is in
forcing the type of partisanship that we all hate. Now,
I don't have a solution. One of the solutions is
(47:08):
dividing the electoral college based on counties rather than full states.
That way more it's a little bit closer to a
direct democracy. Because now, since this isn't the seventeen hundreds,
women can vote, black and brown people can vote, So
we're talking about a whole different set of people that
(47:32):
can possibly vote and you know what we all went.
We can read. People can read. Now there's such thing
as the internet. It ain't like the seventeen hundreds where
you know, you had to vote in public and out loud.
Foods will run into your house, drag you out the house,
drag you to the polls and be like, I'm a
beach your ass unless you vote for this person, that's
(47:53):
like a don't of you notice that's how our elections
used to be, like just rough like gangs in New
York styles, like like they it was violent, homie. Now
it's all private and your business wasn't like that. So
we can just like our constitution, just like our democracy,
like we feel like we nailed it into seventeen hundreds
and it ain't you need no upgrades, Like we all
(48:15):
here out here on an os one iPhone which still
got the button on it, just swearing we invented something,
you know what I'm saying. So at the end of
the day, this is what it is. Does that mean
that your vote don't count? And oh that sucks. Don't
do that. You're in the ocean. You gotta swim. But
this is what the electoral college is. It is a
basically we create a brand new Congress, and if the
(48:36):
electors do what we told them to do, then our
voices is represented. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they vote
their own conscience. Sometimes president pretends like their votes didn't
matter and they just pick whole new people to vote.
And apparently you can't prosecute said president because he's immute.
(48:56):
But to reiterate again, there has to be a way
to make sure that what would seem so simple as
one person, one vote, how do you make sure that
everybody's voices are heard? And you're right populations like Alaska,
you know, in relays, like I said, given the example
(49:16):
to California, it's like you're right, Like there's just more
of us in LA, you know, But that don't mean
that your voices, you know, which the rest of California,
which produces a fifth of the country's produce, like, yeah,
like we should y'all should be heard. You know. We
arguing over water here in La. It's like we want
(49:37):
water because you know, we're off the edge of a desert,
and they like, yeah, well we grow your food. Don't
you think we should give some water too? I feel
you you don't of an answer. I just think the
world we got now, I don't think that's the answer.
Good politics. All right, now, don't you hit stop on
(50:07):
this pod. You better listen to these credits. I need
you to finish this thing so I can get the
download numbers. Okay, so don't stop it yet, but listen.
This was recorded in East Lost Boyle Heights by your
boy Propaganda. Tap in with me at prop hip hop
dot com. If you're in the Coldbrew coffee we got
(50:28):
terraform Coldbrew. You can go there dot com and use
promo code hood get twenty percent off get yourself some coffee.
This was mixed, edited and mastered by your boy Matt
Alsowski Killing the Beast Softly. Check out his website Matdowsowski
dot com. I'm a speller for you because I know
M A T. T O S O W s ki
(50:53):
dot com Matthowsowski dot com. He got more music and
stuff like that on there, So gonna check out The
heat A Politics is a member of cool Zone Media,
executive produced by Sophie Lichterman, part of the iHeartMedia podcast network.
Your theme music and scoring is also by the one
and Noble mattaw Sowski. Still killing the beats Softly, so listen,
(51:15):
don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living,
you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you.
We'll see y'all next week.
As media. All right, teacher prop here, listen, we're a
couple months away from one of the most terrifying novembers.
You we just there's just no way to know what's
gonna happen. Either we gonna make history with the first
(00:23):
female president, the first biracial, Indian and black. Either that
or we're gonna get Trumpetmania. And if we get the
first sister, we probably gonna get another January sixth and
then but if we get the Trumpster we're gonna get,
we might still get like celebratory riots. We ain't even
got to the October surprise yet, Like it is wild
(00:45):
in these streets. But also this means we're all gonna
participate in one of the most bizarre convoluted up the
street round the Corona Rigamaro Way to vote for a leader,
and that is the electoral College. Like why is it
even politics, y'all? All right, First, it's like a d
(01:26):
bull look is like this bullook is like this all right, y'all,
it's like this so uh, Usually the end of Labor
Day marks the like final stretch of campaigning. Now the
(01:48):
it's as as if it hasn't got weird. I believe
it's probably gonna get weirder. And I don't even know
you know, like I I'm I giggle because I'm in
this with you. It's just gonna get weirder. Now. Why
it's gonna get weirder is this and this is the
(02:09):
season we're in now, And what's going on in the
news is you have to ratchet up because the race
is so close. No matter what anybody is saying, uh,
as far as the campaigns are concerned, like or what
you may feel like, Dan, there's so much momentum here.
There's so much momentum there. The race at the end
(02:30):
of the day is pretty even, which means the only
way to win is to get people to actually come
to the show. You have to come vote because you
can have this stuff. But if y'all don't care, if y'all,
if you don't show up, you startin't gonna win. So
right now, that means that foods is gonna be They
gonna be in your inboxes, They're gonna be on your TV,
(02:51):
they gonna be in your your text messages. Somebody don't
leak your number, and you getting text from people from
one of these campaigns and both of these campaigns you
ain't lying to me. I know what's happening. So and
it's because they just need people to come through. Like
you can have whatever feeling you want, you gotta come through.
And that's where where where that is right now. I
(03:13):
am currently about to record an episode on the two
Economic Plans because they've kind of been released. Uh and
you know we we we uh were going through these things.
You know what I'm saying, like like white parents looking
for lights in their hair because I don't know if
you know about black people, like they lights don't be
(03:35):
living in our hair greases, So like I did, I didn't.
I didn't know lights was a thing anyway. Uh what else? Oh,
Disney pulled the plug on ESPN if you had Direct
TV and you was watching the US Open Yoll scream
with black because Disney was like, y'all not paying us
(03:59):
brad TV broke, Like I don't like broke is in
not not having money, but broke is in broken for
like what is going on? So Disney got to deal
with ESPN. And Disney last year was beefing with Charter
because they was like, you're not paying us, right and
(04:19):
Charter was like nah, fam, Like we got to figure
out how to sell this product. They was like, nigga, no,
you're not gonna do it with our channel. So Disney
and Direct TV beefing, and we one week before the
NFL starts. So, uh, if y'all don't want these white
people to riot, boy white people Mexican's from Texas and
(04:44):
and black Raider fans, they they for the burdens, cutry down,
y'all figure out ESPN. Y'all worried about the you worried
about the election. You better get this, you better get
this football back on. In some personal news, I am
on a show in PBS called Reconnecting Roots. It's season four.
(05:09):
I'm on the episode about journalism. I don't know which
episode that is, but the show called Reconnecting Roots. They
want to em me last year. I'm on the show.
It's safe for the whole family. It's a little like
kind of fun take on just like history and and
just Americana, So please tune in. It was a super
honor to be a part of Reconnecting Roots. It's on PBS.
(05:34):
And also, you know RFK bent the knee, y'all, so
if it were me, if I were an RFK fan,
this is literally selling This is what selling out means.
I just don't understand. This is what's selling out means. Right,
(05:59):
you're the anti establishment, You're the like you're that dude, right,
like you're the anti establishment. The system's broken. Both these
parties are flawed. I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna
bring a new way to do it unless you give
me a job. I like, wait, ain't that okay? I
(06:23):
will end my principles if you pay me. Is that's
what selling out means. So I'm just at least that's
what I thought. Now what do I know? Either way?
I think I think JD. Van's better watch his back.
(06:45):
He about to be drew bledzel. You know what I'm saying.
All right, let's do the news is like this, Okay,
So words we throw around all the time, direct, democracy, republic,
democratic republic, all these different terms for which we organize
(07:09):
our government. Sometimes they're thrown around so much. And seventh
grade was so long ago. It's like, what is when
you do Americans? You do America eleventh grade? So seventh
grade is American history and then eleventh grades, at least
in California, that's oh, it was what it lost The
terms become they stop meaning stuff, because it's like that's
why by the time you get radicalized in your twenties
(07:33):
and then disillusioned in your thirties, you like, I don't
care about none of this. I'm not voting like voting
over because what difference is a vate the country don't
match the marketing content. So you're just like, I don't
know what idiot is mean? Is why am I even
what am I even doing? You told me to go
pick a guy, and then on the day of the election,
you talking about this state gave you this much, and
(07:55):
you change in the colors on the screen, and it's like, then,
what did I even what did I? What are we doing?
You like for I voted for Jill sty I voted
for Like You're like, I didn't vote for either of
these fools and they're not even on the screen. I
get it. What does it even mean? You talk about
electoral votes, then people talk about popular vote and electoral vote,
(08:18):
and then how many times if you anywhere within a
ten mile radius of my age, hell yeah, even a
fifteen mile radius of my age, how many times the
president didn't win a popular vote? You mean to tell
me more of us voted more Americans voted for that dude,
and he lost. What does any of this mean? I
(08:43):
feel you today. I'm gonna try to help Okay. Now,
we did an episode last season in season two called
the End of the Year Pizza Party. I'm trying to
help you understand the difference between a direct democracy and
a democratic republic. Okay, you could go back in there
and listen to that. Now, every other person we vote
for in our country, for every other elected position, is
(09:06):
a direct democracy, meaning the people who got the most
votes wins. Except for our president. That's the only office
that we do the way that we do that has
this sort of representative electoral college situation. So today I'm
gonna talk about how it works, the history of it,
and arguments for and against because it's it's it's weird. Okay. Now,
(09:30):
some of y'all may notice already. If you do, that's dope.
If you don't, we only you won't learn today. All right,
let's do this, all right, So when your original for
(10:00):
aims of the Constitution, we're putting together the Constitution, membor,
this is a draft, right, so they have to write
the thing. Then they got to go back home and
make sure that people from their colony would actually be
down with this doc. Now it's Philadelphia, it's in the summer,
it's in the seventeen hundred. Y'all wearing powder, y'all got wigs.
It is hot as hell in them rooms. I just
(10:23):
went like, like, let's not romanticize, Like it's just man sweat,
and you got marrying Europeans. They ain't believe in bathing.
Let me tell you a little bit about black people.
Oh man, I was just on the my Mama told
me podcasts with the with the hoies over there, man Langston,
(10:43):
and like we discussed how we're talking about washing chicken
and that despite the science that is probably provable, I'm
still gonna keep washing my chicken because that's nasty. And
the thing is like cleanliness. I think it's it's the unsung.
It's like the black thought of blackness, Like it's really
(11:05):
the goat. It's like musty is almost sinful to black people,
Like we don't be ashy. You don't be musty. It's
like you're disrespecting your ancestors if you not clean, like
one understand, like the peturely smelling rampits. Ooh, seriously, yo,
(11:39):
that was a straight up, real deal, holy feel earthquake. Man.
That's why I was like serious. I had to hit
stop real quick because I was like this a lot
got dug. Listen, man, this is oh man, that this
this is making me channel all my old folks from
the church, like, oh Lord, I mean, Jesus is coming soon.
The thing is it was in the epicenter was Pasadena,
(12:01):
and I was just a four point seven. But because
it was so close you, like anybody from anybody, I
bet you everybody from here is all talked about where
they were during the north Ridge or the Wittyo or
the Silmar earthquake because it was so may once but
six six or seven or something like that that like,
I mean it took out the five freeway, yo, Like ah,
that earthquake was crazy. And listen, I'll be sleeping through
(12:23):
them like natives like if don't wake me up under
a four point zero, well, nigga, it is a four
point seven, so you get up, yup, Oh man, I
ain't an calm down. Don't cut this out, Matt, this
is fun. I cut We really out here lost scandalous anyway,
but truly smelling armpits. We listened black people washed like
(12:43):
we believe in that. So I'm just imagining a room
for the seventeen hundreds white people in Philly just hot,
ass nasty, just Satan's boogers, just hot. So just imagine
a work retreat with no air conditioner and a bunch
(13:04):
of alphas who all believe that they got a vision
for the future. And you making up not a job description,
not a project. You're making up a country. You're making
up a government like you're making it up. So you
got to take pieces from here and from here. It
just try to cobble the thing together. Now, just like
every other job that you got, you break off into subcommittees,
(13:27):
and each little subcommittee is supposed to figure out a
certain part of building this particular government. That's why you
got all the articles and just trying to figure it out,
like what are okay, what are we doing here? We
have this dope idea, but of like you know, no
taxation was out ready to say okay, cool, okay, now,
so like you gotta make a or we're gonna so
we're just gonna make a country. Yeah. So now you
(13:49):
got these subcommittees. Now, there was one committee that was
called the Committee of Unfinished Parts. Oh my god, this
for everything we've forgot. You have to remember at this point,
every colony don't even use the same dialog. So like,
wait a minute, So how do you buy something in
(14:10):
Philadelphia if you come it from Virginia? What we posted?
How do we we need a tran How you do that?
Matter of fact, we talked about it so many times
in the other things, about the other episodes about the
Supreme Court to where the foolsbuses got tired, because it
just say America has a Supreme Court. It don't say
(14:33):
no other rules besides that. Look, we tied. We're gonna
lead that for the Look, look we'll lead that for
the night staff. You know what I'm saying. That's the
next gen. You know you feel we'll lead that for them.
Y'all figure that out. We can't tell the future. Dog
the Committee of the Unfinished Parts, and it was led
(14:53):
by a brother from New Jersey named David Brarely, right,
And they had figured out everything except for how do
we elect the president. Why was that so important was
because like again, they're inventing the internet in their time,
like the equivalent of like you're making up the internet
(15:15):
and you're trying to explain email to somebody, like you're
trying to explain like it's just it has not been
seen before. This concept of the president that they had
in the head was like, okay, so it's not a monarch,
but it's also it's not a dictator. It's not a
like what like how are well how do they become it?
And how do we protect this person from becoming like
(15:38):
a monarch? Like what who gets to choose it? And
and like how do how do we figure out? We
know we want this separation of powers, we don't want one,
So like, okay, you take the power, you break it
into three, but you still need a dude. But how
does that do? Is that dude in charge of everybody else?
Like how do we make sure? What do we what
are we even doing here? So we need to figure
(16:00):
out a way to elect this particular office. So the
concept was at first the Congress would choose because you
can't just trust it to be a direct democracy, because
don't everybody can't read right, So they were like and
again you remember they were so they were so afraid
of this person having too much power, So what's the
(16:23):
compromise Because it's like if it's if it's chosen by
the Congress, then like, how do you protect from corruption
from there? Like so then, now, so that means that
the Congress and the and the executive branch get to
be in cahoots and they can make their plans. Do
they payola and everything? So they was like, okay, well
that can't. So somebody had to come up with some
sort of compromise that would not be perfect, but at
(16:46):
least would be like, all right, a middle ground. Now
what a lot of historians suggest, which is the part
that really is interesting to me, is Okay, here's what
you're balancing between. You're balancing between the power of small
states and large states, right, and then the power of
slave states and free states. Which is why a lot
(17:11):
of sort of activists in my world that are just like,
hey man, it's origins are racist, and its origins are
really more around slavery, and it ain't really around fairness.
It's around making sure that the slave states feel happy.
But I'm gonna get to that a little bit later.
So they was like, Okay, we know it's not perfect,
but we know some certain states are bigger than others.
So I'm going to have more population than others. And
(17:32):
we know that, Like, there's got to be a way
to make sure that everybody gets a fair say. And
it can't just be to Congress, because y'all can make
deals separate from what the people want, and then you
can't really trust the people because the people don't a
lot of times they don't know what they talk about,
and they'll just mess around. Just make this person a king.
So this is what we came up with. Now, remember
(17:54):
since they just writing a draft and these people got
to go back home to convince they folks, you have, like,
these colonies evolved in so many different ways. Some are cities,
some are agriculturals, some are slave states, some are free states.
They all have different interests and they all want to
protect their own interests. So how you're going to get
everybody to agree on anything is like almost an insurmount
(18:17):
or hill. Let alone, who won't be the dog on president? Now,
how it's supposed to work on paper is like this.
So the electoral college are the electorates that actually vote
for the president. So states select these representatives, and each
state has a certain amount of delegates that are supposed
(18:37):
to vote in alignment of the popular vote for the states.
So we go, we basically tell our selected electors. Now
you remember this drama in that Trump going through where
he picked what's called fake electors, which apparently he gonna
be immune from. But so the state selects these electors
(18:58):
and they say, based on the popular vote of the
state that they represent, this is what our state votes.
Every four years, we just make a Congress, a separate congress.
That was the idea of Congress is supposed to be
choosing the president. We can't trust this cong and we
just make one every four years. We're just going to
call them electors. Their only job is to cast the
(19:19):
votes for the president of the minor states. How each
state gets electors is like this. You take the number
of House of Representatives right and the number of Senators,
and you add that up. That's how many electors you get.
Since these numbers are based on population, right, Texas gets
a lot more electoral votes right then, like Maryland. So
(19:43):
that's why Cali has so many electoral votes. Now, what
they want to do is try to make sure that
this is also set up so it's not so proportional
to where big states still get all the power just
because they big states, which is like, well, if that's
the case, well that's stupid. It's you'll just it's still
if it's just population, then why are we going through
(20:03):
all this? So even though like a smaller state has
less votes, they count for more. I know, it don't
make no sense, it really don't, but it's the weight
of their vote. So how that works is like this, like, okay,
so the amount of representatives plus the senators. Right, every
state only has two senators, and your members of the
(20:24):
House represent particular districts. So let's just say your state
has four districts and that state has four districts. So
if that's the case, you both still only have four
representatives in the House. Now, the size of my district
might be four times the amount of your district, but
(20:47):
just because your district small shouldn't mean that your vote
don't matter as much. So that's why you go by that. Now,
California has fifty five votes because we just have that
many districts. But if one district has one hundred thousand people,
that's one representative and your district only got five thousand people,
that's still one representative. So that's what we mean by
(21:09):
the vote weighs more. All right, Yeah, everybody gets heard
and that the big states don't always win. That's the concept,
which is how someone could win the popular vote, meaning
more people voted for them, but they lost the electoral college.
So your district of five hundred thousand people that voted
(21:30):
for candidate A, it's still just one electoral vote as
compared to the person with only five thousand people they
voted for candidate B. It's still just one vote. So
that's what we mean by smaller states votes way more
than bigger states because less people can move a needle
as long as one the electors do what the voters say.
(21:56):
And two, conceptually, what they trying to say is it's like, yo,
if you got a concentrated fan base, like if you
like like remember I talked about with what's the Florida today,
Ron de Santis, if you got like a concentrated fan
base where you really popping in one area, that means
percentage wise for the country, you may, if there's enough
(22:18):
people there, you may be able to get enough votes.
But the problem is if the rest of the country
don't really care about you, who cares about the percentage
that you have in that one spot. What the electoral
college was supposed to do is to make sure that
your fan base is spread across the whole country, because
you got to govern the whole country, so you still
got to earn points. You can't just concentrate. You can't
(22:39):
just focus on Cali and be like I'm gonna win Cali,
therefore I'm gonna win the country like this. So it's
supposed to protect you in concept. So again, the first
thought was Congress, just choose the guy. Then they thought
maybe governors could choose the guy. But then they were like,
it's just just don't feel right. And then they was like,
what can't be a direct it can't be a dire choice,
(23:01):
And it was like, not just because you just don't
have faith in the people, but it's because of one
word slavery. Next, so obviously, since this is seventeen hundred,
(23:42):
slavery is still legal and there is still a push.
Even back then, there was a push to outlaws lavery.
Matter of fact, it was in one of the drafts
of the Constitution, the outlost lavery. I don't know if
you notice. It was in one of the drafts, and
they was like, ah, we'll deal with it later. Just God,
I can't stand these Thomas Jefferson, he was the one
to put it in there. He was like, Yo, we
(24:04):
should probably I don't know, guys, we should probably deal
with this weird though. But the simplest answer is the
Southern states are like, we have more people that live
in our states. The only problem is they so racist
that you don't think your people is people. So when
(24:24):
you counting delegate, you counting votes. We like full a
full third fourth half of our population can't vote, and
far beard for them to enfranchise they slaves. Hell, y'all
know already when we talk about or when they talk
about the people, they don't mean the people. They mean
(24:48):
land owning, tax paying white men. Specifically. They ain't trust
them either. They was like, I don't know, y'all. This
mob like, y'all don't be knowing what you're talking about saying.
The South is saying we will always lose because the
big chunk of our population can't vote. This was the
South's argument against a direct democracy. So the North, most
(25:13):
of them were like, man, we just don't hold to
like moborol. We believe in democracy. We believe like it
should be a government by the people for the people.
But the people be dumb, so let's just put it
to the people. And then as we add up the states,
the South was like, no matter how you slice it,
(25:34):
you know whether the Congress chooses it. And if the
Congress chooses it, again, we don't have enough representatives there
because half of our population that would be a part
of that representation thing, they don't vote or they can't vote.
If it was a direct democracy, again, half of our
population can't vote. So like, we're never gonna win. We'll
(25:57):
never get our way. You guys, the North will always
get what it wants because there's no way for us
to be, according to them, fairly represented. James Madison just
said it out loud. It's like we y'all like, we
gonna want laws and people that's gonna help us get
our bread. But I know y'all don't like the way
(26:19):
we move. Y'all show you like our product, but y'all
don't like the way we move, So you're gonna keep
making laws that's gonna make the way we move not work.
So like and remember again, this is a draft. You
gotta go home and get this signed. Madison was like,
nobody's gonna go nobody in Souse is gonna go for this.
We can't do a direct amount. You have to come
(26:40):
up with something else. So what they came up with
was the three fist compromise. This is why I be
mad when people say that they no such thing as
systemic racism or that like we've never had a problem.
Like it was in their interest, Like I don't understand
what you It was in your interest to enfranchise black
people like you could have this would have helped, It
(27:03):
would have helped you. So it was like, aw, we
can't accept that, so we're gonna do three fits. Now
how it worked is this, remember delegate votes or electric Yeah, no, no, no,
go to say representative votes are based on population. So
they're like, well, technically we do have this population. So
the bigger the states population, the more money you'd receive
(27:24):
for your federal budget, and the more representation in Congress.
So like they want to be able to send more
representatives to Congress so we can have more political power, right,
And the Northern States was like, now, wait a damn minute.
You just told me they're not humans. You want to
treat them like cattle, and now you want to count
them towards your population. Nah, fam, bring that same energy.
(27:44):
This ain't gonna work for us. The Southern States was like,
I don't care, it will work for you. You want
us to stay in this union, this is what we'
finna do. We need our enslaved people to be counted.
North was like, this is absolutely ridiculous, man. You can't
have it both ways. And they was like, you want
us to state this what we demand. So they said, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,
this is what we're gonna do. Here's the deal, y'all
(28:05):
stick around. We still need to make a country. But
the enslaved people need to count as three fifths towards
your population. So three fifths of a human does that?
I so each person is three fifths of a person.
So you got to understand fractions. Each black person is
counts as three fists of person. So you need for
(28:26):
it to get to five fifths to be one person,
you need two black people and then you get kind
of half a person because they three out of five, right,
it was two point five out of five. Then you
need two black people with equal one white dude, So
now you need are you following me? This? How absurd?
This is this is racism, do to your braining. State
(28:46):
of Massachusetts was like, so, so let's make the math. Math.
What you're saying is for the three fits compromise, then
two black people is six fifths, So that's one in
one fish. You're telling me two black people equals one
in one fifth white dude. So then you add a
third black dude, right, and that's one in four fifths.
(29:12):
So then you add a third black dude. Right now,
that's two and two fifths. Okay, got it? What are
y'all serious? What is even? What are we talking about?
Hell no, now, remember it's hot as hell. Fools is
(29:34):
getting tied. I'm tired of talking about this. You stink
your breath steak and this is ridiculous. And so what
do you do when you at work and y'all can't
come up with something? You know what y'all do? Y'all
take a break, everybody. Okay, everybody, take a break. Y'all
go home. We're gonna leave this for the night staff. Now,
you folks in relationships, I'm gonna say you married folks
straight or have sid generally, there's one of y'all in
(29:57):
this relationship that can't make no decisions when ain't hungry
or when they hot, you have a mess? Might just
they just pissy when they hot. I'm up my wife
to refer to her by her prefix. Listen, we got
a scale of one to my homeboy Holding's wedding. How
(30:20):
hungry are you? Obviously there's a story behind Holden's wedding.
I now know when she gets to about a seven,
I just need to make the call. She can't decide
what she want to eat. She's past she's past it,
So I just need to make sure food gets in
her body because she Nothing she gonna say is logical.
(30:41):
I'm like that when I'm tired. Some people, when they hot,
they're just mad at the world. When they hot, you
can't make no. We can't make no decision when I'm hot.
Like my mom was like that, leave me alone boys hot.
She used to listen. You know how many times I
got in trouble just because it was hot, Like, you
don't ask for no, Mama, let me long son is hot. Oh,
(31:02):
just can't make those decisions when you hot. I'm like
that when I'm tired. When I'm tired, or when I'm
worried about money, don't ask me no. Questions. I'll be
snapping at my children, just saying the most absurd I
hear them. Stop all that giggle it why because I'm tired. Okay,
(31:23):
so you gotta put yourself in these men shoes. They liket.
It's hot, y'all being dumb as a bag of rocks.
Just look, I'm okay, I'm just gonna go home. They
left it for the night staff, and that entered the
Committee of the Unresolved People, and they was like, okay, word,
here we go. That's what we're gonna do. Y'all don't
want the Congress to do it. Y'all feel like the
(31:44):
director ain't gonna work because your population don't work. And
so we're gonna take this three fists compromise. That means
you're gonna have more state representatives inside the House. So
we're gonna add up your state representatives with your little
three fists weird old stuff. Okay, connect it to do
your senators because every state only gets two senators, and
then that's the amount of electors you get, and then
(32:09):
how you choose your electors is up to you. But
at the end of the day, listen to the point
I'm telling you. This was created to make the slave
states feel better. So who ends up winning are states
with lower populations and states that have slaves. That's who
ends up winning in this situation, in the state that
(32:30):
it's in. Now, now that's one point oh. Remember so
a version one point Oh, you voted and number one
got the president, a number two got the vice president.
That's how it worked at first. But then check this out.
In eighteen hundreds the run between Jefferson and Burr, they
both got majorities. It was a tie seventy three electoral votes. Well,
(32:54):
who's the president? Like a tie? So now what do
you have to do? Well, now you've got to go
to the the House of Representatives. The problem is the
House of Representatives was full of Federalists, which is what
John Adams was who lost. Enter the third body problem.
It's like the three body problem is space. Fam. This
(33:18):
is why it's hard for us to get our brain
around because we are stuck in this two party system.
It used to not be like that. You know, you
had the Whigs, the Federalists, the Democratic republic Then you
had the Democrats themselves and the Republicans themselves. These fools
didn't know what to do because you remember The Framers
hated the idea of political parties. It sounded too much
(33:41):
like just sounds too britishy, you feel me, But so
they didn't put anything in the Constitution about it. Nobody
thought it would ever turn into this. The Federalists, who
they just thought the other fools was traders. We're gonna
have to choose one of your all, and we all
(34:01):
like neither one of you. So in that position, right,
Alexander Hamilton, you know, the famed Alexander Hampton, a Federalist,
like lobby this party to choose Thomas Jefferson. Like. So
that's eventually what happened. And they was like, okay, listen,
we can't let this happen again. We thought we had,
(34:21):
We thought we had something going here with this electoral college.
Everybody think you think it was ever going to I
don't think it was ever gonna have no tie, right,
So out of that came the Twelfth Amendment, Right, So,
electoral college two point zero, which is the type that
we have today, which basically says, now you have to
put in one vote for the president and one vote
(34:42):
for the vice Now, obviously, the way we lobby, we
lobbied president and vice president as a ticketed pair. But
in theory, it's not written on our on our ballots anymore.
But in theory, you could vote for one president on
one party and the vice president all the electors could
(35:05):
if they so choose to. Now, let me bring in
the three fists compromise back in. If it wasn't for
the three fists compromise, Thomas Jefferson would have never had
enough electoral votes anyway. Remember, because they're adding them. Adding
us black people made the district bigger, even though we
(35:29):
didn't we didn't vote for the man, like, we didn't
vote at all, but just our presence added to the
size of the Southern States. It gave them more electoral
votes because they counted us as slaves into their population
(35:50):
to grow their districts. Which means that Thomas Jefferson got
electoral votes based on people that ain't vote for him,
not only people didn't vote, and people didn't vote at
all because remember we couldn't vote. So I mean, is
that a democracy? Like what are we doing here? This
(36:13):
is what I mean by it works for the Southern
States like it worked for the slave It worked for
pro slavery people worked they were you had this cover
of small states. But y'all, y'all was cheating. I don't
know how it was to explain it. So then finally
(36:34):
you just just just like, since slavery not only is evil,
three fish compromise is absurd, teared about the country, you
got the Civil War, and then the thirteenth Amendment essentially
ended the three fix compromise because we're citizens. But then
you know, we could vote for a little bit. And
what we do after we started voting, we started electing
black people that ain't like that started the black codes
(36:56):
and all of the ways to disenfranchise it as voters,
and you know, all the voting registration and all these
different things that were made to make sure that black
people could have vote. Because once we started voting food,
we started winning all the way into the codifying of
the Jim Crow laws. This happened obviously from we talk
eighteen sixty five to the nineteen sixties, so for one
hundred years. This was going on until the Civil Rights
(37:19):
movement and us given getting our rights to vote without
all of the other Jim Crow stuff, which as a conclusion,
going back to the beginning part should tell you this
this how important voting is. You'd like, think about all
the rigamarole these people has went through to make sure
(37:43):
we vote, don't do it. So I'm just saying now
I'm with I stand with the rest of cools on
media to be like, you need to vote, and you
need to vote, and voting's not enough. So don't get
me wrong, I'm just saying, Yo, bananas moothie needs to
(38:06):
have bananas in it. What a metaphor. Now, it's the
(38:42):
system we have. Of course, it's got flaws, and I
personally think it was made for the seventeen hundreds, and
I think that there's some changes that need to be made.
Having said that, like I say before, even about capitalism,
you in the ocean, you might as well swim. I'm
obviously selling y'all a podcast, and I need y'all to
listen to these ads because I have yet to recoup.
(39:02):
I have yet to make a royalty from this show,
so I need most streams and I need y'all to
listen to the ads. So that I mean, at some
point I got to I still this third fourth season,
whatever I fourth year doing this, I still ain't made
no money from it except for the original contract, which
is great. But I love it make some extra money
for that. Anyway, I'm in the ocean, I need to swim.
(39:23):
But since you in the ocean, since you in this system,
you might as well swim. So now you fast forward
to now with all the ups and downs of how
to twist and turn and the wheeling and the dealing,
and then the fake electors that happened, you know, with
the twenty twenty election when Trump ain't liked the thing,
so we hired a whole new set of electors. Because
remember again, it's up to the state to choose electors
(39:43):
and how they choose it. The government or the constitution
don't really mention. It's up to the state. That's what
the state says, that's what the concert say. It's up
to stay how you choose your electors. These are just
the amount that you get. Now in our country, the
system is it's a winner take all. Let's just say
your electors vote three to two for Kamala in this
(40:04):
upcoming So your state had five electors, you voted three
to two for Kamala. So that means that a big
portion of y'all's population actually voted for Trump. But it
don't matter because since three out of the two voted
for Kamala, all of the electoral points go to her.
(40:26):
It don't matter what percentage of the population actually chose
the other person. You get the whole pot, even though
you may have barely won a little over half the pot.
You get the whole pot. Which again is how a
person could win a popular vote and lose the electoral
college is because you get the whole pot despite you
know whatever amount of the population actually chose that person,
(40:48):
because it's still it might have been more actual humans
in that particular state than the other state, but since
that state's electoral votes doesn't weigh as much as the
or weighs more than the other, and they got all
the points, that's how they win. You could scroll back
to what I mean by weight of their vote if
you need a quick refresher. Again, the volume of humans
(41:11):
inside of your district that that representative represents doesn't matter.
You still have one that still goes towards one electoral
college vote. So if I am a district of one
and you're a district of a thousand, right, if a
thousand of y'all voted for Kamala and I voted for Trump,
(41:33):
my vote weighs just as much as a thousand of
y'all y'all vote is one one thousandth the weight of mind.
That's what I mean by that. And it's again, so
that my one vote doesn't get drowned out. Is at
least what is sold to us, which is where you
get stuff like jerrymandering and all that stuff that we've
talked about before. It's and this was in the spirit
(41:57):
of being fair. Now, what that tells a candidate is,
you're not so concerned about what the people think per se.
You're concerned about the electoral college map, which one of
these states have the most points. That's when you hear
(42:20):
these things called swing states, purple states, the big Blue Wall,
like these are things that have not necessarily anything to
do with the amount of humans in the state. It's
the amount of electoral college points you get from it.
So what that tells the candidate is, since it's a
winner take all, I don't even need to try in
(42:45):
states that I know I'm not even gonna win. You
win by being the first one to get to two
hundred and seventy electoral college votes. So you look at
the map and you try to figure out looking at
that map, all fifty states where the delegates are broken
up from, and you just go, how can I That's
how you make the math work. How do I get
to two hundred and seventy? Which states do I need
(43:06):
to win? Right to get to that? Which states do
I already know? Like forget it throughout the map. I'm
never gonna win that, So I don't even calculate that.
I'll fight for the ones that could help my math math.
That's the strategy. This is where the term battleground state
comes from, because it's like, Yo, this is a toss up.
(43:28):
I might possibly, I could possibly grab up all these points.
So if you are being smart about your energy, you
being smart about your budget, you being smart about your ads,
where your voters are, and which one do you have
a better chance of snatching up all the points? That's
where you put your money in. You put your money,
(43:50):
your interest in where you think you could find people
that's gonna get you the whole pot. So you take
California for example. I think this is the best example.
California is a blue state, Are you sure? Because it's
blue because of the Bay Area in LA there's just
a lot of people there. Bru You Kaipa, Orange County,
(44:12):
Kerrent County. The middle is I mean, it's the middle's rule.
Like they're farmers in there. You go up north to
Wayrika up in the mountains, they trump folk. It's very conservative.
Remember they they even thought about seceding. There was gonna
be Jefferson, the little spot in between and that little
(44:33):
land that might as well be Oregon at the top
of California and in the bottom of Oregon. In the
top of California, they was gonna be their own state.
And then Pearl Harbor happens. So that's why they do it.
But like that's it's It may seem like California is
this bastion of progressivism, but when you think about the
fact that like dog somebody in Visalia or you know
(44:56):
why Rika got to pay the same gas prices as
us in San Francisco, that's diabolical. They should not have
to pay the same people. They should not have to
pay the same price. Like that's crazy, you know, But
that's just how it is. Because it's one state and
California is worth fifty five points, California worth fifty five
points towards your electoral map. You have to ask yourself
(45:18):
is the juice worth to squeeze? And if you like,
ain't no way in the world I'm gonna win California.
Why would you even try? Like, I'm not even gonna
try to convince them, because even if because let's just
say I win half of the half of the points,
if I get half of the votes at California or
right under half, it don't matter because all the points
gonna go to the other. So I just wasted my time.
If I'm running and I know I'm not gonna win,
(45:39):
why would I waste my time trying to convince these
people that there's not enough there's not enough people in
that state that would choose me in relation to those
that wouldn't. And you already got them, Like if you
like so obviously using this one, if you Donald Trump,
like the Republication here is, you already got them. You
know what I'm saying, Like what, oh, I'll do a
(46:01):
rally here just because I can feel good, you know
what I'm saying. But like you're way in California. I
mean you might be able to pluck off some people,
but like you wasting your money here. No, you need
to right now, you need to focus on Arizona. You
need to focus on, you know, Wisconsin, fam like you
got a chance there if you him, so, why would
(46:23):
I even try? So? What it does is that incentivizes
the candidate to just drill down into their partisans because
I'm not gonna win that state anyway. I'm not gonna
get none of those points. So why should I try
to get a piece of a pie that if I lose,
I don't even get to keep the peace. That don't
make no sense, do it. You're teaching me to just
(46:46):
govern the people that will vote for me, that's what
you're teaching them. Why would you? Are you following what
I'm trying to say here? Our system as it stands today,
which was made to placate the slave States, is in
forcing the type of partisanship that we all hate. Now,
I don't have a solution. One of the solutions is
(47:08):
dividing the electoral college based on counties rather than full states.
That way more it's a little bit closer to a
direct democracy. Because now, since this isn't the seventeen hundreds,
women can vote, black and brown people can vote, So
we're talking about a whole different set of people that
(47:32):
can possibly vote and you know what we all went.
We can read. People can read. Now there's such thing
as the internet. It ain't like the seventeen hundreds where
you know, you had to vote in public and out loud.
Foods will run into your house, drag you out the house,
drag you to the polls and be like, I'm a
beach your ass unless you vote for this person, that's
(47:53):
like a don't of you notice that's how our elections
used to be, like just rough like gangs in New
York styles, like like they it was violent, homie. Now
it's all private and your business wasn't like that. So
we can just like our constitution, just like our democracy,
like we feel like we nailed it into seventeen hundreds
and it ain't you need no upgrades, Like we all
(48:15):
here out here on an os one iPhone which still
got the button on it, just swearing we invented something,
you know what I'm saying. So at the end of
the day, this is what it is. Does that mean
that your vote don't count? And oh that sucks. Don't
do that. You're in the ocean. You gotta swim. But
this is what the electoral college is. It is a
basically we create a brand new Congress, and if the
(48:36):
electors do what we told them to do, then our
voices is represented. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they vote
their own conscience. Sometimes president pretends like their votes didn't
matter and they just pick whole new people to vote.
And apparently you can't prosecute said president because he's immute.
(48:56):
But to reiterate again, there has to be a way
to make sure that what would seem so simple as
one person, one vote, how do you make sure that
everybody's voices are heard? And you're right populations like Alaska,
you know, in relays, like I said, given the example
(49:16):
to California, it's like you're right, Like there's just more
of us in LA, you know, But that don't mean
that your voices, you know, which the rest of California,
which produces a fifth of the country's produce, like, yeah,
like we should y'all should be heard. You know. We
arguing over water here in La. It's like we want
(49:37):
water because you know, we're off the edge of a desert,
and they like, yeah, well we grow your food. Don't
you think we should give some water too? I feel
you you don't of an answer. I just think the
world we got now, I don't think that's the answer.
Good politics. All right, now, don't you hit stop on
(50:07):
this pod. You better listen to these credits. I need
you to finish this thing so I can get the
download numbers. Okay, so don't stop it yet, but listen.
This was recorded in East Lost Boyle Heights by your
boy Propaganda. Tap in with me at prop hip hop
dot com. If you're in the Coldbrew coffee we got
(50:28):
terraform Coldbrew. You can go there dot com and use
promo code hood get twenty percent off get yourself some coffee.
This was mixed, edited and mastered by your boy Matt
Alsowski Killing the Beast Softly. Check out his website Matdowsowski
dot com. I'm a speller for you because I know
M A T. T O S O W s ki
(50:53):
dot com Matthowsowski dot com. He got more music and
stuff like that on there, So gonna check out The
heat A Politics is a member of cool Zone Media,
executive produced by Sophie Lichterman, part of the iHeartMedia podcast network.
Your theme music and scoring is also by the one
and Noble mattaw Sowski. Still killing the beats Softly, so listen,
(51:15):
don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living,
you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you.
We'll see y'all next week.
Host
Prop
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