Abstract

 The outcome of the recent presidential election is considered in the light of political thinking at time of the Constitutional Convention, the creation and role of the Electoral College, and the nature of the electorate today.  The proceedings of the Convention from Madison’s notes, make it clear that there was very little sentiment to elect the President by a direct vote of the people, nor was there any sentiment for a direct as contrasted with a representative democracy.  The Electoral College was created in part to balance the interests of large with small states, but arguably the most important reason was to avoid the direct popular election of the President.  In the recent election while Gore won a plurality of 500,000 votes out of 100 million votes cast, Bush won the electoral votes of 30 out of 50 states and a plurality of votes in 78% of the counties in the country. When the outcome of the election is examined in the light of the principles of a representative democracy, classical liberalism as described by Hayek over 50 years ago and classical republicanism as put forth from Spain with some passion by Ortega y Gasset 70 years ago, it is argued that now President George W. Bush indeed has a strong  mandate to govern.
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Introduction

 “I give you a Republic if you can keep it”. With these words Ben Franklin famously is quoted as issuing a challenge to his and future generations.  This past presidential election should give us pause to consider what a Republic is, how it is distinguished from the fraudulent “Democratic Republics” in the Third World, and encourage us to engage in serious introspection on why the United States Constitution, based as it is on 18th century ideas, is the greatest political document ever written.  This includes the provision to elect the President via an Electoral College,  described recently by the newly elected Senator from New York as an outmoded 18th century idea.  Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan ably disposed of such  comments by pointing out that our Constitution is the oldest written Constitution and that it established the most successful and longest lasting Constitutional Republic in the history of the world.  To repeat the apocryphal response to the King of England at the completion of the first America Cup race won by the United States “your Majesty, there is no second”, compared to our Constitution, there is no second, anywhere in the world..

The Election

 In the recent presidential election what finally happened is what had been feared and what had not happened for over a hundred years since  the now well known election of 1876 in which the candidates were Samuel Tilden, and Rutherford B. Hayes;  namely that the candidate who clearly and unambiguously won the popular vote lost the election, and to make matters worse by only three electoral votes.  In contrast, now President George Bush won the popular vote in 30 out of 50 States (60%) and in 2433 out of 3111 counties (78%).  A question then is who in fact  has the strongest mandate to govern this large geographically, economically, ethnically, and culturally diverse country; the elected George Bush or the loser Al Gore.  This essay will argue that the answer to this question is George W. Bush as determined by the electoral and not the popular vote.

 Gore’s support came almost exclusively from States in the Northeast, North Central and Western regions.  This doesn’t really tell the story, however, since he got his votes primarily in large and medium size cities in these regions.  In fact, without the strong pluralities coming out of the large cities Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Des Moines and Philadelphia, Gore would likely have lost all these States, i.e. Washington, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Pennsylvania.  According to the official election results posted by the New York State board of Elections, Gore came out of New York City with 1,628,427 votes compared to Bush’s 373,625 votes.  This means that outside the confines of this one city Gore’s national vote plurality instead of being five hundred thousand votes would morph into a seven hundred and fifty  thousand vote national plurality for Bush.  The prediction of Charles Pinkney in 1787 at the United States Constitutional Convention (1787) that several large States could combine to carry a candidate to victory has been reduced to one large city by itself since New York City alone gave Gore over a million vote plurality out of 100 million votes cast in the country.  The four large cities of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles gave Gore over a three million vote plurality, and one racial group alone, namely Blacks who represent approximately thirteen percent of the population gave Gore over a seven million vote plurality.

The Electorate

 National exit polls based on 13,131 respondents and published by CNN (2000)  provide further information on cultural and political divides in the electorate..  Gore received votes primarily from individuals who either hadn’t graduated from high school or who had post-graduate degrees, (i.e. college professors for example).  In contrast, Bush’s vote came primarily from individuals who had attended or graduated from college.  Gore’s vote came primarily from individuals earning less than fifty  thousand dollars a year with Bush voters primarily earning more than fifty  thousand dollars. Of Bush voters, 53% were married. Of Gore voters, 57% were not married.  Of Gore voters who were married, most did not have children.  So much for “soccer moms” being democratic voters.

 It is interesting that not only working class, but also upper class  individuals voted more for Gore, while  upper-middle and middle class individuals voted more for Bush.  Individuals who attended religious services at least weekly voted considerably more for Bush (59% to 39%),  while individuals who seldom or never attended voted more for Gore (56% to 39%)..  This helps to dramatize the cultural divide noted by Gertrude  Himmelfarb (1999) in her book One Nation, Two Cultures.   It is well publicized that there is a “Christian Right”, but less well appreciated is that there also is a “Christian Left”.The evangelical churches are fairly characterized as being part of  the “Christian right”.  The larger number of mainline protestant churches, indeed the National Council of churches and the World Council of Churches can  just as accurately be considered to be part of the “Christian left”.  There also is a secular left and  a secular right. From a world perspective during the 20th century, rule by the secular left under communism resulted in the death of 100 million people (Courtois et al 1999), while rule by the  secular right under Naziism and other right-wing governments, 30 million more were killed (Runnel, 1994)

 The “Christian Right” is alleged to be terribly narrow-minded, and intolerant to Catholics, Jews, and other religions. According to John McCain view, expressed during the South Carolina Republican primary, it is an evil influence and poses a significant threat to our freedoms. This wildly overstates the case.  Of course, the “Christian Right” is not a monolith, and opinions vary.  Bob Jones University represents a rather extreme part of the “Christian Right”.  Its views, posted apparently at one time on its web site accused the Catholic and Mormon churches of being cults.  It also apparently considered the Pope to be the anti-Christ.   On the other hand, there has been, at least until recently, one Catholic web site that held to the view that outside the true (i.e. Catholic) church there is no salvation. Few Protestants today share the view of Bob Jones University on Catholicism, and few Catholics share the view that Protestants are damned to go to hell.    The Catholic League for Religious Rights (1999),in its report on anti-Catholicism in the United States did not mention the Christian Right, nor were  Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell mentioned.. Those mentioned for their anti-Catholicism were on the secular left almost without exception. In its 2000 report, as in the earlier report none of the activist groups promoting anti-Catholicism were from the Christian right.  Most mentioned were pro-abortion groups and the ACLU.In the 2000 report,  the Catholic League did object to candidate Bush’s visit at Bob Jones University but accepted his apology.   William Bennett (1999), in his book Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, summarized abortion rates for 1996 by State.  There were eleven States and the District of Columbia that had abortion rates above the national average.  All except Florida gave their electoral votes to Gore.

The Constitution and the Electoral College

 The election of George Bush as President required the intervention of the Supreme Court of the United States to undo by a 7-2 vote what they determined to be the unconstitutional action of the Florida Supreme Court in denying equal protection under the 14th amendment to George Bush by  its having authorized selected vote counts in selected counties using highly variable and non-standard methods in counting ballots (U.S. Supreme court, 2000).  The Florida Supreme Court later acknowledged its poor judgment in considering the case on remand from the U. S. Supreme Court when it said on December 22nd: “Moreover, upon reflection, we conclude that the development of a specific, uniform standard  necessary to ensure equal application and to secure the fundamental right to vote throughout the State of Florida should be left to the body we believe best equipped to study and address it, the Legislature (Florida Supreme Court, 1999)”.

 The above events and the controversies which continue have focused considerable attention on the Electoral College and the reasons, or lack thereof, why it is part of our Constitution. Where did the political ideas and wisdom of the Founders come from?  They came from  John Locke and the English Revolution, Adam Smith, David Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment , and the French philosophes’ Voltaire and Rousseau among others.  These ideas were in the very air our Founders were breathing at the time.  For example, if we compare what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence with what Locke had written previously in his 2nd Treatise on Government we will  readily understand the  seminal influence Locke had on Jefferson and the events in 1776.

 The men who assembled in Philadelphia in May 1787 for the most part knew they wanted to replace the Articles of Confederation with something much better.  They wanted a republican form of government, specifically a Republic in the form of a representative but not a direct democracy.  They were well aware that the various States varied widely in size, population, wealth, commerce, economic power among other differences.  The Articles of Confederation gave each State one vote in Congress regardless of these differences.  They knew this wasn’t working very well but they also knew that a system that put the smaller state at a large disadvantage would not work well either.   The following discussion of the Constitutional Convention is taken directly from James Madison’s notes taken during the Convention (U.S. Constitutional Convention, 1893) and focuses on those discussions and votes that led to the procedure to elect the President of the United States.  For clarity and accuracy direct quotations from founding documents are used when appropriate.

 Preliminary organizational activities  took place on May 25th, at which time George Washington was elected unanimously to be the President of the Convention.  The main business of the convention was opened on May 29th by Edmund Randolph of Virginia.  After enumerating the defects of the Articles of Confederation, he introduced 15 resolutions, which became known as “The Virginia Plan”. Only number 7 concerns us here:

 7. “Resd. that a National Executive be instituted; to be chosen by the National Legislature for the term of   years, to receive punctually at stated times, a fixed compensation for the services rendered, in which no increase or diminution shall be made so as to affect the Magistracy, existing at the time of increase or diminution, and to be ineligible a second time; and that besides a general authority to execute the National laws, it ought to enjoy the Executive rights vested in Congress by  the Confederation”.

 On June 1st, resolution 7 was taken up by the convention.  James Wilson of Pennsylvania proposed that the National Executive be a single person, but a decision on this as well as on the mode of selection was postponed..  On June 2nd  Wilson made the following motion, to be substituted for the mode of election proposed by Mr. Randolph's   resolution:

  "that the Executive Magistracy shall be elected in the following manner: That; the States be divided into districts: & that the persons qualified to vote in each district for members of the first branch of the national Legislature elect members for their respective districts to be electors of the Executive magistracy, that the said Electors of the Executive magistracy meet at and they or any of them so met shall proceed to elect by ballot, but not out of their own body person in whom the Executive authority of  the national Government shall be vested".

 As it later turned out, this was close to what was agreed to two months later, but at this time and after discussion this motion was defeated by a 2-8 vote with only Pennsylvania and Maryland voting in the affirmative.  This was followed immediately by a vote in which electing the National Executive by the National Legislature was affirmed by an 8-2 vote with, again, Pennsylvania and Maryland casting the only negative votes.  The proposal that the National Executive be a single person was again proposed, this time by John Rutlidge and Charles Pinckney, but was vigorously opposed by Randolph.   The issue of a single National Executive was taken up again on June 4th at which time it was agreed to by a 7-3 vote, being opposed only by New York, Maryland and Delaware (Virginia divided in favor of the motion).  The method of electing the National Executive was returned to on June 9th when a proposal was made but unanimously rejected that the National Executive be elected by the Executives of the various States.

On June 13th, the Report of the Committee of whole (i.e. the entire Convention ) again proposed that the National Executive be chosen by the National legislature.  The Convention did not consider the issue again until a month later, on July 17th.  At this time Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania moved that “National Legislature” be replaced in the resolution by “citizens of the U.S”. Considerable discussion ensued but the motion failed on a 9-1 vote with only Pennsylvania voting in the affirmative. At this time the proposal that the National Executive be elected by the State Legislature was voted down by a 1-9 vote and the resolution to elect by the national Legislature was again re-affirmed this time unanimously.  Although unanimous, this vote hid real concerns which came to the surface when the issue of reappointment of the National Executive came up.  These were stated eloquently at the Convention by Madison when he argued that not only must the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government be separate, but “a dependence of the Executive on the Legislature, would render it the Executor as well as the maker of laws; & then according to the observation of Montesquieu, tyrannical laws may be made that they may be executed in a tyrannical manner”.

  These discussions continued through July 19th.  There was a general sense that re-appointing the Executive made sense but not if by the Legislature.   This resulted in a revisiting of the whole issue of how to elect the National Executive.   After considerable discussion it was agreed by an 8-2 vote that the National Executive be elected by Electors appointed by the State Legislatures.  There was no agreement on the ratio of Electors from the various States, but it was agreed that the Electors could not be members of the national Legislature, nor be officers of the U.S., nor could they be eligible to become the supreme magistracy.

 On Monday August 6th, the report of the Committee on Detail was presented to the Convention by John Rutlidge.  This was a first Draft of the Constitution .  Yet again the recommendation was to elect the National Executive, who would be a single person called President of the United States by the National Legislature.

 This left a number of important details still to be worked out.  On August 24th it was again moved , this time by Danl Carroll of Maryland to replace “by the Legislature” with “by the people.”  His motion went down by an 9-2 vote with even Maryland as a State voting against it. Gouv Morris moved that they Electors be chosen by the people in the various States.  This failed by a narrow 5-6 votes.  On August 31st “on motion of Mr. Sherman it was agreed “to refer such parts of the Constitution as have been postponed, and such parts of Reports as have not been acted on, to a Committee of a member from each State”; what became known as the “Committee of Eleven”.  On September 4th, David Brearly of New Jersey presented the report of this Committee to the Convention.  This report recommended the procedure of electing the President by an Electoral College essentially as it eventually was to be approved at the Convention and ratified by the states.

 There was considerable discussion and many votes taken in regard to this report.  Rutlidge tried to postpone discussion of the report but was defeated 2-8 on his motion.  On September 6th this procedure to elect the President was approved as slightly amended and except for a few final changes such as opening the ballots in the presence of both Houses of Congress instead of only the Senate is as it stands today in the Constitution (except, of course as modified by the XII amendment).

 The record is clear that the direct election of the President by popular vote, although brought up several times, never was supported by more than two States.  The only time that votes by the people in electing the President received significant support was the motion to have presidential Electors chosen “by the people of the several States”.  This is philosophically close to what we now do, but more about that later.  From the very beginning of the convention until near the end the natural inclination of those present was to have the National Executive elected by the National Legislature.  This is understandable and derives from the English parliamentary system they were well familiar with. Their intent was to establish a Republic.  A Republic, as defined by Madison in Federalist 39 is:    “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great  body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior,” in other words a representative form of government without a King.  In England, the Head of State is the King, but the head of Government is the Prime Minister.  The Founders were planning a National Executive that would be both.

 The decision to have the President elected by Electors in each State appointed “as its Legislature might direct” was a creative way to reduce but not eliminate the advantage a larger population, and indeed a larger economy would give to the larger States.  At the same time it corrected the existing situation under the Articles of Confederation where each State, regardless of size, had one vote in the Congress.   The definitive rejection of the election of the President by popular vote was based, however, on more than the large State-small State issue.   In essence, it was based on a understandable distrust of a direct or pure democracy, based on their experience and knowledge of history. This concern was stated very clearly during  the debates on July 17th by Charles Pinckney who said on July 17th : “An Election by the people being liable to the most obvious & striking objections. They will be led by a few active & designing men. The most populous States by combining in favor of the same individual will be able to carry their  points.”  .

 We also have some of Madison’s own words on this issue.  In Federalist 10 (Hamilton et al, 1961) he discusses his now well known concerns about “domestic faction.”  He recognized that although all are equal before the law:

 “The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different   interests and parties.”   Then later in the same article “From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.  Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.”

         In a letter to General Washington dated January 28, 1788,  Madison (1884) expressed his concern  that distrust of men of property or education was having an adverse effect in the States on ratifying the Constitution. To Jefferson he wrote on February 19, 1788 that although Massachusetts had ratified by a narrow 187-168 margin “the opposition was comprised primarily men sympathetic to Shay’s rebellion, as well as other ignorant and jealous men.”  Later, again to General Washington Madison wrote, in response to New Hampshire failing to adopt the constitution,“The opposition, I understand, is composed precisely of the same description of characters with that of Massachusetts, and stands contrasted to all the wealth, abilities and respectability of the State”.  In a letter to John Adams dated October 28, 1813 Jefferson wrote “For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men.  The grounds for this are virtue and talents” (Cappon, 1959).

Discussion

 Today, we have a teachable moment to help the public understand the wisdom of the founders in establishing an  Electoral College to elect the president, even if the outcome doesn’t always conform to the national popular vote. If one reads the objections to a direct democracy and the popular election of the President voiced at the time of the Constitutional Convention, they ring as true today as when they were expressed.  The founders had an excellent grasp of human nature.  While culture and many other things have changed in the last several hundred years there haven’t been enough generations or selection pressures to change the biological basis of human nature.

 Thomas Sowell (1987), in his seminal book Conflict of Visions writes that people in their world view can be divided, if not perfectly then broadly, into having one of two visions: unconstrained or constrained, as to many things including the nature of man.  In the unconstrained vision, exemplified in Sowell’s mind by William Godwin the untapped moral potential of human beings in unlimited and only requires correct societal and political arrangements to be realized.  In contrast Sowell lists Alexander Hamilton as exemplifying the constrained vision when he wrote “It is the lot of all human institutions, even those of the most perfect kind, to have defects as well as excellencies- ill as well as good propensities.  These result from the imperfections of the Institutor, Man.”  And Madison observed “if men were angels no government would be necessary.” .  These both are expressed views of men who had a constrained view of human nature in Sowell’s sense. This was also true for the others  present at the Founding of our Republic who also had a firm and  realistic understanding of human nature, and had, in the main, the constrained vision as just described.  This understanding on their part resulted in the greatest and most successful Constitutional Republic in the history of the world.  In contrast the men at the heart of the French revolution of 1789 had more of an unconstrained vision including equality of circumstances as well as equality before the law  which led ultimately to the Terror, Napoleon and four additional Republics following their glorious first..

 In 1932 the Spanish Republican Ortega y Gasset(1932) published his classic and prescient book Revolt of the Masses which is still in press and indeed, still under copyright.  He wrote the following:

 “To-day we are witnessing the triumphs of a hyperdemocracy in which the mass acts directly, outside the law, imposing its aspirations and its desires by means of material pressure. It is a false interpretation of the new situation to say that the mass has grown tired of politics and handed over the exercise of it to specialized persons. Quite the contrary. That was what happened previously; that was democracy. The mass took it for granted that after all, in spite of their defects and weaknesses, the minorities understood a little more of public problems than it did itself. Now, on the other hand, the mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the cafe. I doubt whether there have been other periods of history in which the multitude has come to govern more directly than in our own. That is why I speak of hyperdemocracy.”

  By the word “minority” Gasset meant “individuals or groups of individuals which are specially qualified” ,essentially the same as what  Madison meant as “men of property or education” in one letter, or men with the “wealth, abilities and respectability of the State” in another.  We have come much further down the road to “hyperdemocracy” than Gasset could have imagined as we take instant national polls on every issue, not just those up for a vote by the citizenry, but even those the responsibilities of our representatives in our representative democracy.

 Liberalism, as the word  is generally understood today, lost its way in the middle of the 19th century through the ideas of Marx and the rise of socialism.  Friedrich Hayek, a Nobel Laureate in Economics described the time between the Revolution of 1848 and 1948 as the century of socialism.  However it is now abundantly clear that socialism has failed spectactularly. What has taken its place is the rise of the Welfare State in which the social justice goals of socialism are sought through taxation, income redistribution and government regulation rather than through government ownership of the means of production and distribution.  These are, in the main, the goals of the Democratic Party today.  No one has expressed better both the idealism and yet the unintended consequences of this quest for social justice than the late Lionel Trilling, a man of the left when he said:

  “Some paradox of our natures leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion” (quoted in Himmelfarb, 1991).

   The fact of the matter is that the political left in the Western World, i.e. modern liberals in the United States and Social Democrats in Europe has been wrong in its views about  the major issues of governance and economics during the 20th century.  It was wrong about Socialism, Communism, a market economy, and the virtues of capitalism, free trade and free markets.  It was grievously wrong in defending Lenin, Stalin Mao, Castro and other Communists far too long and in attacking anti-Communists in the form of anti-anti-Communism.  It was wrong about the Soviet Union and China under Mao.  It was wrong in criticizing Reagan when he referred to the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire which it of course was, and is now freely acknowledged to have been, even by the Russians themselves.

 Perhaps a more significant divide today than party affiliation, however, is between those who, in the main, pay the taxes, and those who, in the main, are wards of or employees of the government, or dependent on the government for  important services.  It is clear that such individuals have vested interests to vote for a government that promises to maintain or expand these services and/or employment. Currently it would be fair to surmise that a strong majority of these people voted heavily for Al Gore .  What isn’t so clear is what percentage of the population of people absolutely dependent on the government it would take before the road to an ever expansive government bureaucracy would be foreordained and impossible to resist. Hayek (1960), in his book The Constitution of liberty described as quoted below .the danger of abandoning classical liberal principles and proceeding down the primrose path to dependency and the Welfare State.

 “The distinction, then, is that between the security of an equal minimum income for all and the security of a particular income that a person is thought to deserve.  The latter is closely related to the third  main ambition that inspires the welfare state: the desire to use the powers of government to insure a more even or more just distribution of goods.  Insofar as this means that the coercive powers of government are to be used to insure that particular people get particular things, it requires a kind of discrimination between, and  an unequal treatment of, different people which is irreconcilable with a free society.  This is the kind of welfare state that aims at ‘social justice’ and becomes ‘primarily a re-distributor of income.’  It is bound to lead back to socialism and its coercive and  essentially arbitrary methods”.

 In this connection and much earlier Gasset (1932) made the following prophetic comment:

 “For there is no doubt that the most radical division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves”.
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 In contrast to the period in which our Republic was founded, the voting franchise has become essentially universal, and we have moved in the direction of, but have by no means yet established, a direct democracy.  Senators are now elected by a popular vote as are most presidential electors.  We have instant national polls on every conceivable topics. In 1992 Ross Perot, a Presidential candidate proposed an “electronic town hall” where presumably he, as President, would take a major issue each week to the country and thereby get the responses of “the owners of the country-the people”.  This information, in Perot’s view when sorted by Congressional districts could give marching orders to Congress with “no ifs, ands and buts” as to what the people want.

 We as a people believe, as Abraham Lincoln at a time of national crisis put it so eloquently, in “a government of the people by the people and for the people”.   The question still before us, as it was at the Constitutional convention of 1787, is how is such a government, “so conceived and so dedicated” actually to govern.   Are the well founded concerns of Madison and other of the Founding Fathers about a direct democracy and the necessity to control the deleterious influences of factions still valid or have we simply outgrown them.

 Far from having outgrown these concerns about direct and now a poll driven democracy, the events of the last century have confirmed the wisdom of the Founders in setting up a representative democracy with a diffusion and separation of power, and checks and balances designed to control the mischievous effect of what Madison termed factions.  The concern about a tyranny of the majority is as valid a concern as a tyranny of the powerful and influential minority.  We move further down the road to a direct and poll driven democracy at our peril.
 

References

Bennett, William J. 1999.  The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators.  Waterbrook Press, Colorado Springs.

Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.  1999, 2000. Catholic Leagues 1999 and 2000 Reports on Anti-Catholicism.  New York

Cappon, Lester J. 1959.  The Adams-Jefferson Letters, vol. 2.  University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill

CNN.  2000 www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/epolls/US/P000.html
 

Courtois, Stephane;  Werth, Nicolas;  Panne’, Jean-Louis;  Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel  and Jean-Louis Margolin.  1999.  The Black Book of Communism.  Crime, Terror, Repression.  Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Florida Supreme Court. 2000.  Albert Gore and Joseph I. Lieberman, appellants vs. Katherine Harris, as Secretary, etc., et al., Appellees.  No. SC00-2431

Hamilton, Alexander, Madison, James, and John Jay. 1961 The Federalist Papers.  Penguin, N.Y.

Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1991.  Poverty and Compassion.  The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians  Knopf,  New York,

Himmelfarb, Gertrude 1999. One Nation, Two Cultures.  Knopf,  New York

Madison, James.  1884.  The James Madison Letters.  Townsend MacCoun, New York.

Ortega y Gasset, Jose. 1932.  The Revolt of the Masses.  Norton and Company, New York

Runnel, R.J. 1994.  Death By Government.  Transaction, New Brunswick.

Sowell, Thomas. 1987.  A Conflict of Visions.  Ideological Origins of Political Struggles,
William Morrow, New York

United States Constitutional Convention (1787).  1893.  Journal of the Federal Convention, kept by James Madison.  Scott Foresman and Co.

United States Supreme Court.  2000. George W. Bush et al., Petitioners v. Albert Gore Jr. et al.  December 12. On Writ of Certiorari to the Florida Supreme Court. no. 00-949,
531 U.S.___(2000)

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