Failed Texas Senate candidate and 2020 contender Robert “Beto” O’Rourke connected the Electoral College to slavery Monday and called for its abolition.
O’Rourke took to a stage at the liberal-organized We the People Membership Summit in Washington, D.C., where he took a question about the Electoral College. “Yes, let’s abolish the electoral college,” he told the questioner.
He called the U.S. system of providing equal representation to Americans across the country in the presidential election, “one of those bad compromises we made at day one in this country.”
“There are many others we can think of and they are all connected, including the value of some people based on the color of their skin,” he went on. “There is a legacy and a series of consequences that have persisted and remain with us to this day.”
His words come just days after he told people at a March 14 house party in Iowa that he “is not in favor of traditional reparations for African-Americans for the legacy of slavery,” according to the Associated Press.
A week later at a USC rally on March 22, one man challenged O’Rourke, “Why should I, as a black man, vote for you when you oppose reparations?” according to Mediaite. The Democrat presidential hopeful spent over four minutes, much of it pointing to problems while saying he would look to others for solutions.
In his speech in DC Monday O’Rourke resolved, “In this conversation about how we repair the damage, how we make things right, and how we keep from committing the same injustice going forward is squarely connected to the reason that we are all convened here today and that is fixing our democracy…So yes, if we get rid of the Electoral College, we get a little bit closer to one person, one vote in the United States of America.”
We the People Membership Summit was organized by several groups including labor unions, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and George Soros-funded Center for Popular Democracy Action, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook
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