[ceejayoz]

The same document talks about the "Blessings of Liberty" while establishing slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation?

It's a little hard to reconcile slavery with, say, the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on being "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".

[willcipriano]

> slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation

You would've granted slave owners more votes? You feel they were under represented? If I lived in a state alone with a enough slaves I should have been able to dictate policy for the entire nation?

[InitialLastName]

I think their concern was more the official endorsement of the practice of treating humans as private property, in contrast with a number of amendments providing individual rights (aforementioned property excluded).

[Dylan16807]

They should have made that clear since the complaint reads as being largely about the 3/5 part.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Very strange that you went that direction instead of the more obvious "if slaves are property then they don't count at all".

[willcipriano]

I'd count them negatively personally but the grade school arugment made there has to die, the people who wrote that did so with the hopes of abolishing slavery in the future. It's exactly the opposite of how it is framed.

[ceejayoz]

> You would've granted slave owners more votes?

I would have not had slaves.

[throwaway0a5e]

That's really rich coming from a proponent of federal authority/power.

The alternative here was the articles of confederation or nothing and the states go their own ways as countries, not some fantasy in which the southern states torpedoed their own economies out of some love of the nation.

The constitution and the included 3/5ths compromise most certainly brought about the end of slavery much faster than taking a hard line circa 1790, or anything else that tipped the scales away from the united states forming a national identity would have.

[ceejayoz]

You can say "this was the compromise they had to do" if you like. It's not even a bad argument.

You can't pretend it's not contradictory, though, in a document talking about rights and liberty, and that was the question posed.

[butlerm]

The original was contradictory, it was the result of a political compromise. The current version is not - not legally anyway. Three new amendments to the constitution made the earlier contradictions about slavery a dead letter of no legal effect.

That is what amendments do - they change things, and those ones came at no small price. So what is the point about complaining about a problem that six hundred thousand people already lost their lives in a successful attempt to resolve? Slavery has been illegal in this country for a century and a half.

[quesera]

> while establishing slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation

No argument against your point, but a similar[0] Constitutional issue persists today:

Residents of Wyoming are established as 3.23 people for Congressional representation.

Residents of California are about 4/5ths of a person.

[0] Nothing is similar to slavery, and specifically here the fact that the voting power of these 3/5ths allocations was given to people who did not represent the interests of the humans that comprised the allocations in the first place!

[dragonwriter]

> > while establishing slaves as 3/5 of a person for Congressional representation

> No argument against your point, but a similar Constitutional issue persists today:

Yes, a very similar issue does exist, but the one you are pointing to is not similar.

> Residents of Wyoming are established as 3.23 people for Congressional representation.

The unequal weighting of population for representation in (in descending order of distortion) the Senate, Electoral College, and House as a whole is not really similar to the awarding of extra weight to those who are permitted by the State to vote specifically for people denied liberty as was done in the 3/5 compromise.

The fact that those disenfranchised by felony disqualification are counted—and as whole persons, not 3/5—especially given the way targeted criminalization and penal servitude directly replaced chattel slavery, is, OTOH, a very similar issue.

[quesera]

I believe you're expanding on my footnote, and I agree.

In addition to felons (permanently disenfranchised in most states), you have temporarily-disenfranchised prisoners, and prison-based population distortions that favor some districts over others.

You could probably make an even greater comparison between the voting powers of:

  - a Californian living in a district with high noncitizen population
  - a Wyomingian living in a district with a large penitentiary

WY and CA already start at a 4:1 disparity.

[willcipriano]

I don't see how you can count a illegal immigrant who can't legally hold a job or have a bank account as a free person either.