We Americans have a hit-and-miss record of enlarging our democracy. Lincoln took Jefferson's assertion of human equality and expanded it so that slavery came to be seen as inconsistent with the nation's defining principles. Another hundred years had to pass before all citizens were assured of their right to vote (though we've learned from Florida in the past couple weeks that even that right is inconsistently applied).
Many of our original structures of government plod along unaltered to this day, though they are rooted in assumptions and biases that have been not only rejected, but in many instances forgotten. In 1892, when the court affirmed the power of the legislatures to choose electors, it was still the case that those legislatures elected United States senators. Not until the 17th amendment to the Constitution in 1913 was that right given directly to the people. As for the Electoral College, it is a direct outgrowth of slavery. Had the constitution mandated a popular vote for president back in 1787, the North -- with a far larger population of white males than the South -- would have seen its presidential candidates routinely prevail. By apportioning electors in accord with a state's population, however -- that is, by counting bodies, not voters -- the predominantly Southern drafters of the constitution enabled slave states to dominate presidential elections.
Today, conservatives like Scalia and Yoo cheerfully defend the rights of legislatures over people, but prudently decline to invoke the demophobic and aristocratic beliefs that led to the establishment of these rights. Conservatives like George Will defend the Electoral College but omit any glowing references to slavery when they make their case. No account of W.'s rise, however, should rely on such a sanitized version of history. If he prevails, the first president of the 21st century will owe his office to the institutional legacies of the most repugnant biases of the 18th. The past, as Faulkner reminded us, isn't dead -- and when it comes to selecting our presidents, apparently it isn't even past.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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