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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow the Founding Fathers' concept of 'Minority Rule' is alive and well today
It's a fundamental tension in a democracy: How do you have majority rule in a way that also protects minority rights? Journalist Ari Berman says the Founding Fathers struggled with that question back in 1787 except, for them, white male landowners were the minority in need of protection.
"Most of the founders were skeptical of the public's ability to elect the president directly," Berman says. "So they created this very complicated situation in which electors would elect the president instead of the people electing the president directly."
In his new book, Minority Rule, Berman connects the debates and compromises of the country's founders to contemporary politics. He says the founding fathers created a system that concentrated power in the hands of the elite and that today, institutions like the Electoral College and the Senate designed as a check against the power of the majority are having much the same effect.
Berman notes that in the country's first presidential election, in 1789, only a small fraction of the population was eligible to vote and in certain states, voters were only allowed to vote for electors, not the candidates themselves.
Though the right to vote has since been expanded, Berman says the democratic process remains deeply flawed. He points out that in 2000 and again in 2016, the presidential candidate who won the popular vote did not win the electoral vote. Additionally, he says, because the Constitution stipulates that each state gets two senators, regardless of its population, "smaller, whiter, more conservative states have far more power and representation in the Senate then larger, more diverse, more urban states."
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/22/1246297603/ari-berman-minority-rule-electoral-college
A huge step toward this would, of course, be the elimination of the Electoral College. Another would be to admit DC and Puerto Rico as states.
bucolic_frolic
(43,295 posts)and give metropolitan cities with 2+ million population an extra one.
CrispyQ
(36,518 posts)If you're uninformed or misinformed or just plain ignorant of current political events, then you hear the dems had the White House, the Senate, & the House but they didn't get their dream list of things accomplished in less than four years so hey, let's vote for the other guy. More people understand the EC better than they understand the filibuster, & how it wasn't enough to have 51% dems in congress, you have to have big majorities to get big change, especially in today's hostile political climate.
It really plays to the other side's advantage that so many Americans are so ignorant of how government & elections work.