Professor says votes by black Americans should count twice

A professor is calling for "vote reparations" for Black Americans, which would make their vote count twice as much as other citizens' in order to have fair elections.

Brandon Hasbrouck is an assistant professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. He teaches criminal law, race relations law, and even offers an entire course dedicated to critical race theory.

"The Critical Race Theory class, taught by Professor Brandon Hasbrouck, examines the institutionalization of racism in the development of American law. It explores the development of critical race theory, investigates the uses and meanings of race in U.S. legal institutions and ideology, and maps the connections between critical race theory and broader national debates about race, racism and racial justice," the Columns reported.

Last week, Hasbrouck wrote an article for The Nation titled, "The Votes of Black Americans Should Count Twice."

"Vote reparations would empower us to replace oppressive institutions with life-affirming structures of economic, social, and political equality," Hasbrouck argued. "And if our elected representatives did not prioritize this transformational work, we could vote them out."

Hasbrouck declared that the Electoral College is a "core problem" because it was set up by the Constitution's framers to "protect the interests of slave states." Hasbrouck added, "Along with the Senate, the Electoral College was critical in the endurance of slavery and its continuation by other means."

"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," the professor deduced. "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."

If the Electoral College is not eliminated, the professor insisted that the country "implement vote reparations by double-counting ballots cast by all Black residents."

Hasbrouck called for vote reparations for Native Americans.

"Slavery is rightly called America's original sin, but so too was the United States' genocidal seizure of land from its original inhabitants," he wrote in the progressive publication.

"Vote reparations would empower us to replace oppressive institutions with life-affirming structures of economic, social, and political equality," he theorized. "And if our elected representatives did not prioritize this transformational work, we could vote them out."

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

He concluded by saying, "To address systemic racism, we must transform how we choose our government."