- 2889 - ELECTORAL COLLEGE - how to elect a President? In the summer of 1787 my younger years delegates in Philadelphia agreed that this new country they were creating would not have a king but rather an elected executive. But they did not agree on how to choose that president. We have trouble with that to this day, November 5, 2020.
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------------------ 2889 - ELECTORAL COLLEGE - how to elect a President?
- At that time in 1787, a Pennsylvania delegate, James Wilson, called the problem of picking a president “in truth, one of the most difficult of all we have to decide.” Other delegates, when they later recounted the group’s effort, said “this very subject embarrassed them more than any other, that various systems were proposed, discussed, and rejected.”
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- They were at risk of concluding their meetings without finding a way to pick a leader. In fact, this was the very last thing written into the final draft. Had no agreement been reached, the delegates would not have approved the Constitution.
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- It was amazing to the degree to which our founders had to compromise in order to ensure ratification. Selecting the president was one of those compromises. History repeats itself.
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- Three approaches were debated during the Constitutional Convention:
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-------------------- election by Congress,
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-------------------- selection by state legislatures
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------------------- a popular election.
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- At that time the right to vote was generally restricted to white, landowning men.
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- Do the delegates to the Constitutional Convention have to invent an entire new form of government? Should Congress pick the president?
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- Some delegates at the Constitutional Convention thought that letting Congress pick the president would provide a buffer from what Thomas Jefferson referred to as the “well-meaning, but uninformed people” who, in a nation the size of the United States, “could have no knowledge of eminent characters and qualifications and the actual selection decision.” Do we today have an educated electorate?
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- Others were concerned that this approach threatened the separation of powers created in the first three articles of the Constitution:
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---------------- Congress might choose a weak executive to prevent the president from wielding veto power, reducing the effectiveness of one of the system’s checks and balances.
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---------------- The president might feel indebted to Congress and yield some power back to the legislative branch.
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---------------- Virginia delegate James Madison was concerned that giving Congress the power to select the president “would render it the executor as well as the maker of laws; and then … tyrannical laws may be made that they may be executed in a tyrannical manner.”
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- James Madison’s view persuaded his fellow Virginian George Mason to reverse his previous support for congressional election of the president and to then conclude that he saw “making the Executive the mere creature of the Legislature as a violation of the fundamental principle of good Government.”
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- Letting state lawmakers choose? Some delegates thought getting states directly involved in picking the leader of the national government was a good approach for the new federal system.
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- Alexander Hamilton worried that states would select a weak executive, to increase their own power. Hamilton also observed that legislators are often slower to move than top leaders might be expected to: “In the legislature, promptitude of decision is oftener an evil than a benefit.”
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- Don’t trust the state legislatures? Power to the people?
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- The final approach debated was that of popular election. Some delegates, like New York delegate Gouverneur Morris, viewed the president as the “guardian of the people,” whom the public should elect directly.
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- The Southern states objected, arguing that they would be disadvantaged in a popular election in proportion to their actual populations because of the large numbers of enslaved people in those states who could not vote.
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- This was eventually resolved, in one of those many compromises, by counting each enslaved person as three-fifths of a free person for the purposes of representation.
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- George Mason, a delegate from Virginia, shared Jefferson’s skepticism about regular Americans, saying it would be “unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for chief Magistrate to the people, as it would, to refer a trial of colours to a blind man. The extent of the Country renders it impossible that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the Candidates.”
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- The delegates appointed a committee of 11 members, one from each state at the Constitutional Convention, to solve this and other knotty problems, which they called the “Grand Committee on Postponed Questions,” and charged with resolving “unfinished business, including how to elect the President.”
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- At the beginning, six of the 11 members preferred national popular elections. But they realized they could not get the Constitution ratified with that provision: The Southern states simply would not agree to it.
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- Between August, 31 and Septemer 4, 1787, the committee wrestled with producing an acceptable compromise. The committee’s third report to the Convention proposed the adoption of a system of electors, through which both the people and the states would help choose the president.
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- It’s not clear which delegate came up with the idea, which was a partly national and partly federal solution, and which mirrored other structures in the Constitution.
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- Hamilton and the other founders were reassured that with this compromise system, neither public ignorance nor outside influence would affect the choice of a nation’s leader. They believed that the electors would ensure that only a qualified person became president. And they thought the Electoral College would serve as a check on a public who might be easily misled, especially by foreign governments.
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- But the original system, in which the winner of the Electoral College would become president and the runner-up became vice president, fell apart almost immediately. By the election of 1800, political parties had arisen. Because electoral votes for president and vice president were not listed on separate ballots, Democratic-Republican running mates Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied in the Electoral College, sending the contest to the House of Representatives.
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- The House ultimately chose Jefferson as the third president, leaving Burr as vice president, not John Adams, who had led the opposing Federalist party ticket.
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- The problem was resolved in 1804 when the 12th Amendment was ratified, allowing the electors to cast separate ballots for president and vice president. It has been that way ever since.
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- It may be the only way we can elect a President today?
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-----------------------------
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- The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution:
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- Amendment 1 - Congress can't make any law that: Favors one religion over another religion, or no religion at all, or opposes any religion; Stops you from practicing your religion as you see fit; Keeps you from saying whatever you want, even if you are criticizing the President of the United States; Prevents newspapers, magazines, books, movies, radio, television or the internet from presenting any news, ideas, and opinions that they choose; Stops you from meeting peacefully for a demonstration or protest to ask the government to change something.
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- Amendment 2 - Congress can't stop people from having and carrying weapons.
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- Amendment 3 - You don't have to let soldiers live in your house, except if there is a war, and even then Congress needs to pass a law and set the rules.
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- Amendment 4 - Nobody can search your body, or your house, or your papers and things, unless they can prove to a judge that they have a good reason for the search.
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- Amendment 5 - Except during times of war or if you are in the military. You can't be tried for any serious crime without a Grand Jury meeting first to decide whether there's enough evidence against you for a trial; If at the end of a trial, the jury decides you are innocent, the government can't try you again for the same crime with another jury;
You cannot be forced to admit you are guilty of a crime and if you choose not to, you don't have to say anything at your trial at all; You can't be killed, or put in jail, or fined, unless you were convicted of a crime by a jury and all of the proper legal steps during your arrest and trial were followed; and The government can't take your house or your farm or anything that is yours, unless the government pays for it at a fair price.
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- Amendment 6 -If you are arrested and charged with a crime: You have a right to have your trial soon and in public, so everyone knows what is happening; The case has to be decided by a jury of ordinary people from where you are, if you wish; You have the right to know what you are accused of doing wrong and to see and hear and cross-examine the people who are witnesses against you; You have the right to a lawyer to help you. If you cannot afford to pay the lawyer, the government will.
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- Amendment 7 - You also have the right to a jury when it is a civil case (a law case between two people rather than between you and the government).
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- Amendment 8 - The government can't make you pay more than is reasonable in bail or in fines, and the government can't inflict cruel or unusual punishments (like torture) even if you are convicted of a crime.
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- Amendment 9 - Just because these rights are listed in the Constitution doesn't mean that you don't have other rights too.
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- Amendment 10 - Anything that the Constitution doesn't say that Congress can do, is left up to the states and to the people.
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- 10 Commandments: These put you at a real disadvantage on election day:
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- You shall have no other gods before Me.
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- You shall not make idols.
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- You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
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- Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
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- Honor your father and your mother.
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- You shall not murder.
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- You shall not commit adultery.
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- You shall not steal.
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- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
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- You shall not covet.
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- November 5, 2020 2889
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--------------------- --- Friday, November 6, 2020 ---------------------------
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