# 1301.6c - Mechanics of the New Constitution **Channel:** Chad Tomaselli **Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMZtNiXSr7s **Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/GMZtNiXSr7s ## Chapters - 0:00 — Parties and Checks in Government - 3:30 — Presidential Elections and Electoral College - 7:56 — Why the Electoral College Exists - 11:48 — Voting Rights in Early America - 13:36 — Judiciary and Supremacy Clause ## Transcript **[0:00]:** We discussed how the basic structure of the new government was proposed, the debates over those ideas, and the compromises it took to complete this process. Now we will look at some of the more important mechanics and ideas of the government they were creating. We'll start with political parties. These did not exist in either the colonial assemblies and governments or under the Articles. Thus, the Constitution was created without parties in mind. **[0:28]:** Parties were not a major factor in politics back in Britain, and they did not expect them to be one for them here in the states. Now, as we know, political parties are very much a thing, but it's worth noting that our system was not built with them in mind. **[0:45]:** So that's more of just a. We think of our system as political parties inherent to the system. And that wasn't the case then, and they didn't expect it to become the case. **[0:56]:** Sorry, I just realized Roger Sherman was in this painting looking as excited as ever. **[1:02]:** The second is checks and balances. **[1:06]:** This was not included in the Virginia plan, but added later. They, the founders. These, these people, the Philly Philadelphia Convention or Constitutional Convention, designed the new government so that no one branch could become too powerful or corrupt. **[1:22]:** Example one for you. Congress, right, passes laws, but that's not the end of the process. They go to the executive branch or the President for approval. Now, the President can veto, veto and say, nope, we're not passing that bill. But Congress can then override that veto or overturn that veto with a two thirds vote. **[1:47]:** So Congress can say, we want to pass this law. The President can say no. But then Congress, if they have enough votes, can then overturn that veto. And this is a process that every single law that comes out of Congress, actual law goes through. So this is a way for the presidency to make sure Congress isn't going crazy. But it's also a way for Congress to then check back that the presidency isn't going crazy. Here's a second example of checks and balances. When it comes to judges on the national level, the President appoints or chooses those judges, but Congress, particularly the Senate, has to approve them. So every member of the Supreme Court, the President says, I want this person on the Supreme Court. But it's the Congress that has the final yes or no say. **[2:35]:** So the. If there, if this didn't exist. Excuse me, if this didn't exist, then the President could just name whoever they wanted to to the Supreme Court and there'd be no check on that. Or at least there's supposed to be a check on that. **[2:49]:** Each of these checks and balances exist. Between the branches and also within each one, there are checks and balances within each branch to make sure that they internally are not too corrupt or too powerful. So that's something. They made sure that if they're going to give more power to the national government, which they were very wary of after the colonial experience, we talked about this under the Articles. That's why the pendulum swung the other direction to the. To the limited power national government of the Articles. If they're going to give more power to the national government, they want to make sure that it cannot be too corrupt. **[3:30]:** The next thing I'll mention, presidential elections. There were proposals, we talked about this for the Virginia plan, at least the first one, for the executive to be chosen by Congress. But there were also proposals for a popular vote and everything in between. Several founders, like Alexander Hamilton, did not trust the average person or the populace in general with a straight popular vote, as he believed that the masses could be easily led or deceived. He also feared foreign influence or internal corruption. **[4:06]:** A compromise was created, not an actual separate compromise like we talked about, but what they came up with instead of all of those options was the Electoral College, which I'll discuss specifically, momentarily. These elections for president also worked differently. At their creation, the candidate who won the most electoral votes became president, and the person who had the second most electoral votes became vice president. Once parties formed, this meant that the President and the Vice president could be different political parties without running together, often running against each other. So if that is the system we still had today, then looking at the results of 2016 election, then Donald Trump's vice president would have been Hillary Clinton. **[4:59]:** And looking at 2020, Joe Biden's vice president would have been Donald Trump. And hearing that, you understand how terrible of a system that was. And we will eventually talk about in unit two, how they changed away from that. But this is how it was originally set up. Now we're going to look at. I guess I flipped the slide earlier, but now we're going to look specifically at the Electoral College. As stated, the Electoral College was created as a compromise between Congress choosing the President and a popular vote. People under the Electoral College still have a say, but they have a say with a degree of separation. How does this work? It starts with electors. **[5:39]:** States have a number of electors based on the number of their representatives in the House, plus their senators, which is two. As of the 2020 census, Texas has 37 representatives and two senators and therefore 39 electoral votes. Or maybe they upped it to 38 and two. So now it's 40 electoral votes. I don't remember. **[6:06]:** We haven't had an election since the 2020 census. 2020 election didn't include the 2020 census. But you see that the. So the electoral votes are based on the total of representatives and senators. So that's why Texas and California, New York have a lot of electoral votes is because they have a high number of representatives, because they have a higher population. **[6:29]:** So it's balanced in that regard to where the population in the country is. Electors were chosen by the states by whatever method the state deems best. So they could be chosen by Congress, they could be chosen by the governor. It wasn't a popular vote, but that's basically how it worked. The state chose who the electors were. **[6:52]:** The only purpose of the elector was to cast these votes and then they ceased being an elector. The rules for electors and how they voted was also decided by the states. Sometimes the electors voted based on the popular vote, others by what they interpreted as the will or desire of the people. However you measure that, the popular vote did not become the main determinant until the 1850s. So before the 1850s, the electors would vote either biased on the BA, biased either Beist on the popular vote or. **[7:33]:** Or on what other ever criteria? Bribes. They happened, right? To win an election, a presidential election, a candidate must win the majority of the electoral vote. You can lose the popular vote, but if they win the electoral vote, they win the election. **[7:56]:** Why was this done specifically? Double check, I think. Yeah, it's my one slide and I'll show you that when we get to actual elections, I'll show you this and it'll make you have a visual representation of it. But why was this done specifically? Couple reasons. One, to separate presidential elections from a straight popular vote for the reasons I discussed, like that Hamilton gave, and also to ensure that smaller population states were not ignored in this process. It's not perfect, but a straight popular vote also has merits and flaws. We'll look back at 2016, an election where Donald Trump won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote. Hillary Clinton had 2 million more popular votes, but a significant number of that difference came from states where she won handily, like California. **[9:00]:** So it's not that she won a popular vote in every state. Right. It's just that the states where she typically won big electoral victories, it's because she got a high number of votes in those states, like California or New York or Massachusetts. Right. **[9:19]:** So in a straight popular vote system, why would a candidate go to Wyoming or the Dakotas when they need massive numbers of vote. **[9:27]:** They wouldn't. They would hammer the populous ones. You couldn't completely ignore the small population states, but they're less important in a popular vote system than with the Electoral College. Also, look at it this way. In a popular vote system, Your vote is 1 in 330 million. **[9:47]:** With the electoral College, your vote here in Texas is 1 in 29 million. That's a factor of 10 better. Now, the Electoral College absolutely has flaws, such as the fact that in this system, the smaller population states have a greater share of influence than larger states. But that wasn't that the point? A system to prevent smaller, less popular states from being ignored. **[10:16]:** But there are plenty of problems with the Electoral College. I'm not. The point of me describing this is to explain why they did it and how it worked, not to justify it. Either way, I can see merits of it. I see flaws of it. There's merits of other systems like ranked choice. Voting is one. Another flaw of it is the fact that someone can lose the popular vote but still win the election. And this has happened five times in American history. Andrew Jackson lost the electoral or the popular vote in 1824, but still won the election. **[10:53]:** So Andrew Jackson, 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes, 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000, and Trump in 2016. People who lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote and therefore won the election. It has flaws for certain, and I'm not defending it, just explaining what and why it is you're trying to win the majority of electoral votes a much smaller number. Therefore, the smaller population states have more power disproportionately, but they do have more power. And before the Civil War, the states that had slavery because of the Three Fifths Compromise had a much larger share of power than they should have had otherwise. Because mostly those slave states, with a few exceptions, had a much smaller population. **[11:43]:** So that's the Electoral College and presidential elections. **[11:48]:** Another thing, much shorter on these last couple things, voting rights. The Constitution originally did not outline or determine voting rights and delegated the responsibility for that to the states. Every state initially determined voter eligibility based on property ownership, whether it was a minimum amount of land or the value of that land. Women were already barred from voting in most states with few restrictions based on. **[12:21]:** There were few restrictions based on race, so there were a few. Sorry. There were a few restrictions based on race. So people of color who met the property and wealth requirements could be. I'm going to start this again. **[12:37]:** There were few restrictions based on race, so People of color who met the property and wealth requirements were eligible initially to vote. But that will change over the next several decades as states shifted from property as being a determinant to race and gender as being the main determinant of who can vote. White men of any kind were allowed to vote without restriction. Women and free black Americans were specifically barred from voting. Obviously, slaves were not considered citizens or even people, so they had no voting rights. **[13:09]:** The national government did not address voting rights of any kind until the 15th amendment in 1870. So for the first 90 years, 90ish years, only white men could vote. And the national government didn't do anything to change that until the 15th amendment in 1870. **[13:36]:** Next is the judiciary. It was described through the national court system as meant to interpret the laws of the Constitution, but little actually was fleshed out aside from how justices are appointed and that it should exist. **[13:52]:** The wording was intentionally left vague because they were unsure of how it would work. So for the first several years of its existence, the court system, particularly the Supreme Court, just kind of floats out there doing nothing because it wasn't really defined. And that's something we'll discuss in more depth in unit two. And finally, the Supremacy Clause. States were allowed to make their own separate laws without interference with the national government. **[14:20]:** However, if a state law differed from a national law or regulation, the national one took precedence and overrode the state law law. For example, if a state banned sports, but the national government still considered it legal in their own laws and rules, then the state law was essentially pointless and the state would have to allow sports. This is contingent on the national government actually enforcing their laws, but you understand the idea. So if the state, and we're actually seeing this in the last decade with laws regarding marijuana as more technically, according to the national government, it is a class C drug and illegal. However, states are starting to pass laws where marijuana is legal. **[15:11]:** Now technically, if the national government wanted to come in and, and, and invalidate those laws, they could, but they're not doing that, which makes it silly to even have the, the law. And, and just in, you know, just discussing it in legal sense, doesn't make sense to have a law if you're not going to enforce it. But that's the, the point. Now the states, as we've seen, laws are only as good as their enforcement. Salutary neglect, right? Under the British and the colonies, that was a big deal. **[15:45]:** So the national government, when it comes to laws, has supremacy, but it's only as good as their enforcement of those laws, and those are the mechanics. Now, the state still needed to ratify or approve this agreement, and it would not be easy to convince them. And that's what we're going to talk about next.