
What the Founders Feared About Impeachment - aazaa
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/18/779938819/fractured-into-factions-what-the-founders-feared-about-impeachment
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robbrown451
Partisanship is the problem, (something the founders considered but didn't
fully grasp) and it could be ~90% solved by instituting a voting system that
tends to elect the first choice of the median voter. As it is, we have
plurality elections for electing representatives as well as the president, and
by their nature candidates must cluster into parties to avoid losing due to
vote splitting. That's where most of our partisanship comes from.

A lot of people point to ranked choice voting to solve this, but it really
isn't a lot better than plurality. Approval voting does way better, and it
finally has been put into practice in local elections (in Fargo ND), and is
being considered for a big city (St. Louis MO).

It's a shame more people don't see this for the mathematical problem that it
is, since it is relatively easy to solve.

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smacktoward
It's not so much that the Founders didn't grasp partisanship as it was that
they thought it incompatible with republican government. Their conception of
"good government" was a society governed by an aristocratic class of landed
gentry, whose wealth would (in theory) make them immune to temptations like
bribery and self-dealing. Ordinary people couldn't be trusted with their own
government, because they would too easily succumb to those same temptations.

In practice, of course, that theory broke down almost immediately. Political
parties started coalescing around Hamilton and Jefferson practically before
the ink on the Constitution had dried, and the gentry whose disinterestedness
the Founders had placed so much trust in turned out to be just as flawed and
venal as everybody else.

If you're interested in why the Founders thought the way they did and the
process of how reality broke their worldview in half, I can't recommend Gordon
Wood's book _The Radicalism of the American Revolution_
([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6956.The_Radicalism_of_t...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6956.The_Radicalism_of_the_American_Revolution))
highly enough. It's a great read that will change the way you look at the
Revolution and the early republic.

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robbrown451
I think what they didn't fully grasp was how partisanship directly arrives
from the voting method. Sure, there was factionalism, but the forcing into two
opposing (and almost always equally balanced) parties as a mathematical
equilibrium sort of thing probably wasn't in their lexicon.

For instance Duverger's Law, which didn't even get a name until the 1950s or
so.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law)

I will check out that book, thanks.

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CharlesColeman
> and almost always equally balanced

Doesn't that also follow from the voting method? A faction will make the
political compromises it needs to reliably get past 50% in order to active
power, but won't go much past that because it would be an unnecessary
political sacrifice.

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robbrown451
Yes exactly. That's the equilibrium under plurality.

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creaghpatr
>There were reasons the Founders at first hoped that senators might be more
independent-minded. It wasn't until the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913
that senators were directly elected by the people.

>Now, in a hyperpartisan environment, reelection could often be the motivating
factor, with little incentive to cross sides.

Oh no, thanks to democratic elections of senators, senators risk their voting
decisions being scrutinized by their constituents...yikes!

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SkyBelow
If we trust the constituents enough, why not just have them vote directly on
laws and get rid of the representatives entirely? Back in the 1700s there were
physical limitations that required representatives, but those are no longer a
major factor.

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ci5er
There is a long and storied reason (going back to the greek city-states) about
why direct democracy is a _really_ bad idea.

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SkyBelow
In which case, perhaps some of that reasoning applies to having the
representative's actions scrutinized to the level they currently are.

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homonculus1
Originalism? In my NPR?? Hamilton is a delight, if I had a genie lamp in front
of me I'd have the media quote him in relation to every topic of national
controversy.

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happytoexplain
You find their content usually derivative?

Edit: I suddenly realized maybe "originalism" isn't some obscure synonym for
"originality". My bad :)

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smacktoward
Yep, in this context "originalism" refers to the philosophy that the way to
answer Constitutional questions is to try to divine the original intent of the
Founders who wrote it. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism)
for more details.

The opposite of originalism is the "living document" philosophy (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Constitution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Constitution)),
which argues that the meaning of the document has to be interpreted by each
generation in the light of their own experience.

