The primary concern of the framers of the constitution was the proper and just balance of powers in order to protect against tyranny, ensure fair representation, and safeguard individual rights. The American Constitution was framed with the citizens past experience fully in mind. While under British control, American citizens were severely undercut in both federal power and representation in parliament. Parliament was insanely corrupt, purposefully taking more power for itself over the population of Britain en masse. While making the constitution the framers kept these issues in mind, holding to the firmly held belief of their colonial constituents that, as stated by Lord Acton in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” …show more content…
Needless to say, this system of one vote per state made some of the more populous states feel less influential. Of course the feeling works both ways, the smaller states held just as much say as a state with possibly double their population. Once the Articles were thrown out the Virginia Plan took its place for a brief time. With the Virginia plan representation was based off of population. The same issue arose, but now with the smaller state not being represented enough. If it wasn 't enough, this raised the issue of slaves counting towards a state 's population. Of course slave holding states wanted them to count fully, but the free states saw that slaves would hardly ever agree with their masters, so they didn 't want them to count at all. This led to the three fifths compromise, where a slave would only count as three fifth of a vote. However, with the smaller states not possessing a big enough sway the Virginia plan was quickly thrown out. Replacing it would be the system used still to this day. Congress would be split into two separate groups the House and the Senate. The House would hold representatives based on a state 's population and the senate would let every state get the same amount of votes. This, more or less, accomplished the role of letting every state have fair and balanced representation. Even today people take for granted how much say they have when it comes to the world of
So, we know by now there’s the House of Representatives and the Senate in the legislative branch, the amount of members in each are based off a compromise between the Virginia plan and the New Jersey Plan. The Virginia Plan called for the votes in congress to be based on population, while New Jersey called for the votes to be equal amount states. The House of Representatives is based of the population idea of the Virginia Plan, consisting of no more then 435 members, each state has proportional representation based on population. The Senate, however, is based of the New Jersey Plan, each state having two senators, equal representation among all the states. This way, big states have an advantage in the House, small states have the advantage in the Senate making it very balanced.
Also, each state had one vote in the national Congress regardless of the state’s population. Even
So to speak, it would balance out the powers between Small States and Large States. (A)Federalism, (B)Separation of Powers, (C)Checks and Balances, and (D)Small States-Large States are all the ways the framers of the constitution guarded against tyranny. Separation of Powers is one of the most important framers of the constitution because it helped separate all the branches to lead to liberty for our
This, later know as the Great Compromise, was an idea by Roger Sherman from CT. At the time, this was called the CT Compromise, as they likely did not understand how big of a deal this would become. It was simply a combination of both the Virginia and New Jersey plans. It took the two houses from the Virginia plan, but they decided the Senate would be equal, pleasing the small states, and then House of Representatives would then be based off population, satisfying the larger states. This is so important because they created a government we would continue to use for hundreds of years to come, including
After the countless debates, the Great Compromise was what the convention would come into agreement with representation by population in the House of Representatives “The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one Representative. ”(add footnote) The smaller states were pleased with equal representation in the Senate “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senates from each state and each Senator shall have one vote.”(add
The government in fear of tenancy said that each state can only contribute one vote to various law decisions. This on one hand was unfair because they completely disregarded the size/population of each state which could lead to inaccurate tallies. This system was difficult and create many struggles because in order to pass a new law nine out of thirteen people to agree on one topic. Which was nearly impossible but not the only problem occurring during this time. The federal government was a very flimsy government that printed money but did not tax the states, they were weak and had little control.
Smaller states, or states with a smaller population are given more electoral votes per voter than larger states. For example, for every 177,556 residents in Wyoming is equivalent to one electoral vote. However, in Texas, 715,499 people are the equal to one vote. In New York, a vote is around four times less than a vote from Wyoming. These two examples show how much “voting power” certain states have.
After no progress of which plan to go through with, Roger Sherman came up with the Great Compromise. The compromise called for two house legislator. Members of the house of representatives or the lower house would be elected by popular vote. Members of the Senate or the upper house would be chosen by the state legislators. Each state would only have two senators no matter the size, or population of the state.
With the electoral college in place we see that some states have more power than others when it come to the vote depending on their size and the amount of senators they have. As an example we see in Texas they have 38 electoral vote and California has 55(Document A) Compared to the 3 in Montana and 4 in idaho (Document A) we see that Texas and California have a lot
It was supposed to be a check-and-balance system in the voting process and was not supposed to cause any further complications. However, the Electoral College turned out to be a mere but powerful formality. It was created because the Founding Fathers needed a compromise that would balance out the power between the big and small states. Back in the day, the difference in population between the large and small states was just ten to one. Even cities, such as New York City, had only 33,000 citizens residing in it.
The general election designed in a way where voters in less populous states have more per-voter influence on Electoral College than voters in more populous states. (Due to the Apportionment Act of 1911), which limits the House of Representatives size and keeps the House from growing along with the population as Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution outlines. The answer to this problem is a not a more direct voting system based on the popular vote. Conversely, even though all forms of democracy have problems, the current elections process produces exceptionally bad
The upper house would be elected by the lower house, thus ensuring that there is always at least one representative in the upper house. The New Jersey Plan preserved an existing unicameral legislature, in which each state would have equal representation. The compromise that was made called for a bicameral legislature, like the 1 Virginia Plan. However, the lower house number of representatives was determined by the size of the state, and the upper house each state had equal representation. This was just part of the Great Compromise, the subject of slavery had divided the Northern and the Southern states.
This compromise helped give each state equal say in the government. As John Samples said to the Cato Institute in In Defense of the Electoral College, “ … the Electoral College makes sure that the states count in presidential elections… an important part of our federalist system - a system worth preserving… federalism is central to our grand constitutional effort to restrain power.” (Doc C). Since this nation is founded on federalism (the sharing of power between national and state governments), it only makes sense that each individual state would want equal say in the nation’s government. Samples knew that to keep the government running smoothly, each state needed equal representation in the government, thus the Electoral College.
These authorities that the national government should have, were all up to the states to decide under the Articles. With the taking away some of the states rights in the Constitution, Anti-federalists feared that this would leave the states too weak, resulting in more problems. Under the new Constitution, many powers that were now in the government 's hands are: the power to levy and collect taxes, the power to regulate interstate commerce, the government set up a national court system consisting of district, circuit, and a supreme court, the government could enforce laws, there was now a house based on population, and a senate based on equal representation (two votes per state), to amend the Constitution, a ⅔ vote of Congress was needed, and a ¾ vote of the states were needed, and a majority rule was needed to pass bills. These new powers and abilities of the national government helped to create a strong, new
This compromise had to do with the apportionment of representation in the national Congress. All small states demanded a Congress in which each state had equal representation. On the other hand, larger states, came up with