On September 4, 1787, the term “vice-president” appeared for the first time in the Constitutional Convention. The Unfinished Parties Committee reported on a method of electing the Chair and Vice-Chair, recommending that the Deputy Chair be the “Ex officio Chair of the Senate.” Although delegates adopted the latter measure three days later, few people understood the scope of the Vice President`s duties, as they did not hold a similar position in their own states. However, the New York Constitution set a clear precedent: “The Lieutenant Governor is President of the Senate by virtue of his office and, with the same division, has a decisive voice in his decisions, but does not vote on any other occasion.” New York is therefore rightly credited with establishing the office of the vice president in its executive and senatorial functions. Once the delegates established equal representation in the Senate, they had to determine the number of senators each state would represent. State constitutions have provided some guidance. Several states appointed one senator per county or county, while in Delaware there were three senators for each of the three counties. However, Convention delegates did not refer to State precedents in the debate. Instead, they seemed to take a reasonable approach to deciding how many senators there would be. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified after the Civil War, began to address the “original sin” of the Constitution and ordered that the census fully count every individual, regardless of skin color. While this is a step in the right direction, it has done little to ease the country`s racial tensions. Instead of directly providing for the right to vote for African Americans, the amendment stipulated that only men over the age of 21 should not be discriminated against in voting, unless they had participated in a rebellion against the Union or in “other crimes.” Women were not allowed to vote until 1920, when the 19th Amendment stated that “the right of U.S.
citizens to vote cannot be denied or shortened. because of sex. In 1971, the 26th Amendment increased the right to vote for people 18 years of age or older. These latest changes, however, did not change the division by Congress. The Senate`s six-year term represented a compromise between constitutional legislators who wanted a strong and independent Senate and those who feared the possible tyranny of an aristocratic upper house isolated from public opinion. Although the six-year term has not been used in parliament, congress under the articles of confederation or in the upper houses of the states, these institutions have given participants in the Constitutional Convention an overview of the impact of the mandate on legislative bodies. While few delegates to the 1787 Convention wanted to emulate the lifetime terms of the House of Lords or the annual appointment of legislators by the Confederation to recall, the authors` reaction to these extremes helped formulate their arguments for and against long terms in the Senate. In its final form, the clause of the Constitution is deceptively simple.
“The Senate consists of two senators from each state” seems to be a single provision, the fixed number of senators per state. However, delegates only accepted this figure after dealing with a broader issue: legislative representation. Although representation proved to be the most controversial issue in the Convention, delegates determined the number of senators quickly and without controversy. Although England repealed the Parliament`s Residence Act in 1774, no delegate objected to a residency requirement for members of Congress. The qualification was first discussed on 6 August, when the Detailed Committee presented its draft constitution. Section 3 of Article 5 states: “Every member of the Senate is. . . at the time of his election, a resident of the State in which he is to be chosen. The founders set the conditions for ratifying the Constitution. They bypassed state lawmakers, arguing that their members would be reluctant to cede power to a national government. Instead, they called for special ratification conventions in each state.
Ratification by 9 of the 13 states was issued by the new government. But at the time, only 6 of the 13 states declared a pro-constitutional majority. Given these considerations, delegates had a limited choice in terms of the number of senators. During the Convention, they briefly discussed the advantages of two seats over three. Governor Morris explained that it took three senators per state to form an acceptable quorum, while other delegates felt that a third senator would be too expensive. On July 23, delegates filled the gap in the proposal proposed by Morris and Rufus King: “This representation in the second branch consists of _____ members from each state to vote per capita.” Only Pennsylvania voted for three senators. When the question turned to two, Maryland voted against the measure alone, not because of the number, but because Martin disagreed with the per capita vote that gave every senator and not every state a vote. The American Revolution was in part a competition for the definition of representation itself. In England, the House of Commons represented all British subjects, whether or not the House of Commons could vote for its members. In this sense, most people living in british-ruled areas – including North America – were only “virtually represented” in Parliament.
The American colonists, accustomed to controlling their local affairs in directly elected colonial parliaments, had no voice in parliament and did not appreciate the British policies imposed on them. So they rallied behind the now well-known motto: “No tax without representation!” After the war, the founders struggled to design a system of government to better represent the inhabitants of the new country than the British model that once ruled them. .
