Free Republic

Electoral College advocates see a window of opportunity to eliminate America’s unique presidential election system. They are seizing the moment, working to implement change before anyone realizes what happened. They even think they can do it without a constitutional amendment. National Popular Vote (NPV) is a California-based effort that has been running under the radar. Its proponents ask state legislatures to agree to an interstate compact. By the terms of that simple contract, each participating state would agree to allocate its entire slate of electors to the winner of the national popular vote. This is a change from the current...

Democracy stinks. History is littered with short-live democracies that cratered between the bloodlettings of factions going at each other’s throats. Our Framers were well aware of their shortcomings from the lessons of history and their personal experiences since 1776. Popular election, the democratic element in the Framers’ Constitution, was limited to the House of Representatives. This satisfied the Declaration’s maxim that consent of the governed serves as the just basis of government. In Article II, the sovereign people assigned their Natural Right to elect their chief executive to another body, their state legislatures. As discussed in a recent blog post...

Madison Enters the FrayThe tone of the argument changes. Hamilton is the brilliant raconteur and legal thinker, and Madison is the earnest professor of history. After Shays’ Rebellion, Madison sat down and wrote a scholarly paper titled “Vices of the Political System of the United States”, known by historians today as “Madison’s Vices”, which would have prompted a giggle from the man himself. James Madison was a man of abstemious habits who did not smoke and drank only in moderation with meals. If one wanted a dinner guest who could charm a room with his repartee and sing old songs...