A Washington Post op-ed writer suggests solving the problem on "reparations" for the descendants of slaves by "weighted voting"
— allowing the votes of black Americans to count more than those of other races.
Theodore R. Johnson, a doctoral candidate in law and policy at Northeastern University, notes that slaves were originally counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of congressional representation, but they actually were not allowed to vote. That ratio should be flipped, he argued, giving black voters five-thirds of a vote.
"A five-thirds compromise would imbue African-Americans with a larger political voice that could be used to fight the structural discrimination expressed in housing, education, criminal justice and employment," Johnson writes. "Allowing black votes to count for 167 percent of everyone else's would mean that 30 million African American votes would count as 50 million."
Had the change been made in 2012, five more Southern states with large black populations
— Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana
— would have voted for President Barack Obama and the Senate would still be under Democratic control.
The plan should be temporary, Johnson said, "since the point is not to permanently install a historical equivalence but to erase structural disadvantages."
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