> niggers were 3/5 of a vote for the purposes of house representation funny thing about that, it was decided during the debates during the constitutional convention that apportionment for representation should include 3/5 of the slave population, because that ratio was already being used for taxation by the congress under the articles of confederation. the debate on slavery and apportionment is literally two points removed from the electoral college.    to answer op about why we have the ec, the answer is, we really dont know. five guys just added it into the body of the constitution and the only debate recorded is the one after which was about why it was written in instead of congress appointing the president as they had all voted on prior to convening to the committee on detail.  funnily enough, hamilton later said the ec was the one part of the constitution that no one would ever have a problem with. he also retconned some reasoning: keeping it out of the direct hands of the public and putting vote for president in the hands of learned men would remove the whims of the mob, foreign actors would be less likely to influence the election, and (most importantly to me) the president would necessarily appeal to a wide cross section of america and not one geographic region.
United States