Carter letter: Electoral College

Racism as the basis for America’s use of the Electoral College. Thanks for printing Walt Thode’s guest opinion, which points out why our otherwise brilliant Founding Fathers built in this establishment of America’s original sin of slavery in recognizing there’d be no continuing 13-states America without giving in to the Southerner’s demands that their property — their humans — be artificially counted as 3/5s of a human toward gaining status as politically viable power-wise with the populations of “free” humans in the North.

And, thank you for placing Mr. Thode’s words alongside those of our Rep. Raul Labrador, who attempts to argue the worthiness of this racism-based Electoral College concept by invoking a collection of 21st century sociopolitical conditions and claiming that they are also valid toward applying to the slavery-dependent 18th century Southern society and, therefore, justify the blackmail-like demands of those 18th century Southern political leaders. This fallacious approach of applying current conditions to justify past historical events is called “ Presentism,” as Idaho’s former Republican Lt. Gov. David Leroy so carefully documents and clarifies in his writings and speech. How absurd and embarrassing that slavery is the basis for our president’s selection process, unlike our choosing of state, county, city leaders.

This story was originally published December 15, 2016 at 4:32 PM with the headline "Carter letter: Electoral College."