The filibuster has gone through substantial reform over the years. The initiative could not receive the then-required 75 votes to cloture the debate and move to a vote, and so the amendment was dropped in order for the Senate to attend to other matters. When introduced, a handful of Republican and Democratic senators from Southern states, fearing a loss of influence, filibustered it. The Resolution received bi-partisan support, President Nixon’s endorsement, and 30 state legislatures (out of the 38 needed, as per Article V) promised that they would ratify it. The closest the US has ever come to ending the electoral college, and hence setting a precedent for wider reform of the voting system, was in 1968 with the House Joint Resolution 681, carrying the Bayh-Celler amendment. These voting mechanisms, both for the US Senate and the Presidency, have survived the passing of time and tireless reformers, primarily due to the third cause of gridlock: the filibuster. In the past six elections, the winner of the electoral college has twice differed from the winner of the popular vote. Undesirable though it might have been for the Founding Fathers, the resulting system privileges certain states and their voters over others. 68 stated that such a voting mechanism would ensure that the election of the President would not be subjected to a “ faction” of a “ pre-established body,” recent developments have proved him wrong. Even though Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist no. While modified by the 12 th Amendment in 1804 to ensure a unified ticket at the head of the executive branch, Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution sets out an indirect, state-based form of vote. Article V of the Constitution, which ensures such an imbalance of voting power, thus serves to continually perpetuate this tyranny of the minority in the US.Ī similar observation could be made regarding the electoral college, and the way presidents and vice-presidents are elected. The US demographic trend is making it ever clearer that 15 states – Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, and South Carolina – make up around the population of California, while sending 30, reliably Republican, senators to California’s 2. While the 17 th Amendment was thought of as a way to make the Senate more democratic, the two-senators-per-state rule, protected by Article V of the US Constitution, which provides that “ no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate,” ends up creating an imbalance in the weight of individual voting power across the country. The resulting decision, in the form of the Connecticut Compromise of 1787, led to the Chamber of Representatives, renewed every two years, and the US Senate, with two senators from each state that were appointed by the state legislatures until the 17 th Amendment ensured direct elections of senators in 1913. When it comes to the US Senate, the bicameral Congress is essentially the result of a compromise between the willingness, in a federal country, to represent all states equally, and the need to have a legislature directly representing the people. While ever-increasing partisanship, the segmentation of the news media, and the rampant influence Donald Trump and his followers are having on the Republican party can all be cited as reasons for the current and future gridlock in Washington, the roots of the problem lie in the structure of the voting mechanisms for the presidency and the US Senate, entrenched in the Constitution, and the effects it produces. This is the situation the United States finds itself in, as the Biden administration struggled to pass an additional $1,400 stimulus check as part of its $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan. The “ catch,” the readers progressively discover, is that the only solution to the problem is denied by a factor inherent to the problem. However, the military base’s medical doctor promptly informs him that the mere fact of asking for a psychiatric evaluation is proof enough of Orr’s sanity and fitness for combat. In Joseph Heller’s 1953 masterpiece, Catch-22, Orr, a World War II bomber pilot, requests a mental evaluation, hoping he would be found not sane enough to fly and hence escape the dangerous bombing missions over Italy.
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