5 ms·

I had not read these before, but they are fascinating. For instance, this powerful argument[0] against the Electoral College is still made, nearly verbatim, to

I had not read these before, but they are fascinating. For instance, this powerful argument[0] against the Electoral College is still made, nearly verbatim, today. [0] http://resources.utulsa.edu/law/classes/rice/Constitutional/AntiFederalist/72.htm http://resources.utulsa.edu/law/classes/rice/Constitutional/...

newacct583 6y ago
Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out. Right now is clearly a nadir, it's looking like Trump is going to lose the general electorate by 5 points but the tipping point state by only 0.6, which is just outrageous. But as recently as 2012 we had a (much smaller) skew in the opposite direction, and people tend to forget that. Or, consider a future where some combination of Texas/Georgia/Arizona do what Colorado and Virginia did over the last decade, complete their urbanization and turn hard blue. In that world, we'd be looking at a very large democratic advantage in the EC. Yeah, it's gotta be fixed. It just doesn't correspond well to the kind of population dynamics we have in the modern US. Nothing in the original constitution expected a country where both Wyoming and California could be a single "state". Call your reps and ask for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  > Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out. The argument today says nothing about Democrats or Republicans, it just says the president should be whoever gets the most votes nationwide. So I don’t see how it “swings” both ways.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    Arguments for it are often very coincidentally made by whoever's party benefits from the current skew.
    - salawat 6y ago
      Which is a pity, because if you read the thinking behind it in the Federalist Papers, it is neither Machiavellian or sinister, but rather an attempt to try to get reasonable people to act as a safeguard over the highest office in the nation.
      - newacct583 6y ago
        Alternatively: the EC compromise reflected the personal self-interest of Hamilton/Madison/Jay, just like your citation of them reflects your personal partisan lean. As mentioned, I really doubt you'd have been making a principled argument to that effect in 2012 when the skew went the other way. It's just silly. And it can produce antidemocratic outcomes on occasion, as it did in 2016.
        salawat 6y ago
        I was around in 2012 actually. I also did not understand fully the intricacies of the system as formulated by the Founders. Nor did I appreciate the usurpation of the executive function of an elector in measuring the character of a candidate by the various States and the two National political parties. Fortunately, I was unsatisfied with that state of affairs, and read into the history and writings of the time, so that I could have a better chance of understanding what it was the Founders saw and hoped would carry to the modern day. The understanding I got out of it, was that over the last 200 years is that we've struck a balance between opening up sufferage, but rewriting fundamental abstractions such that the pre-eminence of only two political collectives can be be ontologically considered, ensuring that yet another check the Founders were counting on, Regional Factionalism would disappear as a mitigating factor to prevent the development of a "National Political Elite", much to the dismay of Hamilton and Madison. So, yeah thanks for assuming a modern political caricature is enough to represent the full nuance of my position on a highly argued, oft misunderstood, and underappreciated topic on the mechanics, merits, and warts of the American political system. Really appreciate it.
      - int_19h 6y ago
        If you read the convention notes, those make it very clear that it really was an attempt to compromise on the issue of representation for the slave and the small states by, effectively, transparently incorporating the already-established Connecticut Compromise and 3/5 Compromise. And slave states were really the main roadblock to any scheme involving direct popular vote, because then their slave population would effectively not count for the purposes of representation in the executive. All the stuff about electors being a safeguard etc was post hoc rationalization. I'm not even saying it was in bad faith - the people arguing that EC was a safeguard were doing it sincerely. But that's not why the idea got so much support.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    I meant "who makes the argument" swings both ways. I genuinely thought that was clear from context.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  > Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out I'm not sure "it kind of evens out in the end, viewed over decades" is a great argument for it, really.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    It's not. But it is a bipartisan argument for the NPVIC. Call your state rep.
marcell 6y ago
It's not the same argument that's being made today. They arguing against delegation of your vote to another person. Quoting: > Is it then become necessary, that a free people should first resign their right of suffrage into other hands besides their own, and then, secondly, that they to whom they resign it should be compelled to choose men, whose persons, characters, manners, or principles they know nothing of? We no longer have a system where you vote for an elector who decides which presidential candidate to vote for. The electors in the electoral college execute a formality, they don't make decisions. The issues around electoral college vs. popular vote are not addressed in this paper.
- ericbarrett 6y ago
  The system has been patched since, yes. I was stunned reading this criticism of the powers given to the office of President: > By the same means, he may render his suspensive power over the laws as operative and permanent as that of G. the 3d [George III] over the acts of the British parliament; and under the modest title of president, may exercise the combined authority of legislation and execution, in a latitude yet unthought of. Upon his being invested with those powers a second or third time, he may acquire such enormous influence -- as, added to his uncontrollable power over the army, navy, and militia; together with his private interest in the officers of all these different departments, who are all to be appointed by himself, and so his creatures, in the true political sense of the word; and more especially when added to all this, he has the power of forming treaties and alliances, and calling them to his assistance -- that he may, I say, under all these advantages and almost irresistible temptations, on some pretended pique, haughtily and contemptuously, turn our poor lower house (the only shadow of liberty we shall have left) out of doors, and give us law at the bayonet's point. Or, may not the senate, who are nearly in the same situation, with respect to the people, from similar motives and by similar means, erect themselves easily into an oligarchy, towards which they have already attempted so large a stride? To one of which channels, or rather to a confluence of both, we seem to be fast gliding away; and the moment we arrive at it -- farewell liberty. . . .
  - SllX 6y ago
    The Senate confirmation process has worked both for and against Presidents. This was a powerful argument during the ratification debates and the Anti-Federalists were an important faction (if you could call them a faction anyway, it’s more than just the people that wrote these papers), but history has proven the President isn’t a King. Even the public discourse criticizing the excesses of Bush II, Obama and Trump have been important to curtailing those abuses, and unlike Kings, Presidents have term limits: 4 years, and then America decides if it still wants your leadership, like clockwork. Thanks to people like the Anti-Federalists, both the writers behind the papers and the larger segment of society that was against the Constitution, a Bill of Rights was promised during the ratification debates, and then drafted and passed by the Congress and then ratified by sufficient States. The system works, better than we sometimes like to give it credit for. EDIT: fixed wording
int_19h 6y ago
The Federalist Papers actually have a very powerful argument (#22) against the thing that's most problematic with EC: "Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America3; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration." "But this is not all: what at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, from the nonattendance of a few States, have been frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a single VOTE has been sufficient to put a stop to all their movements. A sixtieth part of the Union, which is about the proportion of Delaware and Rhode Island, has several times been able to oppose an entire bar to its operations. This is one of those refinements which, in practice, has an effect the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy." Hamilton wrote it about the one-state-one-vote arrangement under the Articles of Confederation, of course. But the arguments themselves are clearly very much applicable to the current situation in the Senate and EC.

newacct583 6y ago

Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out. Right now is clearly a nadir, it's looking like Trump is going to lose the general electorate by 5 points but the tipping point state by only 0.6, which is just outrageous. But as recently as 2012 we had a (much smaller) skew in the opposite direction, and people tend to forget that. Or, consider a future where some combination of Texas/Georgia/Arizona do what Colorado and Virginia did over the last decade, complete their urbanization and turn hard blue. In that world, we'd be looking at a very large democratic advantage in the EC. Yeah, it's gotta be fixed. It just doesn't correspond well to the kind of population dynamics we have in the modern US. Nothing in the original constitution expected a country where both Wyoming and California could be a single "state". Call your reps and ask for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

lotsofpulp 6y ago
> Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out. The argument today says nothing about Democrats or Republicans, it just says the president should be whoever gets the most votes nationwide. So I don’t see how it “swings” both ways.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  Arguments for it are often very coincidentally made by whoever's party benefits from the current skew.
  - salawat 6y ago
    Which is a pity, because if you read the thinking behind it in the Federalist Papers, it is neither Machiavellian or sinister, but rather an attempt to try to get reasonable people to act as a safeguard over the highest office in the nation.
    - newacct583 6y ago
      Alternatively: the EC compromise reflected the personal self-interest of Hamilton/Madison/Jay, just like your citation of them reflects your personal partisan lean. As mentioned, I really doubt you'd have been making a principled argument to that effect in 2012 when the skew went the other way. It's just silly. And it can produce antidemocratic outcomes on occasion, as it did in 2016.
      - salawat 6y ago
        I was around in 2012 actually. I also did not understand fully the intricacies of the system as formulated by the Founders. Nor did I appreciate the usurpation of the executive function of an elector in measuring the character of a candidate by the various States and the two National political parties. Fortunately, I was unsatisfied with that state of affairs, and read into the history and writings of the time, so that I could have a better chance of understanding what it was the Founders saw and hoped would carry to the modern day. The understanding I got out of it, was that over the last 200 years is that we've struck a balance between opening up sufferage, but rewriting fundamental abstractions such that the pre-eminence of only two political collectives can be be ontologically considered, ensuring that yet another check the Founders were counting on, Regional Factionalism would disappear as a mitigating factor to prevent the development of a "National Political Elite", much to the dismay of Hamilton and Madison. So, yeah thanks for assuming a modern political caricature is enough to represent the full nuance of my position on a highly argued, oft misunderstood, and underappreciated topic on the mechanics, merits, and warts of the American political system. Really appreciate it.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      If you read the convention notes, those make it very clear that it really was an attempt to compromise on the issue of representation for the slave and the small states by, effectively, transparently incorporating the already-established Connecticut Compromise and 3/5 Compromise. And slave states were really the main roadblock to any scheme involving direct popular vote, because then their slave population would effectively not count for the purposes of representation in the executive. All the stuff about electors being a safeguard etc was post hoc rationalization. I'm not even saying it was in bad faith - the people arguing that EC was a safeguard were doing it sincerely. But that's not why the idea got so much support.
- newacct583 6y ago
  I meant "who makes the argument" swings both ways. I genuinely thought that was clear from context.
rsynnott 6y ago
> Note that EC arguments swing both ways depending on the way the coalitions fall out I'm not sure "it kind of evens out in the end, viewed over decades" is a great argument for it, really.
- newacct583 6y ago
  It's not. But it is a bipartisan argument for the NPVIC. Call your state rep.

marcell 6y ago

It's not the same argument that's being made today. They arguing against delegation of your vote to another person. Quoting: > Is it then become necessary, that a free people should first resign their right of suffrage into other hands besides their own, and then, secondly, that they to whom they resign it should be compelled to choose men, whose persons, characters, manners, or principles they know nothing of? We no longer have a system where you vote for an elector who decides which presidential candidate to vote for. The electors in the electoral college execute a formality, they don't make decisions. The issues around electoral college vs. popular vote are not addressed in this paper.

ericbarrett 6y ago
The system has been patched since, yes. I was stunned reading this criticism of the powers given to the office of President: > By the same means, he may render his suspensive power over the laws as operative and permanent as that of G. the 3d [George III] over the acts of the British parliament; and under the modest title of president, may exercise the combined authority of legislation and execution, in a latitude yet unthought of. Upon his being invested with those powers a second or third time, he may acquire such enormous influence -- as, added to his uncontrollable power over the army, navy, and militia; together with his private interest in the officers of all these different departments, who are all to be appointed by himself, and so his creatures, in the true political sense of the word; and more especially when added to all this, he has the power of forming treaties and alliances, and calling them to his assistance -- that he may, I say, under all these advantages and almost irresistible temptations, on some pretended pique, haughtily and contemptuously, turn our poor lower house (the only shadow of liberty we shall have left) out of doors, and give us law at the bayonet's point. Or, may not the senate, who are nearly in the same situation, with respect to the people, from similar motives and by similar means, erect themselves easily into an oligarchy, towards which they have already attempted so large a stride? To one of which channels, or rather to a confluence of both, we seem to be fast gliding away; and the moment we arrive at it -- farewell liberty. . . .
- SllX 6y ago
  The Senate confirmation process has worked both for and against Presidents. This was a powerful argument during the ratification debates and the Anti-Federalists were an important faction (if you could call them a faction anyway, it’s more than just the people that wrote these papers), but history has proven the President isn’t a King. Even the public discourse criticizing the excesses of Bush II, Obama and Trump have been important to curtailing those abuses, and unlike Kings, Presidents have term limits: 4 years, and then America decides if it still wants your leadership, like clockwork. Thanks to people like the Anti-Federalists, both the writers behind the papers and the larger segment of society that was against the Constitution, a Bill of Rights was promised during the ratification debates, and then drafted and passed by the Congress and then ratified by sufficient States. The system works, better than we sometimes like to give it credit for. EDIT: fixed wording

int_19h 6y ago

The Federalist Papers actually have a very powerful argument (#22) against the thing that's most problematic with EC: "Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America3; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration." "But this is not all: what at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, from the nonattendance of a few States, have been frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a single VOTE has been sufficient to put a stop to all their movements. A sixtieth part of the Union, which is about the proportion of Delaware and Rhode Island, has several times been able to oppose an entire bar to its operations. This is one of those refinements which, in practice, has an effect the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy." Hamilton wrote it about the one-state-one-vote arrangement under the Articles of Confederation, of course. But the arguments themselves are clearly very much applicable to the current situation in the Senate and EC.