Fifty Laboratories of Democracy
One of the most common misunderstandings about our Founding Fathers is that they intended for each state to be free to decide how big or small a government to have.
This idea, taught for generations in the schools and regularly repeated by the press and political class, posits that the Founding Fathers were specific about the federal government, but they didn’t care at all how big each state, county, or local government became.
They teach that each state was to be its own “laboratory of democracy,” free to be anything from libertarian to dictatorial, as each state’s population chose.
And wouldn’t that be cool, huh?
This is not only wrong, but since many of its proponents actually know better, it’s an outright lie.
In fact, our Founding Fathers were virtually united in the belief that government – at all levels – was best and most philosophically honorable if kept very, very small. You need roads and police, national defense and ambassadors, courts to keep contracts respected, and other things like that. So, you need some government for these purposes.
But that’s it.
Our Founders did not believe that any states should have a big government, or that any states should be free to behave in a statist manner, any more than they thought the federal government should.
But here’s where our Founding Fathers differed, from man to man: They were unsure what exactly was the most effective method of ensuring such small government. They were uncertain which method was optimal for maintaining it over the long term.
So, the Framers designed a federal government in our national Constitution that established three branches of government, with a bicameral legislature, and a four year term for a President, two year terms for House members, and six year terms for Senators, with life terms for federal judges and justices,… but they didn’t necessarily think that was certain to turn out to be the best approach. They were open to seeing if other methods worked.
So the Founders encouraged the individual states to experiment with different methods of construction of their own respective small governments.
Maybe some would do without an executive, or have two or three co-executives. Maybe some would have ten year terms for state legislators or judges. Maybe some would have a unicameral legislature while others would have a bicameral, or perhaps some might even invent a three-house approach. Who knows? Maybe some states would put more issues up for referenda and allow broad recall opportunities, and others would not allow referenda or recalls at all.
When our Founders spoke of the states being individual laboratories of government approaches, that’s what they were talking about.
They were united in advocating small government at all levels; they were open to the best method of achieving that goal.
The Timing of Primaries
As I write this column in anticipation of the August 4 primaries, I am horrified (as I am, frankly, every cycle) at how many primaries are still yet to be held in this midterm election year.
By my count, we’re only about 60% done; we have 19 states left (14 after the dust settles Tuesday night) that still haven’t chosen their nominees for the November election.
Many people see a statistic like that and cheer.
They hate long election cycles and they think it would be wonderful if elections could just be over with, perhaps permanently.
Such people probably belong in a monarchy, not in a republic.
Here’s the problem: In any election, each candidate has to raise money, inspire and organize volunteers, and educate his constituents about himself and his positions, so they can make the best choice on Election Day.
This all takes time.
The longer the race, the better a chance an opposition party or challenger has to get through to his electorate in the general election. And the corollary is therefore just as true: the shorter the race, the harder it is for a challenger to do all that.
There are tens of thousands of people to reach in a county board or state legislative election. Hundreds of thousands in a congressional race. Millions in a statewide race for senator or governor. You can’t come close to doing a decent job of that kind of outreach in just a few weeks.
Short general elections are essentially a gift to the political establishment, an “incumbency protection plan” as people say in the political world.
An August 4 primary may sound like plenty of time for a November 3 election, but let’s do the math:
The primary results won’t be certified for a couple of weeks, longer if there’s a close race or, worse yet, a recount. We won’t know for sure who all the candidates are until the end of August, if then.
And people don’t really all vote on November 3, do they?
Not anymore. Every cycle, more and more voters take advantage of mail-in voting, early in-person voting, and other forms of absentee voting, so they start casting ballots several weeks before November 3. In many states, ten, twenty, even thirty percent of the electorate has already voted in the first week of October.
This means that the candidates chosen on August 4 really have only a little over a month to truly have a chance of reaching all their constituents in time to hopefully convince them of their best choice.
And for the candidates chosen on August 6, August 8, August 11, August 18? It’s even worse for them.
Amazingly, even that still doesn’t complete the calendar. Oklahoma has a primary runoff on August 25. And Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware have their primaries during the month of September.
By the time these elections are certified, the nominees are already out of time. They have to get their ads up, and get their mailings out, and get yard signs posted and precincts walked, virtually instantaneously, or they haven’t a prayer of competing with an incumbent who has two, or four, or ten, or twenty years of name recognition already.
In my half century of paying attention to politics, one of the most common recurring themes I have seen is the complaint that incumbents are never turned out of office, that we can’t expect things to get better if we keep electing the same people all the time.
And yet, those same people who complain about the permanence of incumbents are usually the very same people who complain that election seasons are too long, and they would never support moving up their state’s primary to an earlier date.
The people who whine the most about persistent incumbents are the ones whose distaste for elections makes them the incumbents’ greatest weapon.
There’s No Vote Fraud Where I Live!
Another of the most persistent faulty assumptions in American politics is the stubborn belief that there’s no vote fraud in red states; that in fact it all occurs in blue states.
This is certainly an understandable assumption. Since virtually all vote fraud accrues to the benefit of the Democratic party (sorry for the generality, but it’s true), it’s logical to assume that it would only happen in places that the Democrats run. But this is based on some faulty assumptions.
Democrat party operatives only commit some types of vote fraud. There are dozens of very different kinds of vote fraud, and only some require the control of the election apparatus to accomplish them.
For example, in recent elections, we have seen votes switched by the intentionally incorrect programming of touchscreens, or by the remote tweaking of election returns by software engineers with internet access and an algorithm to load. And we have always seen ballot stuffing take place, where election officials cast ballots on behalf of registered voters whose names are known to be of dead people, moved-away people, or fictional people. These methods are infinitely easier to accomplish for the party that rules the city, county or state in question.
But also in recent elections we have seen other methods used: the college student who lives in a blue state but goes to college in a red state, the snowbird who has a house in a blue state but also has a winter condo in a red state, the senior citizen with alzheimers or other severe illnesses who lives in a nursing home.
If the college student votes from both his house and his dorm, both votes look valid. If the snowbird votes from both his house and his winter condo, both votes look valid. And if the senior’s vote is cast for him by a nursing home official with a quota to deliver for his alderman, and each patient hasn’t the faintest idea whether he cast a vote or not, or for whom, that vote looks valid too.
It’s hard to enforce some types of vote fraud, and many of them can happen anywhere. Even the red states that try very hard to keep their elections honest can’t afford to devote the necessary resources to ensure that their Florida resident who seems to be casting a valid ballot isn’t also voting in his upstate New York home district at the same day.
At least in the days when you had to show up on Election Day, in person, casting two votes in two different states was a very difficult thing to accomplish. But nowadays, when we give people a month to vote and we allow them to just mail it in, from anywhere? Election fraud has been made easy. On purpose.
This is why we need such corrections as the SAVE America Act. It won’t solve every kind of fraud – nothing could. But it will make most types of fraud much harder to accomplish, and that alone will help our society more than words can say.
Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance trainer, speaker, and consultant. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), his first nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” and his brand new collection of stories about the heroes of the American Founding, “The Founding Generation: The Patriots Who Built America,” are all available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon. His trade compliance training practice is available either in person or by webinar.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA