Really?
"Lee is articulating a view that has long been in vogue on the American right, but which Republican politicians were generally hesitant to express openly," according to an
article in
New York magazine.
The fact that the United States is a "republic" is often given as a reason to be against a nationwide vote for President.
However, this argument isn't based on either the Founder's definition (or today's definition) of a "republic."
In Federalist No. 10, James Madison said that the “difference between a democracy and a republic [is] the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.”
In Federalist No. 14, Madison said, "in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents.”
Popular election of the chief executive does not determine whether a government is a republic or democracy. At the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, five of the original 13 states conducted popular elections for Governor.
The U.S. Constitution requires that each state have a “republican form of government.” These five states would not have voted for the Constitution in the Convention, or ratified, it if they believed that their state’s method of electing its chief executive put the state in violation of the new Constitution.
In a republic (as the term is defined in the Federalist Papers and used today), the people do not rule directly, but instead elect officeholders to whom they delegate the power to conduct the business of government during the period between elections. In a democracy, the people rule directly (as they do today in some New England town meetings).
The United States is neither less nor more a “republic” if its chief executive is elected under the state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each separate state), or under the National Popular Vote compact (where popular votes for choosing presidential are tallied on a nationwide basis).
A change in the boundaries for tallying popular votes for choosing presidential electors would do nothing to change the fact that the people delegate power to elected officeholders who, in turn, run the government.
The United States is currently a republic under current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, and it would remain a republic under the National Popular Vote compact.
In short, popular election of the chief executive has nothing whatever to do with the question of whether a particular government is a “republican form of government” or whether a particular government is a republic or democracy.
Detailed discussion
