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Politics : Polite Political Discussion- is it Possible? An Experiment. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (549)	8/5/2006 5:05:15 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1695

Okay maybe I confused my explanation. The issue was the number of representative in Congress that each state has. The north would have preferred slaves not counted at all. Because counting them gave the voters in the slave states more representatives. And more representatives meant that the vote of each white male who could vote carried more weight. Assume two states - one with no slaves, one with 50% slaves. Assume one Congressman per 50,000 people total (used as example). Assume that the ratio of adult males to total population is 40% (the 60% are women and children). In the non-slave state, there is one Congressman for each 20,000 voters. In the slave state, if slaves are counted fully for representation, there would be one Congressman for each 10,000 voters. In the example above, the vote of a white man in the slave state would carry twice the weight of a white man in the non-slave state. This was unfair to the non-slave state. 3/5 was a compromise value between fully counting slaves or not counting them at all. And the reason was the counting of the slave population for determining number of representatives - none of the slave population could vote and they were in fact not actually represented at all. Worse than that in fact, out of weight representation was given to their owners and oppressors.