The Electoral College has come up for debate on The View the hosts debated its purpose, with one saying it is based in slavery.
According to Decider, the panel discussed the recent hate crime in Buffalo, NY, in which 10 people were killed and three were injured. The crime, which occurred in a local grocery store, was meant to target Black people and was fueled by the conspiracy theory called the Great Replacement–the idea that people of color are replacing white Americans.
Haines said that people who believe in the theory are using double-speak to spread the message, particularly by using messaging that could work at the voting booth.
“They keep swapping it around and selling it as, ‘Be afraid, because these elections are now going to be overrun.’ The interesting part is, we already live in a country were the popular vote supports left-leaning issues,” she said. “It’s the electoral college and a lot of those protections, and a lot of the–on a local level–the gerrymandering. The redistricting. So they’re manipulating who can vote and how they can vote.”
Once the Electoral College was brought up, Behar interjected, "The system is rigged. The Electoral College is a rigged idea." Hostin also added that "it's based in slavery."
According to TIME, American historical figure James Madison wrote that a direct voting system would put the south at a disadvantage, saying, “The Right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.”
"In other words," according to TIME's explanation of Madison's quote, "in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote.
“But the Electoral College–a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech–instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.” This would lead southern states to be able to vote in presidents who protected their interests, i.e. slavery and the profits from the horrible practice.
Haines, an Iowan, said that the college was also created that states like Iowa are "in the middle of the country, we don't have the population of people, are we saying that a vote from an Iowan or a less populous state should not have its input in national elections?"
Behar said that the system should be “one vote for each person,” but when Haines argued once again against the popular vote system, Hostin said, “It should be one vote for each person, shouldn’t it? It should be one vote for each person.” Hostin also added that the Electoral College helped states like Iowa ” because the less rural areas owned a lot of slaves, and they wanted their slaves to count.”
Haines said that Hostin's point only further proved her point about smaller populations not getting recognized. "You're proving my point," she said. "The rural vote didn't help."
However, Whoopi Goldberg put a button on the conversation saying that the Electoral College just doesn’t work anymore, something that everyone was saying within their arguments, in their own ways.
