Is there a lore reason why American elections are so convoluted? (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 years ago by tombruzzo@lemm.ee to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Are they stupid?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] emizeko@hexbear.net 48 points 2 years ago

In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.

—James Madison

[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 34 points 2 years ago

Also Madison.

The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from, and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.