Elective system

“ The power to judge of the elections and qualifications of its members, inhering in each House by virtue of section 5 of article I, is an important power, essential in our system to the proper organization of an elective body of representatives. ”

“ Now, while the Federal offices remain mostly as they were under our first Presidents and Congresses, in the States almost every office, from governor and judges of the highest courts down to magistrates and constables, has become elective by the people, and the States, with whom, under the Constitution, rests the power of regulating the qualifications for the exercise of the elective franchise, have generally removed all qualifications thereon, and conferred universal suffrage, as it is called, upon the people. ”

“ But if he is annually elective, you need not scruple to give him a free and independent exercise of his judgement, for he will have so great an affection for the people, the representatives and council, that he would seldom exercise this right, except in cases, the publick utility of which would soon be manifest, and some such cases would happen. ”

“ But the National Assembly—like those invalids who, having found a remedy for their disease, fancy that if a little of such remedy does some good, a great deal must do much more—made the whole of their institutions, with one exception, depend upon the same basis; and as their chamber was elective, their municipalities elective—so their judges were to be elective, and their clergy and bishops elective also. ”

“ A further innovation, rapidly growing, is the expression of a wish or preference by the electorate where such vote is merely advisory and not binding. Office after office, once appointive, is made elective, and when so gained by the people is never surrendered again. ”

“ If the sovereignty of America is designed to be elective, the circumscribing the votes to only ten electors in this State, and the same proportion in all the others, is nearly tantamount to the exclusion of the voice of the people in the choice of their first magistrate. ”

“ The most difficult task and the highest duty that our electorate are ever called upon to perform is, therefore, the selection of candidates for elective state office. In order to perform that duty, it is imperative that there should be adequate and reliable means of information, full opportunity for conference, exchange of views, debate and criticism as to the capacity and character of candidates, and effective methods of cooperation and organization in support of qualified candidates. ”

“ Elective functions—Deputation—Elective councils.—There is a whole class of functionaries, if it be permitted to say so, who owe their origin to election, and who are the mandataries of the people, either in municipal councils, or in general councils, or in the great elective bodies of the State, the Senate and House of Representatives. (See Civil instruction.) The principle of the sovereignty of the people requires that for all its interests, communal, departmental or national, the country have a deliberative voice by means of its representatives. ”

“ Take the power of appointment in executive work. You elect officers, choosing men of character, intelligence, and experience for a few great offices, and then what do you do under the Federal Constitution? You turn over to the President the appointment of great officers because he needs intelligence, knowledge and skill to make their selections.
Consider the system of general direct primaries in the selection of judges. There is a ticket at the primaries on which something like twenty or thirty lawyers run for the Supreme Bench. ”

“ The administrators of the executive power may be either elective or not; and in the former case all or only some of them may be elective. They are elective in a proper democracy, that is to say, in a democracy which recognizes representation. If all the public officials are directly elected by the whole people, the democracy is a pure democracy; if only some, it is a mixed democracy. The public officials may also fill vacancies themselves; this is the case in a pure aristocracy. ”

“ Is it to be presumed that the people will ever agree to such a system? He moved to render the members of the House of Representatives, as well as of the Senate, ineligible, not only during, but for one year after the expiration of, their terms. If it should be thought that this will injure the legislature, by keeping out of it men of abilities, who are willing to serve in other offices, it may be required, as a qualification for other offices, that the candidate shall have served a certain time in the legislature. ”

“ The Constitution and the laws of the state thus require that, in order to entitle, anyone to have his vote received at any election, he must not only have the requisite qualifications of an elector, but he must have been registered. ”

“ Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector. ”

“ It was necessary, on the one hand, that the people should appoint one branch of the government, in order to inspire them with the necessary confidence; but he wished the election, on the other, to be so modified as to secure more effectually a just preference of merit. His idea was, that the people should nominate certain persons, in certain districts, out of whom the state legislatures should make the appointment. ”

“ A complicated system of party organization and representation grew up under which a disciplined body of party workers in each state supported each other, controlled the machinery of nomination, and thus controlled nominations. The members of state legislatures and other officers, when elected, felt a more acute responsibility to the organization which could control their renomination than to the electors, and therefore became accustomed to shape their conduct according to the wishes of the nominating organization. ”

“ The election of the executive magistrate will be considered as of vast importance, and will create great earnestness. The best men, the governors of the states, will not hold it derogatory from their character to be the electors. If the motion should be agreed to, it will be necessary to make the executive ineligible a second time, in order to render him independent of the legislature ”

“ Are our governor and council legislators, in both the state and national governments, because, on an examination of votes transmitted to them by the selectmen, they issue certificates of election to our state senators and to the members of Congress elect? Do they exercise any part of that power which makes “each house the judge of the elections, returns, and qualification of its own members”? Just as much, I reply, as sheriff, auditor, commissioner, or clerk, does of “judicial power.” They perform acts preliminary or antecedent to legislation, but no legislative act ”

“ He observed, that, in some of the states, one branch of the legislature was composed of men already removed from the people by an intervening body of electors; that, if the first branch of the general legislature should be elected by the state legislatures, the second branch elected by the first, the executive by the second together with the first, and other appointments again made for subordinate purposes by the executive, the people would be lost sight of altogether, and the necessary sympathy between them and their rulers and officers too little felt. ”

“ The appointing power is the State, the manner of its action is prescribed by the Legislature; the valid authority and the valid manner of its exercise must concur, to make a valid appointment.
If, therefore, the persons assuming the office are not appointed by the State, and in the manner directed by the Legislature, they are not electors; that is to say, they are not electors de jure; electors de facto they can hardly become, since their functions exist but for a moment, and with one act they perish. ”

“ They have confounded democratic government with representative government; they have confounded the rights of the people with the qualifications of an elector, which society dispenses for its well understood interest. Where the government is representative, where there exists an intermediary degree of electors, society, which elects them, has essentially the right to determine the conditions of their eligibility. There in one right existing in our Constitution, that of the active citizen, but the function of an elector is not a right. ”

“ It is necessary you should have Wardens to assist you in the government of your Lodge. The constitution requires us to elect our officers by ballot, but it is common, on occasions of this kind, to dispense with those formalities, and elect by ayes and noes; I move we do so on the present occasion." The question is tried and carried in the affirmative. The Master has a right to nominate one candidate for office, and the brethren one. ”

“ The functions of the legislature are originative, those of the judiciary expository, and those of the President executory. The one gives birth to that which the other expounds and explains, and the third, when understood and explained, carries into effect. To create an office, then, is in its nature a legislative function. And to define and fix the tenure of an office which is in the process of creation, is also in its nature a legislative function. ”

“ If the executive be appointed, as has been determined, by the legislature, he will probably be appointed, either by joint ballot of both houses, or be nominated by the first and appointed by the second branch. ”

“ Popular Rule through Representatives.—Although public opinion exerts a guiding influence upon the course of government, the actual work of making the laws and putting them into operation must be performed, for the most part, by individuals selected for this purpose, that is by elective or appointive officers. ”

“ Now if all the citizens judge, in all the different cases which I have distinguished, they may be appointed by vote or by lot, or sometimes by lot and sometimes by vote. Or when a single class of causes are tried, the judges who decide them may be appointed, some by vote, and some by lot. These then are the four modes of appointing judges from the whole people, and there will be likewise four modes, if they are elected from a part only; for they may be appointed from some by vote and judge in all causes ”

“ If a State declares that an entire class of citizens is ineligible for the position of Elector, and that class is defined in a way in which individual merit plays no part, it strikes at the very basis of the College as it was originally conceived. ”

“ If what has been said be founded in sound reason, the two Houses of Congress, when inquiring what votes are to be counted, have the right to go behind the certificate of any officers of a State, to ascertain who have and who have not been appointed electors. The evidence which these Houses will receive upon such inquiry it is for them and them only to prescribe, in the performance of their highest functions and the exercise of their sincerest judgment. ”

“ ELLSWORTH would prefer a negative in the executive on a nomination by the second branch, the negative to be overruled by a concurrence of two thirds of the second branch, to the mode proposed by the motion, but preferred an absolute appointment by the second branch to either. The executive will be regarded by the people with a jealous eye. Every power for augmenting unnecessarily his influence will be disliked. ”