America’s Uncomfortable Relationship with Voting
How would we structure our system if we wanted people to vote?
On November 5th, tens of millions of eligible American voters won’t cast a ballot despite the fact that this is one of the most important elections in American history.
This wouldn’t have been a problem for the founders of our “democracy” — in fact, they may have preferred it that way.
Inspired by the history of ancient Athens and the Roman Republic, the founders distrusted the “mob” of uneducated, less wealthy voters. James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers that, in systems where too many people have too much input,
A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
Alexander Hamilton warned that the common people were easily misled — he said that “of those men who have…
