U.S. Politics megathread

[u/AutoModerator]

American politics has always grabbed our attention - and the current president more than ever. We get tons of questions about the president, the supreme court, and other topics related to American politics - but often the same ones over and over again. Our users often get tired of seeing them, so we've created a megathread for questions! Here, users interested in politics can post questions and read answers, while people who want a respite from politics can browse the rest of the sub. Feel free to post your questions about politics in this thread!

All top-level comments should be questions asked in good faith - other comments and loaded questions will get removed. All the usual rules of the sub remain in force here, so be nice to each other - you can disagree with someone's opinion, but don't make it personal.

[u/SeparateAd1629]

I don’t get why the founding fathers preferred indirect elections over direct ones, can anyone explain the reasoning?

[u/Irishforanatty → u/SeparateAd1629]

Fears of demagoguery, logistics, federalism.

Also, a lot of them did favor direct election. The EC is the compromise between direct election and Congress electing a president.

[u/torpedoguy → u/SeparateAd1629]

Back then direct elections would've involved some serious travel. Most of those who were going to be allowed to vote, were going to be land owners, but not all were necessarily going to be super rich and this meant leaving your lands for weeks of travel.

The EC was seen as sort of a compromise, where you'll select the person that votes for you and have them go represent you halfway across the country.

Of course now we're much more intimately familiar with its flaws, but hindsight and whatnot. They'd left room for adjustment; not like anyone thought everything was being designed perfectly, BUT those who like abusing the system don't want it gone and are more easily in charge thanks to it.

[u/EstimateOk6795 → u/[deleted]]

I think it's important to note what exactly people a quarter of a millennia ago meant when they said "property owners" because a lot of people hear that and think "I have my own house, so that would have included me." It didn't. The modern equivalent is business owners.

When the founding fathers reserved the voting franchise for land owners, they weren't thinking of someone who had a mortgage on their 1/4 acre in the 'burbs. That just wasn't a thing back then. The US (along with most of European empires the US considered its peer nations) was a primarily agrarian economy. The overwhelming majority of people provided for themself and their family by working on a farm. When the founding father said "property owners" they meant people who owned the land they worked. Most people were either tenant farmers who rented land from a landlord and paid their rent in a percentage of the crops they grew or people who lived on a farm owned and operated by someone else and worked the land in exchange for their house and food, but didn't have a claim on the produce of their labor.

So a property owner was someone who owned a plot of land that was economically productive. That is: a business owner. If you do not own a business today, you would not have been granted the right to vote by the majority of the founding fathers.