Federalism’s Machinery Has Never Been Assembled Properly

We have never known real federalism, the ultimate machinery that organizes sovereign states to act as one. What the thirteen states created in 1789 was a new nation consisting of 13 states and a union of peoples determined to make the new nation work no matter how it was assembled. This union of peoples was not the federation we like to think we have.

We have never interpreted the Constitution as a sketchy, partial outline of its deeper implications as it discusses Electoral Colleges and Congressional Districts. We totally scorn Electoral Colleges and have allowed Congressional Districts to degenerate into shameful conglomerates of partisan politics. When those two mechanical parts are fully understood and integrated into their proper places in the federation, this nation will have the federalism that the Constitution attempted to create.

We avidly follow the quadrennial conventions of the two major parties. One of those conventions always produces the next President. A select few people run those conventions. Grassroots voters have to jump through hoops to participate. The Founders had exactly the same thing in mind as they designed the Electoral College, except that the Founders wanted all voters to participate in choosing their President. And, with true federalism, the Founders would have all voters choosing their state officials, also.

Electoral Colleges are the grassroots voters’ state conventions, and their national convention. Their elected reps were supposed to go to those places first after they were elected. The Founders wanted those reps to have full responsibility for the running of the federation.  Therefore, they were to complete the election process and come up with a full set of state and federal officials for the next four years before adjourning.  This process takes political parties almost entirely out of their proposed system.  The only partisan infections at the conventions would have been sent there by local districts.

The second vital part is the Congressional District which furnishes the people who go to the Electoral Colleges. Tragic experience has shown that diluting a district of 40,000 persons by adding 660,000 more persons, destroys local people’s ability to make intelligent choices of reps. This forces them into political parties and destroys the system the Founders intended. Students of government should be watching for results from districts of varying populations. What size district produces the more competent reps for that district? It is a more critical number than the ones guiding the Congresses of the past.

To rectify the errors of the past, and actually form a working federation, this nation needs one common set of home districts of a size somewhere between 30,000 to 50,000. County Election Departments, or their equivalent, should have  the responsibility for setting up and maintaining these local, standard districts. Their reps will rule their respective States as well as their nation. County governments should fill state senate seats.  State governments should fill the senate seats in D.C.

Just as soon as this nation can get this system of reps and their national conventions to elect officials, the people can begin to rebuild it. 

Representative Government: the Unsolved Puzzle

The United States is a representative government.  The United Nations is a representative government.  Russia is a representative government. And so is China and maybe a hundred other nations are representative governments.

In the United States, you and I and every other voter, each have five reps who claim to be representing us, personally. Not a single one of them actually do represent us. Rather, they are reps of some political party with which we voters are compelled to establish a relationship. If we want to participate in the governments of our state and nation, we fall in line and do as we are told.

Is this the governing system that the Founders thought they were establishing? Has the world of nations fallen in line with the Founders’ ideas of how people can set up their own representative systems? Or is every nation simply mocking the failed system that the U.S. flaunts as being authentic? What would we have to do to make ours authentic? Better yet, what have we done to destroy authenticity?

Whatever authenticity we had at the beginning was based on the Congressional District that had no more than 40,000 people. How did the Founders come up with 40,000? Good question. Would 20,000 have been better? Who knows?  When the optimum number is finally determined, the nation can have an authentic representative system. They will shop around their manageable local district and choose a rep without any assistance from a political party.

The representative system lost whatever authenticity it had as its corrupt reps expanded their districts by a factor of seventeen times and sometimes distorted their boundaries ridiculously.  Nor were the states any help as they created all the extra, unneeded districts. One standardized set of districts can run the entire federal system of fifty-one governments.

The world’s phony representative systems need to get rid of their partisanship. The way to get rid of partisanship is to reduce the size of each district to the point that local voters can competently use the neighborhood gossiping system to locate their reps. If free and fair elections are held, those reps will be locally derived and authentic.  That is the key to having governments of the people, by the people, and for the people. If County Election Departments were empowered by their State Governments to set up and supervise a system of such districts throughout the nation, the voters would happily abandon their divisive partisan elections system. They would happily tell their five impotent reps where to go.

The Basic Constitutional Issues That Scholars Refuse To Discuss

The foremost issue is federalism, and the failure of the States to achieve federalism.  During the nation’s first hundred years, the States were represented in the U.S. Senate, but only the people were represented in the U.S. House of  Representatives. Apparently, the States could not figure out how to put their own reps into the U.S. House. If States could have figured out that problem, federalism would have been achieved.  The Constitution would have been a success. Well, almost a success, except for one other thing. The States run all elections through their county elections departments. But the responsibilities of county elections departments should come to an abrupt end just as soon as all local officials are elected. Unfortunately, States have not figured that one out either.

We have this thing called “representative government” where the whole election process is constitutionally supposed to change gears and enter into a completely separate system of elections.  They are Electoral College elections, over which the county elections departments should have no jurisdiction at all. The Electoral Colleges do their first jobs at their respective State Capitols, followed by their second job at their National Capitol. When both jobs are done, these colleges will have organized themselves into legitimate working bodies and conducted their own conventions that will have both nominated and elected all executive officers of the entire Federation of the Fifty States. Republicans, Democrats, et al leave their partisan labels outside the door, and follow the wishes of the local district which sent them.

The Founders wisely planned that only a body of elites would manage all the affairs of the Federation. States, from the beginning, have bungled and mangled this constitutional plan for creating a true Federation. They should have said to themselves in the beginning, “Now before we start implementing this Constitution, we must reorganize our people into the Congressional Districts required by the Constitution so that the one elected body of people’s reps are qualified to sit in any legislative body to which they are sent. Thereby, every State Legislature will move right on into the U.S. House of Representatives as well.” Those instructions are just as valid today as two and a quarter centuries ago.

We are one people, deserving one local rep to take care of all governing (for a 2-year term) above the county/city level. Of all the crying and fussing over civil rights, all of us without exception should have that civil right to a local rep of our own. This nation needs upwards of 10,000 of such reps. That is 10,000 Home Districts (Congressional Districts) in which all elections are local contests no more exciting than a shopping trip. The three senators and two house members each of have now, can go take a hike.  The Founders Congressional District is all we need.

Political Scientists, this writer has been evolving this idea for eighty-six years, or since I was age ten.   

The Governmental Units Keeping Western Civilizations Alive

Partisanship is killing Western Civilization.  It launches a person’s rational way of thinking into a mode of irrational thinking.  Common sense goes out the window.  Partisanship happens under the pretense of self-governing, as a people are asked to make unreasonable choices about candidates they know nothing about.

When a people of a local community are asked to elect one of their own to take charge of a local office, the process is a no brainer.  But when those same people are asked to elect someone to a state-wide office, they don’t have a clue about those candidates’ local community reputations. It is emotionally traumatic to even be asked to make a ballot choice under those circumstances. Exacerbating that situation further, the two parties organize mud-slinging campaigns. Such “elections” are tantamount to barbarism. 

The contrast between local vs. state/federal elections is like day and night.  Local elections are intelligently conducted. The others are nasty ordeals. That is why it is said that all elections are local.  Because people deal intelligently with local issues, and irrationally with cleverly contrived state/national issues. That is why the county system stands out as the last great hope of Western Civilization.  It is the highest form of a civilized self-governing system.  Politicized representative systems are nothing more than make-believe self-governing.  

Did the Founders think about this problem? Yes.  Did the Founders have a solution for it? Yes. Would their solution have solved our problem? Emphatically yes! There is no need at all for us to go through the election ordeals that we go through. The Constitution is a far greater instrument of government than anybody has given it credit for. It was supposed to unite the people as one body politic, as well as unite the states as one federation. 

It has failed in both respects. The states treat their people as two bodies politic, thereby creating two legislative bodies with a legal system to arbitrate between the two. It is total nonsense. What the Constitution was saying to the States in 1789 was, “Let’s become one body politic of equalized Congressional Districts. This will give everybody a home district with a rep handling all affairs of State.

Reps will operate the governments of the States in which they reside; then operate the foreign policy work of the States jointly at the nation’s capitol. This will destabilize state legislatures until a satisfactory size of common districting can be worked out. The U.S. House of Representatives will take whatever number of reps that the states finally decide to send. Meanwhile, states must expeditiously set up standardized home districts.”

Those hypothetical instructions went out in 1789. We are now a nation of one hundred times as many people, and the same unfulfilled instructions still apply. The nation ignores the Founders’ convictions about local districting and the Electoral College.  The local district has been consolidated into one that is seventeen times larger. The Electoral College lies damned and essentially unused. Each of us have five useless reps instead of the Founders’ ONE useful rep.

Everybody can find one person to blame for this mess. That person is your local state representative who swore to uphold the above described constitution.  But they have no vision of what must be done to turn the Constitution’s failures into successes. Ironically, state reps would become the movers and shakers of the entire system, if only they had the vision to act. 

The Founders’ Constitutional method of keeping all elections local and civilized and out of the hands of partisans, is the Electoral College. It is the natural enemy of partisans, so naturally the partisans hate it. The Electoral College does in a civilized manner, the same thing that partisans do in a barbaric manner.

The people properly elect the ones going to the Electoral College. At that gathering of electors, the secret balloting system prevails. Roberts Rules of Order prevails. The electors set their own agenda regarding campaigning and public access. Such colleges should be electing the executive officers of all fifty-one governments of the federation.  Every elector will work closely with the people of the district, if the elector wants reelection.  The college’s secret voting will be repeated until the winning candidate gets a majority.

Historians cannot let us forget one of the first Presidential elections, when the runner-up was named Vice President. The two contenders were worst enemies. Experience should bring adaptations for a better performance next time. Unfortunately, experience brought shyster politicians who subverted the college’s function.

Western Civilization would be alive and well in this country if: (1) We lived in a single grid of local districts, and (2) We were allowing Electoral Colleges to operate as intended.  Since we are doing neither, it is dying.

Americans Do Not Trust Their Congress

Ninety-three percent of those recently surveyed said that they do not trust the U.S. Congress.  Actually, it is a poorly designed instrument of government. To say that it represents the people is simply not true. Even as a poorly designed instrument of government, individual members of Congress should have held themselves to a higher standard of personal integrity. 

The Founders were openly doubtful that their brief little Constitution could work among non-Christians.  If today’s Congress were to pass a law against spitting on the sidewalk, it would necessarily have a hundred times more words than the entire Constitution. We live in a paradox having ten times the lawyers of any other society, yet in a nation of Christians claiming to have other means of settling disputes.

Now, to the higher ethical standards our lawmakers should have been observing. Number one is their unfaithfulness to a community size Congressional District of about 40,000 persons, to which they were originally assigned. In a district that size, people can “shop” among candidates just as they “shop” for all their other necessities of life. At each 10-year census, the crooked lawmakers have expanded their districts (and their power) until each district now has 700,000 persons.

These crooked reps have designed their own districts, each gobbling up sixteen other districts that should have their own reps. They horse trade and re-arrange constituencies among themselves, disregarding their duty to a particular constituency. The district may end up looking like a snake or horse shoe. The result of these shenanigans is that most local communities in these humungous districts are represented by foreigners.

The second problem with Congress is that it was never set up as the single law making body of a united people. The Constitution is brief.  It didn’t come with a 300-page manual about how the people shall run their new federation. If those who set up the system in 1789 could have had access to such a manual, it would have told them to first get their own houses in order. Adapt their own governments to the same district that was to rule the federation. Equalize all of their districts in all of their States to conform with the Congressional District idea.

Try to imagine what a smooth-running synchronized system we would have, if all the people were organized into one set of Home Districts (Congressional Districts). One rep from each district should be doing all the governing of the entire federation of fifty-one governments. The fifty Governors and the President would coordinate their calling up of the reps for duty at their respective capitols.

The much maligned Electoral College (fifty-one of them) should employ these Home District Reps as the “electors” who choose all the executive officers of the fifty-one governments. The Founders profoundly feared partisanship such as has deadlocked Congress, and is spreading hate and fear among us.  

We grassroots voters were never expected to run the governments of the federation. The Founders assigned that job to the Congressmen. These “congress people” have never been fully conceptualized.  To run a nation of over 300,000,000 persons, divided into districts of 40,000, requires 8,000 reps.

Would you rather blunder into another civil war, or reorganize the representative system into Home Districts? This November, as you choose your state rep for the next two years, you should be demanding that your rep comply with his superior Constitution which wants his/her people put into one set of home districts. Such a change will put the reps of the fifty states into the U.S. Congress, thereby eliminating the U.S. Congress that satisfies seven percent of the people.

The U.S. Senate is a disgrace since Amendment XVII was passed in 1913. It is easy to conclude that the senators themselves engineered that passage. When the amendment is rescinded, and home districting is accomplished, the people of the local districts will finally be in charge for the first time in the nation’s history.

One  more detail is apropos: Once the home district idea is established, each local county government, or its counterpart, should be put in complete charge of a district’s administration. The district and its boundaries should not be administered by a rep or any combination of reps.  

The Original Constitution Was Improperly Implemented

The people of the United States do not know how to set up a representative system of governing.  They have never been able to do so.  If they had pondered the uses of the congressional district more extensively, they would have solved the puzzle.

The Constitution of 1789 was an adequate governing instrument. It was to guide persons in setting up a workable federation of states. Since the Constitution did not succeed in creating the federation, it has reverted to a cherished and revered document whose state government enforcers have no power to enforce it. The Supreme Court became the fall-back cajoler as it has whimsically opined about it.

What would have succeeded in creating a real, genuine, working federation of states? Answer: If the States will ever show the good sense to adopt a single standard set of  h o m e  d i s t r i c t s  for all their people, their people will be able to operate all fifty-one governments with one set of reps.

Instead, the districting mess the States have contrived is unbelievably redundant. It creates reps for humungous, useless districts with all manner of pecking orders. Yet States are somehow unable to create a single local rep that serves one local community. Ironically, it is the State Governments who have tied their own hands. For over two centuries, they have failed to see the original congressional district as their key to federation.

Constitutionally, the grassroots voters were to directly operate their local governing districts, up through the County level governments.  At that point, grassroots voters were to turn over all governing of the federation, including the nomination and election of its officers, to their elected reps. However, reps have abused their freedom to set district sizes and boundaries. Counties should be supervising the setting up and maintenance of the boundaries of these districts.

Suppose the fifty State Governments decided to do themselves a favor.  Suppose they all just happened to adopt the same 40,000 size HOME DISTRICT. Suppose they repealed Amendment XVII, and restored the original U.S. Senate.  State officials would be swarming over Washington, D.C.  D.C. would be theirs.

It's time to love the Electoral College!

The Electoral College is the alternative to partisanship.  Democrats and Republicans particularly are disdainful of it because it constantly reminds the people that there is an alternative to partisanship. However, Democrats and Republicans have so abused it in election law that its real purpose has been forgotten. 

The Electoral College was to have been not only the nominating convention for the federation’s executive officers, but also the final choosers of the federation’s executive officers.  These executive officers of the federation include all the Constitutional Officers of the fifty states, plus the President and Vice-President.

If the nation were “home districted” as implied by the Founders in their “Congressional District Idea,” everybody would have one home district headed up by one elector/legislator.  That elector/legislator would, immediately upon election, take over the operations of the Federation of States.  That district would be about the size of the original one (40,000), which adds up to a total of 8,000 districts for the nation. Each district rep would enjoy a common pecking order with the other 7,999.  We would become a nation of equals.

The Constitution says that a district should not be less than 30,000, but it makes clear that the federation’s governing belongs to its rep and not to its people. A look at the way the Founders set up the elections system should be convincing:  They set up three levels of voting competence. (1) The people were to elect their reps for two-year terms.  (2) The Reps were to elect their executive officers for four-year terms.  (3) And the reps, when organized as assemblies, were to elect their own “watchdogs” (the senators) for six-year terms.   

At that point, the Founders delivered their constitution to the State Governments for “implementation.”  Did the States equalize the districting of their new “more perfect union” to give their citizens a common legislative body that could operate the entire federation? Has anybody ever thought about doing it in the last two and a quarter centuries? Sensibly sized “home districting” and use of Electoral Colleges would go a long way to healing our sick, partisan un-federated “union”.

Create Home Districting for the Federation

The partisan quagmire that is about to crash the system stems from a failure of the States to properly organize their people.  What the people most need is a sensibly sized “home district” and their one rep who takes over all governing duties in their behalf.  This nation has never known the tranquility that such as system could bring to it.

Only the State Governments are able to reorganize their people into sensibly sized home districts.  Inexplicably, States have never seen fit to do so.  Their myopic legislatures feel bound by their State Constitutions, while at the same time they fail to see that they are contradicting their Federal Constitution’s call for Congressional Districts.  The two constitutions should be reconciled in favor of the more dominant Federal Constitution.

The Federal System requires a common set of districting.  Otherwise, it simply will not work.  It is not working now and never has worked.  What is working now are two clashing systems of States vs. the Federal Government.  The people are caught in the middle and are being driven insane as they try to satisfy the voting demands made upon them by the two clashing systems.

Whenever the State Legislatures see fit to abandon their districting system in favor of a “commonly agreed upon size of Congressional District” to also run their State Governments, the people can have their sanity back.  One set of “home districts” of 40,000 each creates 8,000 reps.  With those 8,000 reps, let’s return to the original plans laid out in the Constitution.  Let them elect the executives of the federal system, Governors, President, et al.  And, tranquilly, make all of our laws.

An Open letter to Jim DeMint

To: President Jim DeMint at the Heritage Foundation

From: Cloyce K. Avey, member of Heritatge Foundation

Jim, you and Heritage Foundation have produced an excellent book that everybody should read.

But, in all seriousness I must ask you, “What’s the point?” You are laying a guilt trip on the electorate, a guilt trip that the electorate does not deserve and should not be laid on them.

Everything in your book points to local communities (their districts) as the ones who should be choosing their fates in the federal system. You literally hold out a dish of wonderful food for them to see and smell and drool over. But it is just beyond their grasp---and there is absolutely nothing they are able to do about it. Until the States put their people in charge, there is absolutely nothing the people can do but bitterly throw up their hands in frustration.

For two and a quarter centuries, they have been forced into a Jekyl/Hyde schizophrenia by their States’ double districting with all their plethora of pecking orders. The people instinctively know that if they were properly organized, they could do much better. Their States are utterly clueless about districting inferences from their Founders. Those who wrote and signed the Constitution had brilliant instincts. Those who implemented the Constitution were just plain stupid in that they did not properly organize their people into the more perfect union. Nor did they have the vision to plan for it at a more suitable time. Equally disgusting, is today’s constitutional scholarship which is as bad as that of the original implementers.

The brilliant instincts of the Founders continue to shout to state governments, “District your people into locally managed, equal-sized districts; then allow the resulting single set of reps to operate the entire federal governing system of states and their national government.” We must dig ourselves out of the existing districting mess, and go back to the original district of 40,000 persons, distributed nationwide.

The Founders were elitists who trusted the grassroots only to elect reps to rule over them---not to participate further except via their reps. They cleverly devised a sophisticated voting system of three levels: (1) Those who elect persons to two-year terms; (2) Those who elect persons to four-year terms (the executives); and (3 Those who elect persons to six-year terms (the senators).

By implication, the states should have mirrored that system. The people’s reps would serve at both places in their designated “houses of reps.” And county and/or city governments would choose their state senators. The reps would collegiately elect all executives.

Instead of state and national conventions to elevate party members into offices, why not turn that job over to the individual districts and allow their reps to gather together and finish the elections?

Your “Falling In Love With America All Over Again” refuses to follow through with the above decisive action to implement its ideas.

If you cannot see the people’s desperate need for reorganization. If you are not in sympathy with that need. What is the purpose of the book? Please see my letter in the April issue of The American Spectator (p.6) on this subject.  

HOW INEPT DISTRICTING LEADS VOTERS INTO PARTISAN DEPENDENCY

The Founders’ experiment with representative government was supposed to keep partisan ideologues from gaining control of the system.  Their first districting system placed 40,000 persons in each district. Today, 700,000 people live in each district, and the U.S. Congress is in political deadlock  State Governments, as usual, shrug powerlessly over any prospect of doing anything about the situation.

In fact, State Governments are the only entities with the sovereign power to completely empty out Washington, D.C. and replace the personnel with their own.   Their problem is that they must agree among themselves on whatever plans they want to pursue.

The two-year representative system still has partisan flexibility.  But, since the six-year senatorial system was sidetracked into an election vacuum in 1913, the Founders’ purpose for the U.S. Senate has been absolutely negated.  Its members have become loose cannons who follow only their own personal whims. There is no Constitutional process to effectively control their tenure once they achieve name recognition on their state-wide ballots.  State officials must govern in the shadows of these whimsical beings.   When Amendment XVII is cancelled, they will go away and State Legislatures will again be able to send their reps to the U.S; Senate.  And the people and their State Governments can prepare their districting for a different set of reps who should be sitting in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Forward March of the Nationalists

The Constitution, Section 3. “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislatures thereof, for six years; ...”

A hundred-twenty-years later, the following time bomb was inserted by the nationalists, performing a coup of the entire federal government, and reducing State Governments to symbolic figure-heads of the union.

The Constitution, Amendment 17 (1913).  “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the people thereof, for six years; ...”

The mere suggestion of such an amendment should have triggered outrage among all State Legislators, as well as other State Officials. It was a thumb-of-the-nose to the Founders and all their federalist ilk.  The nationalists had, overnight, built a wall around Washington, D.C. The nationalists had sent the States back home with their tails between their legs.  The U.S. Congress was now completely under the control of the nationalists.  The situation was a no-brainer that should have caused an immediate realignment of the two major political parties.

Twenty years later, President FDR consolidated disparate political factions into one partisan group which began looking to the national government to solve all their problems.  Since that time, the nation’s electorate has been waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Their question: “What is the other major party going to do to counter the trend toward nationalism?”  “Who will come to the aid of those cherishing the right to vote with their feet?”  Who will carry the message that fifty states are better than a single government in D.C. for those pursuing “a life of freedom and opportunity.  Fifty laboratories of democracy competing with each other for the best talent to come live in their State, should be the ideal of a free people. Eighty years after FDR, the nation still waits for the formation of a political party that is dedicated to federalism and will go all out in the fight to limit nationalism to its proper role: the pursuit of a common foreign policy.

Boiled down to one issue, that new party should go all out for the adoption of one grid of local community districts for the entire federation.  That is the key that unlocks the secret to successful federalism. It qualifies a single set of legislators to rule the entire nation.  And it empowers the people to change them every two years if they wish.

Term Limits

SOLVED  BY  THE  PLAN  THAT  MODIFIES  FEDERALISM

A preponderance of astute political observers look at the term-limit problem and think there must be a way to solve it.  The modified federalism plan solves it by reducing the district to community-size.  A community habitually elects its sheriff and changes sheriffs without the term-limit problem.  They have no need for partisan haranguing of voters over their political belief systems in order to choose a sheriff.

Political scientists should be critically studying the interactive process between voters and their local candidates. Voters should not be expected to make wise choices from among candidates who do not live in their community.  The representatives that run the federation of states should be from those local community districts.

Suppose it were determined scientifically that a grid of districts with 40,000 people each was smooth running and successful.  And that a grid of districts of the 700,000 size created confusion and conflict.      Common sense would dictate that we choose the system of 40,000.  Please note that today’s U.S. Congress is totally made up of officials coming from either the 700,000 size districts or from state-wide districts many times larger.  Their 98% reelection rate is due to campaign garbage that does not impress local voters who have neighborhood relationships with the candidates.

There is a dirty little secret that politicians discovered very early: Expand the size of one’s district to increase one’s legislative clout.  The Constitution’s Article 1, Section 2 contains an obscure statement that a district should not be formed with less than 30,000 persons.  The actual size the Constitution started with was closer to 40,000 persons.  After each ten-year census, the reps from these districts have assumed authority to consolidate districts until districts are now 700,000 pop each.  That is seventeen times their original size.

Ask any legislator about “district reform,” and the response is, “I took an oath to uphold the Constitution and cannot do anything about it.”  Then, how did you guys manage to increase its size seventeen fold?  But the problem is five times worse than that because every voter is saddled with five districts and their reps, producing all manner of pecking orders---all supposedly in a federalism of equals.  We live in a representative fairyland of make believe.

The electorate needs only one standardized grid of districts to operate the entire federation of State Governments and the one in Washington, D.C.  That is what the modified federalism plan does.