During the discussion taking place regarding the Electoral College, many of its defenders claim it defends the interests and rights of smaller states. What does this mean? I thought only people had rights. Don’t farmers and North Dakota and farmers in California have similar interests even though one is a “small” state and another a “large” state? And don’t the citizens of a large city in a “small” state have similar concerns to citizens of a “large” state. It seem to me that the true question should be which people are overrepresented and which are under represented. When we answer this question it seems clear. Rural, white, conservatives are overrepresented while Urban, non-white, progressive people are underrepresented. Therefore the political system is skewed to the right.
Mostly unmentioned in this debate is the fact that the Senate radically skews the system even more than the Electoral College. For example, it is the Senators from sparsly populated western states in which the Federal government holds large tracts of land who are largly responsible for allowing environmentally unsound mining and logging practices to continue on public land.
Neither of these two structures will change unless the powerful conservative forces controlling small states are willing to concede power and the Senate votes to abolish itself. Neither will happen.
These are the United States of America, not the United People of America.
(Note: I prefer to say “these United States” rather than “the United States.”)
The U.S.A. isn’t really a “nation”; we are a federation of individual states, and we have a federal (not national) government that has a small, limited number of responsibilities.
Now to your question… you are indeed correct: only people have rights. Governments (federal, state, and local) do not have rights; they have responsibilities. And I guess I would have to agree that some people may be underrepresented, especially in the Senate. But you must not forget that (again) this is a federation of states, not people. And when it comes to federal issues, each state as a whole must have a strong voice.
Let me say one more thing: Technically we are a nation, but I think it is best not to think of the U.S.A. as a nation, but instead as a federation of states.
I disagree (regarding the federation of states, not about people having rights). We tried the whole federation of states thing at first, and ended up moving to what we have now.
I think it sounds like you would prefer The People’s Republic of America rather than the **United States of America[/] but that is not what it is.
The smaller states wouldn’t have agreed to form the union if the knew they would be trampled by the states with more population. I recommend you look at what’s happeneing in Europe these days. Do you think countries with smaller populations would like to join the European Union with the understanding that they will have to take orders from the larger countries? The European Union is a Union of countries not of people. The United States is a union of States. If you like your voice to weigh more you can go live in Montana or Nebraska.
>> We tried the whole federation of states thing at first, and ended up moving to what we have now.
What you have now is a federation of states and that is where some people (including, it seems, the OP) are complaining, that votes of people in states with lower population weigh more than votes of people in states with large populations.
But it was the States who joined the union, not the people. It is the States who send the electors to the electoral college, not the people. The election you vote in is not a federal election, it is a state election (as you can clearly see in Florida).
Originally the United States was a confederation of independant nation states. We have since moved away from that and more toward the concept that the US is a nation and that the states are semi-independant governmenatal entities. The main turning point being, of course, the Civil War. The states aren’t exactly soveriegn anymore. Indeed soveriegnty is a complex issue here. Where soveriegnty lies in America is debateable.
A compromise I suggested a bit facetiously in the electoral collage thread might be more appropriate here. For those of you who feel that checks and balances are a good idea ( and that’s nearly all of you, I imagine ) then the elimination of the EC in favor of a popular vote can be seen as a check by the people as a whole on the power of the states. Congress would be represent the people of their respective states and the President would represent all Americans.
Boy, I really butchered the end of that first paragraph.
I was trying to say that it is difficult to argue that American sovereignty currently resides in any one institution.
Galen, it’s more likely today, that unless a small state has powerful representation in congress, it won’t get any of the benefits a larger state can get.
Hmmmm you people really should read the U.S. Constitution, it is chock full of interesting things.
States DO have rights under the Constitution, rights which are carefully guaranteed to them by the constitution. Remember, this country remains (despite the best efforts of people like 2sense to treat it differently) a federation; that is, a group of political entities fused by yielding some of their powers to a central government. As between that central government and the individual states, there are rights that the states have (that is, things they may do without undue interference from the federal government) and responsibilities that the federal government assumes with regard to the states.
If you want to know the scope of these rights and responsibilities, I recommend a constitutional law or constitutional history class. They are fun; enjoy it!
As for the original post: The concept of ‘small’ states and ‘big’ states does indeed have some folds to it that aren’t easily covered by pigeon-holing all small states as alike and all large states as different from the small states. However, Wyoming, Nevada, Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas, etc. all are examples of small states with few if any large urban centers, which would have trouble feeling like they had ANY political power nationally if the Senate did not exist. In this regard, they are no different than such ‘small’ states as South Carolina in 1787, which while it was a southern farm state had one of the four biggest commercial urban centers in the new country, yet still felt threatened by the potential political power of Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia.
As for the absurd assertion that the Senate is the main reason we still engage in ‘unsound’ mining practices, we will simply point out that all legislation has to be approved by the House of Representatives, where such states have almost no significant political power. These practices exist because those opposed to them have little political clout in either house of Congress, for reasons that are more intricate than ‘big state v small state’.
Nobody disputes that states have rights under the constitution. We are all aware of the history and the compromises which are embodied in the Constitution. But I think that reality has overtaken our political system. Are there really 50 “states” in the classical sense of the word? I don’t think so. Remember, this is an 18th century creation.
And you ask whether North Dakota would be shortchanged if it did not have two senators. What do you mean? Do you mean that the people of ND would get a smaller slice of the pie? A true story: farmers in these small states are hurting big time as grain prices are near or at historic lows. They are crying for relief from the so-called “freedom to farm” act that the Republican Congress and Clinton imposed a couple of years ago which will ultimately remove the guaranteed prices which the Federal Government has provided since the depression. So when this bill was being debated, you would think that the Republican members of congress and the senate would have been howling about how their rural constituents are being screwed. No way. It was DEMOCRATIC members of congress and the senate elected by urban, union, non-white, liberal voters who opposed it. So there it is. So why do all these rural voters keep the Republicans in there? Mostly, it is the political unsophistication of not knowing who their enemies are. I’ve lived there.
Now, then. Yes it is absolutely true that Senators from sparsly populated western states are responsible for keeping 19th century mining and timber laws on the books, the 1872 mining law in particular. The law cannot be changed without them. Between them, they can filibuster almost anything they choose to death
Absolute balderdash. Show me when they have done so within the last several years, or when the House of Representatives has passed some bill attempting to change such laws, responding to the overwhelming appeal of the outraged masses, only to see the bill die in the Senate through the political pressure of these mythical Senate Republicans. No one GIVES a damn about the way we mine in the West, or, at least, not enough people to make a political difference, or didn’t you get the fact that Mr. Gore’s environmental appeals weren’t exactly energizing the national electorate?
As for the issue at hand, state’s rights, your initial post asserted that ‘only people have rights.’ Are you now agreeing that states have rights? It appears so. Then you blandly assert that we really don’t have 50 states any more. While it is true that national trends and an active federal government (to name only a couple of the myriad influences involved) have tended to blend out some differences between states and regions, it is completely untrue to assume that individual states don’t make a difference to how people in this country live. I have lived in four states, and visited three others extensively. There is a significant difference in how California, for instance, deals with taxation from how most other states deal with it, and it is affecting California’s ability to provide basic services at a time when such services are being overwhelmed by the inflow of new residents. Then there is Nevada next door, which maintains still to this day the lion’s share of legalized gambling activity, which affects the lives of those living in that state to quite a large degree. Some states are quite friendly to the concept of commercializing basic education, while others view such trends as anathema. In short, I can assure you that I could tell quite well the differences when living in California, Colorado, and Ohio (not to mention my almost move to Florida).
There is an unfortunate tendency in debating to overstate generalizations as if they are actual fact, rather than observations about trends. There is no doubt that the current relationship between states and the federal government is significantly different from that which existed in the 1920’s, or the 1880’s, or the 1820’s. But to take a trend like the increased activism by the federal government from 1933 through 1980 and generalize that to mean that states are unimportant as political entities ignores reality, which usually shrugs off such sweeping pronouncements with the inevitable diversity of human life.
Right on, DS; I am glad to see someone interject some facts into this thread. BTW, I thought I had read that Montana and a couple of other western states were now passing legislation to deal with past environmental abuses.
Galen: Small farms are going out of business for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with which party controls Congress. I believe if you check the records you will find out that as many family farms ceased operations in the 1980s, a decade which saw the Democrats control both Houses of Congress for much of the decade, as did during the Great Depression. An industrialized society, not GOP politics, is killing the small farmer.
I feel that states are important as political entities mostly because of the continuing federalism. Granted, regional governments are necessary to some degree but that doesn’t justify investing them with a portion of a nation’s sovereignty. Nor does the fact that they are already so invested. The reason that our interpretation of the federal/state relationship has changed is because the nation itself has changed radically in the last 2 centuries. The old assumptions are not automatically valid.
In the structure of both the EC and the Senate I mislike what I see as the presumption of the choice of the rural state voter. It is argued that for that voter to be heard his/her voice must be added with his/her neighbors’ and strengthened otherwise the few rural folks would be drowned out by the multitude of urban and suburban voters. This works fine until the hypothetical voter disagrees with a popular position in his/her state. Then the voter’s voice isn’t strengthened; it is eliminated.
Did you read this thread? Nobody argued this. The electoral college does not exist to strengthen the rural voter’s voice.
Is it me, or did you just try to re-define words in order to change the perception of a popular vote, but not the practical effect?
Some random thoughts:
Thanks DSYoungEsq, I don’t always agree with you, but we see pretty much eye-to-eye on this issue.
The European Union is a great illustration. I don’t see them proportioning the power based on population.
The bottom line to me is either you accept the idea of states, or we just roll it all into one giant federal government where everything is centralized and all decisions come from Washington.
I have immense respect for the reasoning powers and rational posting of DSYoungEsq. But once again, as has come to be a habit with me over the past few months, I need to disagree with him over one point.
A really nice job of defining the Federal system, and the relationship of natinal and state governments under it.
But there seems to be an occupational disease in the legal profession to mistake two small and simple words for each other. I’ve noticed this in the work of a lot of lawyers, so I feel bad singling out DSY for it. But it makes a big difference in the question at hand.
The Tenth Amendment clarifies that the powers not delegated to the national government are retained by the states, “or by the people.” (The last ties back to the Preamble, and makes it clear that the powers of both national and state governments come from the people; its immediate referent is to the handful of powers which neither federal nor state government may constitutionally pursue.)
The Ninth Amendment, on the other hand, deals with the unenumerated rights, which are retained by the people.
Neither the national nor the state governments have rights. (Except, perhaps, the right to exercise the powers they are granted by their constitutions.)
I see this as important because in analyzing constitutional law one often comes up against the question of the right of the individual as against the power of the state to pursue its lawful ends. My fourth and fifth amendment rights as opposed to the state’s vested interest in proper law enforcement. My first amendment rights versus the state’s putative power to protect from hate speech, pornography, or what have you. And so on.
Which is why I see the “states rights” issue that has been bandied about during my entire lifetime in one context or another as a red herring. Do the states have legitimate powers? Certainly. Are there limits to what the federal government can do because the states have that power? Certainly. But they aren’t rights – rights reside, ultimately, in the individual, and secondarily in such voluntary unions as he chooses to make, be it partnerships, marriage, church, Lions Club, or whatever. But never in government. It’s in the nature of the right to reside in the individual; the powers we corporately delegate to government represent a voluntary surrender of certain rights for the individual and corporate benefits we receive from good government in return. For example, I give up the right to shoot the intruder on my land in exchange for police protection and the right to sue for trespass – which benefits me if I should ever be the intruder; I’ll get arrested or sued rather than killed.
The assertion that a ‘right’ cannot exist in anyone other than an individual is not supported either by common definition of the word, nor by any position of logic.
Nothing in such a definition limits such a concept to individuals. Indeed, as Polycarp admits, “Except, perhaps, the right to exercise the powers they are granted by their constitutions”. This is precisely what is MEANT by the phrase “states’ rights”. The compact of government between the states and the federal government to which they surrendered some of their inherent powers as sovreigns sets forth certain powers reserved to them, either specifically, or by absence of grant of those powers to the federal government. Thus, in a discussion of whether a particular power is properly exercised by states or by the federal government, the right of a state to act will be a result of the inherent power of the state to act as a sovereign and the failure to yield that right via the Constitution to the federal government.
To the extent that we believe a state is a creation of the people, one must be careful to understand that the inherent well-spring of any state’s power is the right of the people to decide how they shall be governed. But, once these same people have entered into a compact which creates a given government, a sovereign entity, then that entity has powers that it is justly entitled to utilize. Such powers are called ‘rights’, regardless of whether they are invested in a person, or a corporation, or a sovereign.
Thus, when Polycarp says, “It’s in the nature of the right to reside in the individual…,” there is no logical support for that statement. As Polycarp also admits, “powers we corporately delegate to government represent a voluntary surrender of certain rights for the individual and corporate benefits we receive from good government in return.” Once we delegate some aspect of sovreignity to a government, some power that it can justly expect to utilize, it becomes a ‘right’ for that state, especially when measured against the actions of other governmental entities.
Odd. I could have sworn that I heard this argued by defenders of both the EC and the Senate. Just to demonstrate that I was paying attention here is an assertion from this thread that I took as an example:
As for your other query, you are essentially correct; however, I don’t feel that I was using any words outside of their generally understood meanings.
I am seeking a paradigm shift here. What do you think?
