Law Professor Calls for All Black Votes to Be Double-Counted From Now On

Do you believe your vote counts?

To explain, I mean counts for one.

Or, if you’re black, possibly double that.

Such is the system that works for Brandon Hasbrouck, who recently penned a piece for The Nation magazine.

The Washington and Lee University School of Law assistant professor thinks each lever-pull by a black voter should be tallied twice.

Professor: The Votes Of Black Americans Should Count Twice | The Daily Wire. Brandon Hasbrouck, an assistant professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law, says votes from black Americans should be counted twice. https://t.co/UCClJdslZL

— NicoleMak (@begoodly18) December 21, 2020

In the article, Brandon insists “black voters in this country are worth less than white voters.”

He does state that black people (in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia) won Biden the Electoral College; yet, he asserts, despite “overwhelming Black support — 94 percent of Detroit voted for Biden,” Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were still “worryingly close.”

One enemy to the black American’s ballot-casting — says Brandon — is the Electoral College:

One core problem is the Electoral College. Wyoming, which has just 580,000 residents and is 93 percent white, gets three electors because of its two senators and one representative in the House. By comparison, Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District — which includes Atlanta, has 710,000 residents, and is 58 percent Black — has no dedicated electors or senators and can only occasionally overcome the mostly white and conservative votes from elsewhere in the state.

Do black lives matter? Where the government’s concerned, he estimates No:

This devaluation of Black votes allows our political system to ignore Black lives, and the consequences are devastating. Unequal representation has led to unequal health care outcomes, which the Covid-19 pandemic has only worsened.

One thing’s for sure — repeatedly, black voters by and large enlist Democrats to save the day.

The Daily Wire runs some numbers:

Democratic presidential candidates have received an average of nearly 90% of the black vote for more than five decades. George W. Bush got 9% of the black vote in 2000, then made a heavy outreach and soared in 2004 — to 11%. In 2012 Mitt Romney pledged to help the black community more than had President Barack Obama (who got 95% of the 2008 vote). Romney ended up with 8% of the black vote, the same percentage President Trump would get in 2016.

Has it served them well?

Regardless, Brandon argues the Electoral College was set up from the get-go to disadvantage black Americans.

Its foundational purpose, in fact, was to protect slavery:

The Constitution’s framers set up the Electoral College to protect the interests of slave states. Along with the Senate, the Electoral College was critical in the endurance of slavery and its continuation by other means. Abolishing this system would mean that ballots cast by Black voters — or any voters, for that matter — would count the same.”

Therefore, it’s time for reparations, Doublemint Gum style:

We can implement vote reparations by double-counting ballots cast by all Black residents.

The professor points out the idea isn’t only his — in a 2015 op-ed for The Washington Post, Brennan Center for Justice Senior Fellow Theodore Johnson called for roughly the same.

Mr. Johnson endorsed the increase of each black vote to 5/3 — accomplishing “a poetic symmetry with the three-fifths clause of the Constitution.”

That clause, as you may recall, counted each slave as 3/5 of a person.

But Brandon considers a doubling to be closer to right — it “keeps the point clear and provides redress for myriad forms of disenfranchisement deployed against Black voters.”

And if Washington will agree to it, voilà — balance to the Force:

Because white votes currently count more than Black ones, double-counting Black votes would restore electoral balance. Vote reparations would be a giant step toward remedying our nation’s long history of denying and devaluing Black votes.

The university instructor makes clear: Systemic racism is real.

So a solution’s got to be found.

He asks readers to imagine a world where black votes are twice-counted:

To address systemic racism, we must transform how we choose our government. Even if vote reparations aren’t instituted, Black voters will keep tirelessly dragging our states toward a more perfect union. But just imagine our country if our votes counted twice.

Can you envision it?

If so, how ’bout it? Are you down with a doubling?

Or does Brandon’s plan just not add up?

-ALEX

See more pieces from me:

‘Washington Post’ Cartoon Depicts Republicans as Rats. Is Horrible History Repeating Itself?