Did the Founders of the USA support democracy or property rights?
Although Tom Paine is an exception, by and large, the founders trusted the judgement of men who own property (land and/or slaves) rather than the judgement of the population at large.
For example, Alexander Hamilton wrote:
"… most men of property in the several states who wish a government of the Union able to protect them against domestic violence and the depredations which the democratic spirit is apt to make on property …"[1]
Another example, in 1776, John Adams, who became President after George Washington, wrote:
"… Men in general in every Society, who are wholly destitute of Property, are also too little acquainted with public Affairs to form a Right Judgment, and too dependent upon other Men to have a Will of their own? If this is a Fact, if you give to every Man, who has no Property, a Vote, will you not make a fine encouraging Provision for Corruption by your fundamental Law? Such is the Frailty of the human Heart, that very few Men, who have no Property, have any Judgment of their own. They talk and vote as they are directed by Some Man of Property, who has attached their Minds to his Interest."[2]
What is the logical connection between ownership of property and judgement, especially when ownership of property can be inherited, and thus does not require any proof of judgement?
Yet another example is George Washington, the first President. The outstanding aspects of George Washington are those of property, not democracy. Among all the inhabitants of the thirteen colonies, George Washington excelled for his ownership of property:
-
Ownership of the most slaves, at least 577 at one plantation alone[3]
-
Ownership of the most land, over 8,000 acres, located in Viriginia, Maryland, New York, Kentucky, and the Northwest Territory[4]
-
Ownership of the most government debt, which could only be paid to him if the thirteen colonies obtained military and financial security. These include shares in "United States securities", the state of Virginia’s Potomac Company, the James River Company, the Bank of Columbia, and the Bank of Alexandria.[5]
Some conjectures worth considering about the most radical form of property, which is slavery as practiced by the Southern states:
-
protecting slavery property rights could be why the USA has the undemocratic Electoral College (to avoid, or at least delay, the election of an abolitionist President)
-
protecting slavery is why the Constitution considered slaves to count as merely 3/5ths human, but nevertheless boost the number of members of House of Representatives by this practice. Consider that the majority of the population of South Carolina was Black from the Colonial era until 1920[6]
-
protecting slavery was probably the reason for the Second Amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
-
The state militia could hunt down escaped slaves and could defend a slave-holding state against a Federal Government. According to U.C. Berkeley History Professor Brian DeLay, "… many in America were wary of the new Constitution and the power granted to Congress to establish a national standing army. In the Anti-Federalists’ view, those armies represented a threat to liberty and the sovereignty of states." The solution? To form a well-regulated militia, or a citizen army composed of men “trained and prepared to act together in coordination for common defense,” DeLay said. “The overwhelming focus of debate whenever guns were invoked was about military,” he said. “It wasn’t about hunting, it wasn’t about self-defense.”[7]
-
When South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said the Civil War was about "States Rights", she was referring the right of South Carolina to protect slavery against the Federal Government.
-
-
A legacy of protecting slavery might be a factor for the type of religion practiced by Whites in the South. Unlike to social gospel of Martin Luther King, Junior, the Bible Belt brand of religion focused exclusively on personal sin.[8] By removing social issues, and narrowing awareness to the lone individual, the South could isolate the peculiar institution of slavery from moral questioning.
Democracy is limited in the USA
-
The Electoral College boosts the political power of small states. For example, a voter in Wyoming has 370% more influence on a presidental election than a California voter. This is because even the smallest states are awarded two senators and one Congressional representative, even if the number of people in the state is less than the number of people in many cities.
-
For legislative purposes, small states having two senators and one Congressional representative also awards them disproportional power.
-
Elections occur on a workday, which can be a problem for voters who cannot afford to take time off work.
-
People with a felony record cannot vote in many states, even if they have completed their prison sentence.
Electoral College
To get a Constitutional Amendment that eliminates or reforms the Electoral College would be almost possible. States could voluntarily all switch to popular vote, but one party (probably the Republican) almost always sees an unnecessary risk to the job security of its party office holders.
In 1944, the South, with just 12% of the popular vote, controlled 25.2% of the electoral vote (1994).[9]
States like Wyoming, South Dakota, and Alaska have two senators and one Congress member even though their population is less than 800,000, the average population of a Congressional district.
What should replace the Electoral College?
-
Congressional district allocation, which would be one electoral vote for every 800,000 voters within a given state. This would be more fair for states like Texas and Florida, where the Democrats in Austin, Houston, and Miami are ignored because the state-wide majority is Republican,
-
the allocation of electoral votes state-wide that are proportional to the multiple candidates state-wide, or
-
a winner-take-all nation-wide based on the nation-wide popular vote, which would have resulted in President Gore in 2000 and President Hillary Clinton in 2016,
-
Ranked voting, whereby voters select their first, second, third, and fourth preferred candidate.[10]
Prior to the 12th Amendment to to the U.S. Constitution,[11] that took effect in 1804, if the President were impeached, the President would be replaced by whoever came in second. Fear of this consequence would have discouraged corruption because the President would want to avoid being replaced by an opponent. The flaw in making the Vice President be part of the President’s ticket is that the risk of impeachment ceased being a check on the power of the President’s political party. Indeed, the sole notable action of Vice-President Gerald Ford was to pardon the crimes of President Nixon, something that Nixon’s opponent, Democrat George McGovern would not have done. Similarly, Donald Trump can resign at any time to receive a pardon from J.D. Vance that Trump would not received from Kamala Harris.
The Electoral College default of winner-take-all creates a small number of swing states, such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia. They get most of the campaign attention. They thus have no incentive to switch to proportional voting. The Electoral College is worse than merely un-democratic because it also generages political apathy in the non-Swing states, which are most of the states:
"The Electoral College also contributes to low voter turnout and voter apathy, which further erodes our democracy. On average, ten to fifteen states have very close races in presidential elections and are known as ‘battleground’ or ‘swing states’. In close national elections these states will determine the winner. Voters in non-battleground states know that their vote is “less important”, thus providing a disincentive to voting."[12]
The Electoral College also harms the national economy because the battleground Swing states get more Federal investment ("pork") than non-Swing states. Thus the national economy suffers from the fragmented logic of looking out for the financial gain of a minority of the states instead of planning for the nation as a whole. Examples include a relatively small number steel workers in Pennsylvania and soy farmers in Wisconsin than are showered with an irrational amount of subsidies so that the Republican party wins.[13]
1816, Virginia and Alabama, blocked a vote to consider whether to have direct popular election of the President because the 3/5th clause gave the slave-holding South disproportionate influence based not only on population but also on property. Each slave counted as an item of property that was 60% human. The effect of the three-fifths rule was the protection of slavery.[14] The Southern slaveholders knew their rural economy, with vast fields of crops, could not have the concentrated populations of cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.
Liberals are also capable of protecting the Electoral College
In 1979, the proposal to make the electoral college follow the national-wide popular vote failed in the Senate 51 against to 49 in favor.[15]
Joseph Biden voted to keep the Electoral College because it gives three (3) votes to tiny Delaware.[16] Had Biden voted for democracy, the vote would have been 50/50 and Vice-President Mondale could have broken the tie to make the proposal pass.
Two other examples of the liberal side rejecting the popular vote:
-
Leaders of the Jewish population in New York City preferring that New York state be winner-take-all because it forces the Democractic party to court this particular group.
-
Leaders of the black population of Chicago preferring to be courted for winner-take-all rather than have Illinois be split.[17]
Earlier, in 1950 the Northern liberals and the NAACP defeated the Lodge-Gossett Amendment "to allocate the electoral votes proportional to the popular vote". African-Americans benefited from the Northern migration of Blacks from Southern cotton fields to Northern factories, and the NAACP wanted to preserve the solid block of Blacks votes. [18]. This Dixiecrat scheme aimed to weaken the influence of minorities, such as Blacks, Jews, and Italians, in Northern cities. If the Dixiecrats in 1950 succeeded in diluting New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit, the Southern goal to retain Jim Crow segregation had a better chance. The amendment won only one third of the House.[19]
No representation without taxation
The dogma is that the 1776 Declaration of Independence stems from the doctrine of "No taxation without representation". Ironically, it might be more true to say, "No representation without taxation":
-
The Poll Tax prevented Blacks (and some poor Whites) from voting in the Jim Crow South
-
When the the requirement of owning land to be eligible to vote was removed, it generally was replaced by the requirement to have paid taxes on farm land or rented housing, which prevented many from voting, including men who moved about building roads or as members of a state militia.
Independence of the Thirteen Colonies from Britain was not for democratic ideal of granting voting rights to the population at large. Instead, changes in voting rights occurred for the job security of a select few, that is, to help a given political party retain (or obtain) a partisan advantage in holding public office.[20]
One example is South Carolina, where the invention of the cotton gin introduced a technology that shifted the bottleneck of production from individual female slaves inside a home cleaning the cotton, to groups of slaves growing and collecting the cotton outdoors in the fields. This led to more plantations and more slaves. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin)
In 1819, by allowing all white male adults to vote, even those without a sizable ownership of land, the whites of South Carolina found unity against the risk that the North would intervene against the expansion of slavery. Dividing the whites by social class would have weakened the institution on which the elites depended.[21]
Virginia, similarly, enlarged the franchise in 1851 for unity against the North. Virginia took longer because its elites were more conservative about sharing power, and waited until the risk of the Civil War could no longer be ignored.[22] Virginia’s was the most powerful state in 1776. Most of the first Presidents were Virginians: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. (The western part of the state is too hilly to be suitable for large plantations. Indeed, during the Civil War, the western part of the state split off and became the state of West Virginia, which was loyal to Lincoln.)
In Rhode Island, the landholding aristocracy refused to enlarge the voting franchise until those free white men who were denied the right to vote resorted to violence in Dorr’s Rebellion of 1841-42. This led to a new state constitution in 1842 that payment of tax an alternative to land ownership.[23]
New York politicians bowed to popular demand to expand the franchise in 1821 to obtain victory for Martin Van Buren against his rival, DeWitt Clinton. New York expanded the franchise to all white tax payers rather than only white land owners. In 1826, a white male did not even need to have paid taxes but a non-white needed both to own land and prove he had paid taxes on that land. The expansion of voting rights fits with the general trend that culminated in Jacksonian Democracy: more power for white males at the expense of non-whites.[24]