Based on what criteria do we elect leaders? -- Your religion is the same as mine? You speak the same “language” that I do? You seem like someone I would like to have dinner with maybe?
It’s funny, we are very proud that we’re a democracy; one person, one vote… but it is strange, isn’t it, that the founders didn’t establish a democracy? With appointment of John Roberts and the nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court, there has been a great deal of conversation concerning Constitutional Originalism (vs. judicial activism). Miers and Roberts are both touted as Originalists and it seems difficult to argue with anyone who is committed to upholding the Constitution as it was originally drafted…
Yet it seems that very early on we strayed from the original intent of the Constitution. Within the context of contemporary elections there is a great deal of debate having to do with the continued relevance of the electoral college and the manner in which votes themselves are counted. If we are a democracy shouldn’t we have a system that is truly based on one vote, one person? Yes, but, we are not a democracy, nor did our founders intend us to be… We are a republic.
Our founders understood that it would be best for citizens, rather than to vote directly for a candidate, to vote for people they knew and trusted to select the president. The idea seems to have been that the country was too large, even then, for individual citizens to know a candidate well enough to make an informed, not emotional, choice. A reality that is even more relevant today with the introduction of mass media into the process.
I fear we too often elect candidates based on the character they play on television rather than for their real life qualifications.
The counting of votes also reflects a different kind of thinking concerning the very nature of the country. The state by state vote reflects an understanding of the nation as a collection of smaller, yet sovereign states. It is a system designed to protect the political power of states with smaller populations and weaker economies. It was established to ensure that larger states did not exploit or “rule over” their weaker neighbors.
It seems disingenuous to prattle on about Constitutional Originalism when we’ve moved so far away from the intent of our founders in terms of how we envision the nation. It would be an interesting experiment to allow our system of elections to function as it was originally intended; but then, different sorts of machines would have to be constructed to build the road to power.
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