Good or Bad?

Suffrage is the term given for the right to cast a vote.  In a pure Democracy everyone of the established voting age or any other qualifier can cast a ballot.  Then all it takes is for one side to have one vote more then the other side in order to win, which is majority rule.  In addition in a pure democracy all the citizens with the right to vote would vote on all issues directly.  Rousseau wrote about that kind of Democracy in his The Social Contract since he was very familiar with this kind of government from Geneva where he grew up.  Obviously this system only applies to a small area or town.

That direct voting by the citizens on everything has always been considered to be both bad and impossible especially at the Federal level and so when the Constitution was written only men (predominately white) with property were allowed to vote. But that restrictive view was not universal and so a few years later under President Jackson, who believed that voting rights should be extended, they were. Therefore by 1840 universal white male suffrage (and some blacks) was the norm, and nearly all requirements to own property had been dropped.

This expansion of the voting franchise continued unabated until 1971 when by that time all Citizens over 18 male or female and of any race could vote.  Whether that was good or not it was the law of the land through the amendment process to the Constitution (14^th, 15^th, 19^th, 23^rd, 24^th and 26^th Amendments plus various legislative acts).  The United States was the first major country to have full suffrage for women starting with a few states as early as 1869 and completed when the 19^th amendment was ratified in 1920.

The problem with this expansion of the franchise was not with any of the various groups that were added but with an ever increasing lack of understanding by the voters on whom or what they were voting for. There were two parts to this:

The first problem was the education system which stopped teaching the principles of government.  This was by far the worst problem for if the Citizens no longer understood their system of government then they could be manipulated by those seeking power.

The second problem was the formation of political parties that took advantage of this and created block voting where it didn’t matter who was running or what the issue was — it was a vote cast only for the party.

With the very lose voter registration process and vote manipulation (this maters a lot when the vote is close) going on today we have created a system where the winner is chosen more by popularity and money then anything that really counts. Who has the best “spin” and/or the most money gets to win today with the TV, radio and the web (social media) as powerful means of communication. An interesting tidbit about the entertainment industry, Plato in his Republic understood that the Arts could influence elections and that therefore they must be strictly controlled so as not to corrupt the Citizens, he would be appalled at what comes out of Hollywood today..

But there is more as we have a representative system of government as the Citizens with the right to vote do not vote directly they vote for Representatives. In the Federal system as originally setup the Citizens voted for someone to represent them in the House of Representatives known as the Peoples house, for obvious reasons.   The House with the Constitutional mandate to prepare an operating budget for the Federal government was given this task so that the Citizens could control the spending since it was their representatives that were responsible for the budget.

This was a much debated system with concerns that the Citizens would find ways to have the federal government find ways to spend money on them, the citizens.  So to counter this tendency the Senate was established (for other reasons as well) and they had to concur with the House on spending bills.

Now the Senate was originally set up to be filled with appointed Senators two from each state.  The logic being that the several states would appoint seasoned and experienced Citizens to these positions.  It was probably assumed back then that these would be wealthy land owners and they would represent the upper class of the country while the House was for the common man.  A check and balance system again.

So with this system both ends of the Citizens were represented the common man and the wealthy man. And they had to work together to get anything done.

But over the last couple of elections cycles this system has been subverted by the Democratic Progressives and the current occupant of the White House Barak Husain Obama the first president that actually instructs the Senate to refuse to bring up House passed Budgets. So instead of doing their job they demand that their spending ideas be taken and no debate is allowed.  The president approves of this process since he does nothing to stop it and instead demands that the House Republicans give him what he wants. This is probably unconstitutional but since the Public education system has produced several generations of students with no real understanding of the process and so the media can blame the House for not giving Obama what he wants. Which is absurd since the House is the peoples House and it is their main responsibility not the Senate nor the Presidents to produce a Federal Budget.

James Madison, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”