Did the Founding Fathers Ever Intend for Voting From the General Population?

Executive Summary

• • It is often stated that the founders planned for the general public to vote for representatives.
  • This article investigates how valid this claim was.

Introduction

In this article, we’ll review what the founders wrote about the degree of voter participation among the general public.

What The Founders Set Up Regarding Voting

The following quotes are from Reddit.

The Extreme Limits on Voting

The U.S. Constitution originally left it to states to determine who is qualified to vote in elections. For decades, state legislatures generally restricted voting to white males who owned property. Some states also employed religious tests to ensure that only Christian men could vote.

No Popular Elections for President

There is nothing that requires popular elections for president. From Article II, this is the relevant language:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress:

The Constitution lets the State Legislatures decide the method for selecting electors. It is clear that this language did not even imply that an election was required. Language that would have required direct elections was rejected. Many States immediately adopted a practice of the Legislature appointing electors – no one thought that unusual. The Constitution had also provided that Senators were not picked by popular elections, so a procedure not requiring elections for President was consistent with the thinking.

The Constitution only provided for elections as to the House of Representatives.

The House of Representatives is the “lower house” or the House of Councilors.

The Founders Thought That Voting Should be Performed by White Men Appointed by the State Legislators

The Founding Fathers, the ones who wrote the Constitution in 1787, intended for the President to be voted upon by a large number of White men who were “appointed” by the State legislatures—that’s the term used in the Constitution—none of whom would know who was being voted upon in other States.

There were no US political parties in 1787, so the Founders anticipated that there would be numerous candidates for President each time. According to George Mason, there would be a lack of a majority in the electoral college ninety-five percent of the time. If that were the case, then 19 out of 20 Presidents would be elected by the US House of Representatives, with each State delegation having one vote. These State delegations, according to the Constitution, would choose from among the five men who had received the most electoral votes when these votes were cast at the State capitols in December. There was no popular election anticipated, but, likewise, there was no expectation that the Presidential election contest would come down to a handful of “swing” States as it does today.

And This Quote

No, in fact the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to pick electors. For the first few presidential elections, in fact, we don’t even know what the popular vote was. Gradually all the states opted to have the voters select electors. Interestingly the last state to give them that right was South Carolina in 1860, just before they seceded. The last state where the legislature picked electors was Colorado in 1876, because it was admitted to the Union too late to have a general presidential election.

 

The Expansion of Voting Rights

It is often claimed that the expansion of voting rights was a very positive feature. The following article is very typical of articles that make this type of claim. They also overlook the fact that this expansion of voting rights contradicts the founders’ design. The following quote is from the article Voting Rights Timeline.

Challenges to voting rights in this country are hardly a 21st-century invention. Entrenched groups have long tried to keep the vote out of the hands of the less powerful.

This also includes the founders.

Indeed, the United States began its great democratic experiment in the late 1700s by granting the right to vote to a narrow subset of society — white male landowners.

That would not be democratic. At best, this would be an experiment in a republican form of government.

Even as barriers to voting began receding in the ensuing decades, many Southern states erected new ones, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, aimed at keeping the vote out of the hands of African American men and other targeted groups.

Having blacks vote has not done anything good in either the US or in Africa. Having blacks vote has resulted in them taking over the local government in places like Baltimore and Detroit, which has led to the most corrupt cities in the country. Latinos, who are highly ignorant, have also been given the right to vote. And the same thing has happened; it has allowed Latinos to take over local government and turn those cities into hellholes.

Over time, voting rights became a bipartisan priority as people worked at all levels to enact constitutional amendments and laws expanding access to the vote based on race and ethnicity, gender, disability, age, and other factors.

Again, this has not been a good thing.

Conclusion

The founders did not want the general population to vote. Since voting rights have been expanded, the evidence of how correct the founders were from the beginning has turned out to be quite obvious.