(Another old Belgrade News commentary from November 5, 2004)
I am convinced that a clear understanding of the Constitution and Bill of Rights by each citizen ensures that liberty will always belong to us. That’s why I was disturbed to read that a local candidate was being accused of wanting to take away our right to vote.
This candidate belongs to the Constitution Party, which advocates the repeal of the 17th amendment. I’m not a member of the Constitution Party, so I am not necessarily trying to defend its positions. However, it is worth the time to examine some history and gain a bit of perspective, rather than simply throwing around uniformed accusations.
We should first attempt to understand the events surrounding the formation of the Constitution to discover the Founders’ intent. The Founders established the House of Representatives as the “peoples’ house.” In fact, this was one of the first provisions of the Constitution, right after the Preamble.
In Article 1, Section 2, we read, “The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states.”
The next section, Section 3, establishes the Senate: “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years...”
From 1787 until the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913, the Senate was chosen by the states. The 17th Amendment reads, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof, for six years.”
As the Founders convened the first constitutional convention, their intent was to bring the “several states” together, yet preserve each state’s autonomy and ensure that the federal government would not usurp the power and authority of each state to regulate its own affairs. Rightly suspicious of concentrating political power, their overriding goal was to establish a severely limited federal government.
Part of the debate during the constitutional convention was centered around how to best give each state a voice in the federal government. Two plans were proposed, Edmund Randolph’s Virginia Plan and William Patterson’s New Jersey Plan.
Randolph wanted Congress to be apportioned according to the population of each state. However, this would give the more populous states greater representation and disproportionate control. Patterson’s plan gave all states equal representation regardless of population. This meant the small states could unify against the larger states to exercise control over them.
This debate ultimately led to what became known as the “Great Compromise,” where two houses of Congress were established. The states were given equal voice in the Senate, but the people were given voice in the House of Representatives according to population.
By the close of the 19th century, the concept of states’ rights had eroded. A movement to establish direct elections of the Senate by the people began to gain momentum. Interestingly, the civil war also contributed to the erosion of states‚ rights. Clearly the civil war was fought to correct the injustice of slavery. But it was the position of the South that the federal government had no constitutional authority to impose its will regarding slavery or any other issue. The South had the right concept, but a really wrong issue.
Happily, slavery died as a result of the civil war, but another casualty was, for all practical purposes, the 10th Amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”). This developed into a larger trend to centralize power in the federal government to the point that today states are subject to it rather than vice versa.
That is also why there is a debate today about the electoral college. Direct election of the President by popular vote is a feature of a democracy, not the representative republic the Founders envisioned.
The Founders recognized the fatal flaws of raw democracy and wanted to avoid the inevitable tyranny that results from its excesses. So they struck a brilliant balance between the will of the people and the problems of majority rule.
The issue, then, is not about attempting to take away the peoples’ right to vote, nor is it really about the 17th amendment. It is about the proper constitutional role of government.
It’s about liberty and self-determination. It’s about returning to our roots and the genius of our Founding Fathers, who designed a government to prevent tyranny and ensure freedom.
This is what the Founders intended, and what we must preserve.
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