The founders finally agreed that each state would have two senators and that a state's number of seats in the House of Representatives would be based on that state's population. But then came the question of how to count a state’s population. Women would count toward population, the founders decided, even though women couldn't vote. The next question the founders tackled: should they count slaves? The Southern states wanted slaves to count toward their populations. They had more slaves, so counting them toward population would mean that they could send more representatives to the House. The more populated states in the North didn't want slaves to count toward the population of the Southern states. They didn’t have as many slaves and didn’t want to lose the advantage of having larger populations. Ultimately the delegates agreed on a seemingly random fraction: in determining a state’s population, each slave would count as three-fifths of a person. This is known as the