How should our leaders be elected?
America is often referred to as a Democracy;
in a pure Democracy, one person should get
one vote.
Yet the framers of the U.S. Constitution set
up a system where our president isn’t elected
that way – the electoral college.
To many on the left, particularly after the
elections of George W. Bush and Donald Trump,
who lost the popular vote but won the electoral
college, this was a mistake.
Organizations such as National Popular Vote
and Fairvote want states to join the National
Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which calls
on each state to require its electors to vote
for whomever comes first in the national popular
vote, even if that candidate lost the state
and did not receive a national majority.
But as the Framers knew well, pure democracy
has its faults.
The founders worried that pure democracy could
potentially infringe on the rights of the
minority, in part from ancient history and
in part because they saw this in their own
time: Functionally bankrupt Rhode Island elected
a radical government that used its power to
print worthless paper money to threaten the
property of merchants to benefit the state’s
majority rural interests.
Alexander Hamilton wrote: “We are now forming
a republican government.
Real liberty is neither found in despotism
or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate
governments.”
James Madison wrote: “Democracies have ever
been spectacles of turbulence and contention;
have ever been found incompatible with personal
security, or the rights of property; and have
in general been as short in their lives, as
they have been violent in their deaths.”
And while they also recognized the uses of
democratic votes to make the government accountable,
the framers moderated it with a system that protected
the rights of the minority by requiring cross-region
and cross-interest alliances to govern.
We aren’t alone in seeking this balance;
an overview of democratic countries shows
that very few countries use a pure popular
vote.
Both at the Founding and now, America is a
collection of different societies.
Different states have different interests.
Rural, less-populous states such as West Virginia
and Alaska have substantially different interests
than tech-titan California and financial capital
New York when it comes to how the government
should treat land or regulate resources.
Without a balancing system like the Electoral
College, these interests would be overrun
by the democratic power of larger, more partisan
urban areas.
“One person, one vote” is a catchy slogan
and might feel intuitive, but there is a reason
the framers abhorred it – because they
cared about protecting all of our rights.
I’m Michael Watson.
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