OPINION:
The Founding Fathers feared the tyranny of the majority even more than they feared the tyranny of England’s king. That’s the real reason slaves were counted as only four-fifths of a person for purposes of calculating the population to determine the number of congressional representatives.
Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina controlled 20 members of the original 65-member House of Representatives. Another nine members were controlled by sympatric Georgia and Maryland. The more industrialized Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania controlled only 26, and they hardly shared the southern states’ identity. To secure passage of the Constitution, the Founders also had to create the Electoral College to ensure the small states had a say in who became president.
Without the Electoral College, the votes cast in Maryland, Joe Biden’s Delaware and most of the other states would be meaningless. The tyranny of the four or five largest states would control all our destinies.
ROBERT H. KAMMER
Silver Spring, Maryland
