A Washington and Lee University law school professor is calling for “vote reparations” for African-American people by giving them twice the voting power than other voters.
"Vote reparations would empower us to replace oppressive institutions with life-affirming structures of economic, social, and political equality," Brandon Hasbrouck, an assistant professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, wrote in the Nation. "And if our elected representatives did not prioritize this transformational work, we could vote them out."
Hasbrouck, who teaches classes on critical race theory and race relations law at Washington and Lee, says that the “core problem” of the American election system is the Electoral College.
Hasbrouck argues the current system and ignores black lives and devalues black voters. He says that this was done “by design” by framers of the Constitution to allow for the “endurance of slavery.”
His plan to remedy that would be with “vote reparations,” that would work "by double-counting ballots cast by all Black residents," he said.
He also demands that vote reparations to be extended to Native Americans in a story that was published by the Washington Examiner.
“Slavery is rightly called America’s original sin, but so too was the United States’ genocidal seizure," Hasbrouck said.
Washington and Lee officials told the Examiner that they endorse Hasbrouck's freedom of expression for his plan.
"Washington and Lee's faculty are individuals who hold and express a variety of opinions, and the university is committed to upholding their right to freedom of expression," the school said in a prepared statement to the Examiner. "Professor Hasbrouck's piece on voting reparations in The Nation was published as part of 'The Argument,' which the publication identifies as 'a column where writers and thinkers propose a provocative idea that may not be politically realizable in the short term but that pushes one to think broader about a pressing issue of public importance.'"
