In Federalist 61 Hamilton explores the question as to whether it should be required that elections occur only in the counties where the electors reside. Remember that there was no provision for the direct election of the President. Citizens would choose electors who would vote for President, and there were some who thought that it would be best if the counties where the electors resided would be the location for this election.
While this may seem like an obscure point, please remember that one of the issues in the Georgia 2020 election was the requirement that voters vote in the counties where they were registered. This was a requirement that stemmed from this original debate, where it was thought that keeping elections local was a recipe for integrity in that the poll workers would likely know more of the people who were voting. That Georgia requirement was dropped because it was felt that, because of COVID, it presented an unnecessary burden on voters.
Hamilton believes that the requirement is basically “harmless”[1] but neither did it really add to electoral security. He goes on to point out that, using his home state as an example, if elections were only held in Albany for instance, it would not be a long time before all the representatives would be only from Albany. The distances that people would be required to travel, as well as the inconvenience of transportation at the time, would result in limiting participation in government and voting.
Ultimately, the purpose of these election rules is to avoid tyranny. The uniformity of the timing of House and Senate elections was designed to do just that. Hamilton points out that if “an improper spirit” were to inhabit the congress, keeping all the elections at the same time, instead of allowing the states to set the timing, allows for the “total dissolution or renovation of the body at one time.” And, of course, “Uniformity in the time of elections seems not less requisite for executing the idea of a regular rotation in the Senate” as well. We keep coming back to the concept that regular turnover in government is a prerequisite for liberty.
Moving on to the unique nature of the Senate in Federalist 62, Hamilton starts by talking about the more mature age requirement in the Senate (thirty, vs twenty five in the House), and the longer citizenship requirement (nine in the Senate vs six in the House). Hamilton explains this discrepancy by the “nature of the senatorial trust” that requires a greater “stability of character”, as well as a distance from any past foreign citizenships by being “thoroughly weaned from the prepossessions and habits incident to foreign birth and education.” As quaint as this might sound to us today, there is, as usual, great wisdom to expect that our Senators be steeped in the traditions and culture of this country rather than those of a foreign land. Those traditions and cultures must be as much a part of the new Republic as its laws, as Aristotle had recommended.
The longer term, nine years originally, was far longer than that of the House of Representatives because presumably, greater maturity in both age and citizenship, makes a Senator less of a threat to liberty than his House counterpart. Of course, the second great difference between the House and the Senate is the choosing of Senators by the state legislators rather than by popular vote. That method of choosing “is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment, and of giving to the State governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government as must secure the authority of the former, and may form a convenient link between the two systems.” We have already discussed at length the departure from the Founder’s intent by allowing for direct elections of Senators so I will not go into that further. More information on that is here https://afnn.us/2023/08/11/federalist-59/
As to the apportionment of two senators to each state, this is seen as a compromise between the larger states, which would have greater representation in the House of Representatives, and the smaller ones, where the Senate “preserves the sovereignty remaining in the individual states” and thus allows for both “the national and federal character” of the new republic. Regardless, it would have been impossible for there to be any agreement that does not take into account the needs of both the large and small states. This equal representation also preserves the “residuary sovereignty” of the states and acts as a way to prevent “an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic.”
Of course, as we have seen time and time again, the founders are speaking to us today as well as to a somewhat skeptical citizenry back when they were writing. The real genius of the bicameral nature of our congress is that it made the passing of unwise legislation difficult. “No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States.” This is a brilliant feature of our republic that we have allowed to corrode with predictably disastrous results. The founders anticipated the possibility that those in Congress “may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust.” In the absence of this feature “ambition or corruption of one (body of the legislature) would otherwise be sufficient” to pass laws damaging to the country. We have seen this wisdom tested time and time again in recent history. The fact that one or two Senators can grind the legislative process to a halt is not a bug, it is a feature of our form of government.
Indeed
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- All quotes are from https://www.teaparty911.com/federalist-papers-summaries/federalist-61-summary/ ↑