You say "should" and I think you're right that that is how the system is interpreted to work and has been for a while. But don't mistake that for a design choi

You say "should" and I think you're right that that is how the system is interpreted to work and has been for a while. But don't mistake that for a design choice by genius founding fathers OR for a good aspect or a way of achieving good government. Relying on consensus to get things done AND designing a system to prevent consensus (party system, FPTP etc) is really just a recipe for deadlocked government. The result is the main failing of the US system: things are dictated by the craziest holdout. I don't think this is a design choice (thinking so would be pretty damning for the founding fathers...). I don't think it serves the US well. I think it is only how the system "should" work in the sense that it is the natural failure mode of the system as written. If a bad, rushed coder fails to put divide by zero protection in, the program "should" crash when someone puts a 0 in. That doesn't mean that isn't a bug to fix though...