"They only adopted the Constitution because the founders recognized that there existed a need for a small, but powerful, Federal Government, to provide for some basic, common things, like military and regulation of commerce among the states."
Well, the military was handled in common before the Constitution, at least as far as external threats (c.f. Continental Army). It was really more that by centralizing power, the southern plantation owners and northern merchants could force their preferred monetary policy on the agrarians, who were strong regionally, but lacked a national power base. Um, I mean, The Founding Fathers could provide for better regulation of commerce...
Note that I'm actually a huge fan of the founding fathers and the Constitution. But like most successful political efforts, theirs succeeded not only by being a good idea, but because it was good for people who were powerful, and the people it screwed were weak.
"...you -could- make the case, that all the Presidents are unconstitutional"
No you couldn't. Actions and laws can be unconstitutional; Presidents cannot. Presidents can show more or less respect for the Constitution. If you'd like to argue other Presidents have had as little respect for the Constitution as this one, you've got a tough sell.
You could even argue the founders intended the President to be a temporary but largely unfettered King. It's a pretty convincing argument as long as you heavily skew your interpretation of Hamiltons views, and steadfastly ignore every other founder.
"...really have to square Dick Cheney's view of the Presidency as Hamiltonian, more than anything else."
More than "dangerous to the very fabric of our society"? I think not.
Legal maters that are not clear generate court cases. It took until 1878 for anyone to question the obvious fact that mail was "papers"; at which point the court unanimously smacked them down.
My apologies. Upon re-reading, I realize I entirely misunderstood your post. You were arguing against removing the words, which is mildly baffling, as I never suggested doing so in the first place. But OK, yes: The quote is excellent as it is. Another point upon which we agree.
I believe the extra words do nothing but reinforce Franklin's point. Is it your assertion that capable writers necessarily write as few words as possible? That they never provide justification for their assertions?
In any case, Franklin is being remarkably concise here. He advises the reader not to trade liberty for security, and, with the addition of mere two adjectives, forcefully explains why: Because liberty is essential, while security is temporary.
But seriously, have you read anything by Franklin longer than a sentence? Do you really doubt he would not support the most lofty, far-reaching interpretation of this maxim possible? To call the man an idealist is the understatement of two centuries. The suggestion that he was trying to define which liberties one ought to give up in exchange for which sort of security is just laughable.
No, I am disagreeing. I believe Franklin clearly meant "essential" to describe the nature of "liberty". For your interpretation to make sense, he would have had to say "an essential liberty" (as you do), or more likely "essential liberties". He didn't. He said "essential liberty" as a non-specific singular, and not by accident.
If you read a significant amount of Franklins writing you'll note that grammar is not his weak suit. Also, there is no need to rely on detailed parsing of this one sentence. While that quote puts it particularly poetically, the idea I claim he expresses through it is also expressed about five billion other ways throughout his work.
"Franklin was undoubtedly referring to basic liberties provided by the constitution."
Undoubtedly? Years before that list was written? Really? I had no idea. He doesn't mention his psychic abilities in his autobiography.
Of course not, the creators of FISA (in Congress and the Carter administration) recognized the need for judicial oversight despite the special requirements of intelligence gathering. Wisely maintaining essential restraints on executive power... no, I can't imagine anyone would confuse that sort of thing with the Bush administration.
But, yeah, it's hard to see why Bush should come in for a particular blame on this. All he did was put in place policies and programs that clearly subvert the intent of the law. Well, that, and argued in favor of those policies before this court that now has issued a decision supporting them. I mean, beyond that he didn't have anything to do with this. Well, unless you count appointing all the judges in question. Um, yeah...
You know the "F" is for Foreign? It has never had jurisdiction over domestic communication.
"Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but this really only means they don't need a warrant immediately, they will still have to go through FISA to get a longer term warrant."
I hearby correct you, for you are wrong. The "warrantless" program is about not getting a warrant ever. Getting a warrant a few days after you start listening is the procedure they would have us believe was not fast enough, hence the need for the "warrantless" program.
"A communication coming in abroad is no different than a package. The government has *always* had a right to intercept foreign shipments and communications."
According to whom?
"The 4th applies to American citizens *in* America not aything about people who are not Americans or persons (be they American or not) overseas."
Really? Which part of the fourth amendment says any of that? Could you quote the passage? I know, I'll help you out; here's the 4th amendment in it's entirety:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
"Citizen", "overseas", "American"... I don't see those words. Could you point them out for me? Or are you talking out your ass?
Yeah, I thought that one was really cool when I heard it was in trials, and expected to be on sale soon. They had a bunch of awkwardly-cropped photos hiding the crane they use for "flight" tests. There was a whole big writeup in Popular Mechanics... 20 years ago.
To be really fair, I blame the idiot engineer who designed the VCR/Microwave/whatever to blink 12 in any circumstance. That's a dumb thing for it to do, regardless of user action.
With you on everything but Science. The greeks Science sucked. They never developed the basic concept: theories rigorously stated and confirmed by observations, so that others don't have to take your word for it.
Aristotle said nothing can move without pushing against something immovable. Everyone said, gee, Atistotle is smart, didn't think too hard about birds, and went with it for hundreds of years. Hero of Alexandria built his steam engine to show that Aristotle was wrong, by neither he nor anyone else came up with a workable theory of motion before Newton.
"So happy accident or not it's a very stable solution to a tricky optimization problem."
No it isn't. It disenfranchises the vast swaths of voters who live in non-battleground states. It occasionally (and mostly randomly) gives the victory in a close election to the guy who got less votes. It does nothing to protect the rights of smaller states under modern demographics realities.
Yes, it was a wonderful way to keep the poor farmers from taking power from the wealthy merchants and plantation owners who came up with the idea, while still calling themselves a democracy. It solved that trick optimization problem perfectly.
You can argue if that was a good thing in the first place. But positive effects over a straight popular vote in the last 150 years? I don't see it.
"You mention a 'crude compromise' as if it were a bad thing. Letting people hammer out their differences by ramshackle compromises is preferable to any other system of government that I can think of."
I absolutely agree. My objection is only to people amusing the ramshackle compromises that let them put together a narrow majority in the late 1700s continue to be great ideas today.
"Although our own founding fathers used the term democracy to describe the system, they knew they were abusing it. We are not a democracy, but a republic. At risk of being pedantic, we are actually a democracy within a republic, meaning that we have legislators vote in our place, but we at least get to elect the legislators. (At least in most cases -- the Illinois debacle being a glaring exception.)"
Bah! Consult your OED. "Democracy" included representative democracy then as much as it does now. And Republic just means you don't have a King: We're a Republic, China is, Canada isn't.
"Although recent elections have been close in both popular and electoral college terms, one interesting effect (some would say advantage) of the current system is that it can create an impression of an overwhelming mandate for the victor. For example, IIRC, Mondale carried only a single state out of 50, which pretty much gave Reagan enormous honeymoon capital."
You're saying, by occasionally handing victory to the guy who got less votes, and always making a vast number of voters irrelevant, we create a false impression of the peoples will. I can see how one might call that an advantage if they were absolutely desperate to declare the electoral college a good idea, but come on; that's just stupid.
"First of all, they campaign all over the nation. Maybe AK and HI get shafted, but between primaries and all the traveling, even CA gets visits (if for no other reason, than to do inteviews)."
CA gets visits for fundraising. Either of the candidates in the last general election trying to win votes in CA would have been idiotic, and neither were idiots.
"would we allow the peaceful exit of small states that would rather not be governed by LA and NYC?"
If you read the post you were replying to: If the small states are concerned about being dominated by the big ones, it's too late. The electoral college does jack for them.
I can and do hold candidates to high standards. I carefully evaluate who I think will best represent me each time an election comes around. And it's pointless. There has not, in my life as a voter, ever been any doubt about which candidate was going to get 100% of the electoral votes from my state.
It's not that the mechanism is amazing by modern standards that is interesting. It's not not even that the mechanism must have been amazing by the standards of the time when it was manufatured. It's that the mechanism is amazing by the standards of at least 1000 years after it was apparently manufactured. Historians find stuff like that interesting; sorry you're not impressed.
"I honestly know nothing about what is happening in Canada."
Short form: The Prime Minister wanted to suspend parliament to prevent them from voting to remove him from office. The dispute ultimately had to be settled... by Queen Elizabeth II.
"The president today is very much the most powerful and direct representative of the people, but is this a reason to ditch the EC? No, quite the opposite--the stronger the office of the president gets, the more important it is to maintain some abstraction between that office and the mob of direct democracy."
The stronger the president gets, the more important he not be accountable to the people? The EC doesn't provide any significant wisdom on top of the will of the people and the election of the president, assuming you think that would be a good thing. It adds random noise.
"This is a common view of people who really only pay attention to the end of elections, where differences are magnified. But by the time a candidate has won a major party primary, all the truly niche or narrowly focused candidates have been weeded out. For example Ron Paul, for all his narrow fanatical support, did not even come close to winning his primary or the general election."
Gee, I though I was paying attention quite a while ago; guess not, dopey me. In any case, yours is the view of someone not paying attention to what the conversation is about. Of course a candidate must appeal to a broad number of people to win election. The question at hand is how the use of the EC vs a straight popular vote changes the nature of the group they must appeal to. Does it require they appeal to a broader set thatn a popular vote would? Of course not. Assuming we're not changing the primary system (though we should), the main difference the EC makes is that most states voters are irrelevant in the general election.
"John McCain sought to distinguish himself from Obama by exploiting narrow issues, but that was AFTER he had already established himself as the Republican with the broadest national base of support."
The candidate with the broadest base of support amongst active Republican party members in states holding early primaries. He was the presumptive nominee long before most voters had any chance to say anything about it.
If I cared much about small state bias, absolutely. but, eh, worse things have happened. People living in Wyoming might have a better chance of a Senator caring what they think, and in some theoretical sense their vote counts a tiny bit more for President. I don't really object to that strongly enough to get too excited.
I object to people talking about it as an expression of some beautiful and just truth that the founders perceived, wisely disregarding the seemingly simple but naive view that a popular vote would be more fair.
That reflects a troubling lack of critical thinking. Of course a straight popular vote would be more fair. Of course the current system is a strange accident of history based on short term political calculations that ceased to apply long before the civil war. To suggest otherwise is patently ridiculous, yet every grade school civics teacher does, and most of their better students go on to become adults who spout it back authoritatively.
But as government procedures driven by weird historical artifacts go, it's not so bad. I mean, the Parliament of Canada just got suspended by the authority of the Queen of England. I'll take the Electoral College.
If I'm going to care, it's not small-state bias that's the problem, it's winner-take-all. While a Wyoming voter might theoretically have more power than a California one, in reality, neither has any power at all.
"That's the mostly revisionist version of the nature of the compromise."
I'd prefer to say a grossly over-simplified version:) The economics of the time put the interests of the wealthy slave plantation farmers of the south more in line with the wealthy urban merchants, so they cut a deal. The poorer family-farm types of the North got left out in the cold. (To say nothing of non-landowners, women and the slaves themselves, of course. The land-but-not slave owning farmers actually had some political power to be worth uniting against.)
Anyhow, in my opinion, the by-population-plus-2 formula adds a bit of wackiness to a system that would be best without it, but is not that terrible. Compare, for example, the wacky-accident-of-history based procedures determining the government of Canada in recent weeks.
It's the statewide winner-take-all aspect that really produces injustice. I've voted for President half a dozen times and only in this last election could you reasonably say there was any chance my vote would make any difference. Several of those elections were quite close, but if you didn't live in Florida or Ohio, your vote wasn't significant.
Boycott, not blockade. i.e. the other states stopped trading with them, but didn't do anything to prevent them trading with other countries. Fairly serious economic sanctions in any case, but not military force.
The Constitution had been enacted with 4 states as holdouts, but the other 3 ratified it before it actually took effect. The agrarian party in Rhode Island wanted a liberal monetary policy to benefit farmers, and was concerned that with a stronger federal government, the other states would push the state around economically. Which the other states immediately did. This disagreement between over economics, and the (armed) conflict it had already inspired (Shay's Rebellion) was a major impetus for the constitutional convention in the first place.
So my previous post might have more accurately described the Electoral College as a crude compromise to get Delaware and Georgia on board. Rhode Island wasn't going to be since hadn't even sent anyone to the convention, so they needed the critical mass to steamroller them into it regardless.
If realizing the Constitution is based on a fair bit of crude political deal making disturbs anyone, consider it an improvement on raising a private militia and shooting each other. Because that's what it was (and is). I'm a reasonably big fan of the US Constitution, but that's not because it's perfect. It doesn't have to be to be a lot better than the alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
"They only adopted the Constitution because the founders recognized that there existed a need for a small, but powerful, Federal Government, to provide for some basic, common things, like military and regulation of commerce among the states."
Well, the military was handled in common before the Constitution, at least as far as external threats (c.f. Continental Army). It was really more that by centralizing power, the southern plantation owners and northern merchants could force their preferred monetary policy on the agrarians, who were strong regionally, but lacked a national power base. Um, I mean, The Founding Fathers could provide for better regulation of commerce...
Note that I'm actually a huge fan of the founding fathers and the Constitution. But like most successful political efforts, theirs succeeded not only by being a good idea, but because it was good for people who were powerful, and the people it screwed were weak.
"...you -could- make the case, that all the Presidents are unconstitutional"
No you couldn't. Actions and laws can be unconstitutional; Presidents cannot. Presidents can show more or less respect for the Constitution. If you'd like to argue other Presidents have had as little respect for the Constitution as this one, you've got a tough sell.
You could even argue the founders intended the President to be a temporary but largely unfettered King. It's a pretty convincing argument as long as you heavily skew your interpretation of Hamiltons views, and steadfastly ignore every other founder.
"...really have to square Dick Cheney's view of the Presidency as Hamiltonian, more than anything else."
More than "dangerous to the very fabric of our society"? I think not.
Legal maters that are not clear generate court cases. It took until 1878 for anyone to question the obvious fact that mail was "papers"; at which point the court unanimously smacked them down.
If while on vacation, some guy says you did those things, would you like the chance to say they had the wrong guy?
My apologies. Upon re-reading, I realize I entirely misunderstood your post. You were arguing against removing the words, which is mildly baffling, as I never suggested doing so in the first place. But OK, yes: The quote is excellent as it is. Another point upon which we agree.
I believe the extra words do nothing but reinforce Franklin's point. Is it your assertion that capable writers necessarily write as few words as possible? That they never provide justification for their assertions?
In any case, Franklin is being remarkably concise here. He advises the reader not to trade liberty for security, and, with the addition of mere two adjectives, forcefully explains why: Because liberty is essential, while security is temporary.
But seriously, have you read anything by Franklin longer than a sentence? Do you really doubt he would not support the most lofty, far-reaching interpretation of this maxim possible? To call the man an idealist is the understatement of two centuries. The suggestion that he was trying to define which liberties one ought to give up in exchange for which sort of security is just laughable.
"You are still misquoting"
No, I am disagreeing. I believe Franklin clearly meant "essential" to describe the nature of "liberty". For your interpretation to make sense, he would have had to say "an essential liberty" (as you do), or more likely "essential liberties". He didn't. He said "essential liberty" as a non-specific singular, and not by accident.
If you read a significant amount of Franklins writing you'll note that grammar is not his weak suit. Also, there is no need to rely on detailed parsing of this one sentence. While that quote puts it particularly poetically, the idea I claim he expresses through it is also expressed about five billion other ways throughout his work.
"Franklin was undoubtedly referring to basic liberties provided by the constitution."
Undoubtedly? Years before that list was written? Really? I had no idea. He doesn't mention his psychic abilities in his autobiography.
"surely nobody believes that Bush created FISA"
Of course not, the creators of FISA (in Congress and the Carter administration) recognized the need for judicial oversight despite the special requirements of intelligence gathering. Wisely maintaining essential restraints on executive power... no, I can't imagine anyone would confuse that sort of thing with the Bush administration.
But, yeah, it's hard to see why Bush should come in for a particular blame on this. All he did was put in place policies and programs that clearly subvert the intent of the law. Well, that, and argued in favor of those policies before this court that now has issued a decision supporting them. I mean, beyond that he didn't have anything to do with this. Well, unless you count appointing all the judges in question. Um, yeah...
Um, no.
"FISA is still valid for domestic communication"
You know the "F" is for Foreign? It has never had jurisdiction over domestic communication.
"Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but this really only means they don't need a warrant immediately, they will still have to go through FISA to get a longer term warrant."
I hearby correct you, for you are wrong. The "warrantless" program is about not getting a warrant ever. Getting a warrant a few days after you start listening is the procedure they would have us believe was not fast enough, hence the need for the "warrantless" program.
"A communication coming in abroad is no different than a package. The government has *always* had a right to intercept foreign shipments and communications."
According to whom?
"The 4th applies to American citizens *in* America not aything about people who are not Americans or persons (be they American or not) overseas."
Really? Which part of the fourth amendment says any of that? Could you quote the passage? I know, I'll help you out; here's the 4th amendment in it's entirety:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
"Citizen", "overseas", "American"... I don't see those words. Could you point them out for me? Or are you talking out your ass?
"These adjectives change the meaning of the quote entirely."
On the contrary, those adjectives only emphasize why the quote is true.
Unless you believe liberty is sometimes inessential or security is ever anything but temporary.
Yes, that's why small planes have been banned.
Yeah, I thought that one was really cool when I heard it was in trials, and expected to be on sale soon. They had a bunch of awkwardly-cropped photos hiding the crane they use for "flight" tests. There was a whole big writeup in Popular Mechanics... 20 years ago.
Moller is a bad joke.
To be really fair, I blame the idiot engineer who designed the VCR/Microwave/whatever to blink 12 in any circumstance. That's a dumb thing for it to do, regardless of user action.
With you on everything but Science. The greeks Science sucked. They never developed the basic concept: theories rigorously stated and confirmed by observations, so that others don't have to take your word for it.
Aristotle said nothing can move without pushing against something immovable. Everyone said, gee, Atistotle is smart, didn't think too hard about birds, and went with it for hundreds of years. Hero of Alexandria built his steam engine to show that Aristotle was wrong, by neither he nor anyone else came up with a workable theory of motion before Newton.
Not that Stephenson invented the dead-man switch, but Snow Crash was 1992
"So happy accident or not it's a very stable solution to a tricky optimization problem."
No it isn't. It disenfranchises the vast swaths of voters who live in non-battleground states. It occasionally (and mostly randomly) gives the victory in a close election to the guy who got less votes. It does nothing to protect the rights of smaller states under modern demographics realities.
Yes, it was a wonderful way to keep the poor farmers from taking power from the wealthy merchants and plantation owners who came up with the idea, while still calling themselves a democracy. It solved that trick optimization problem perfectly.
You can argue if that was a good thing in the first place. But positive effects over a straight popular vote in the last 150 years? I don't see it.
"You mention a 'crude compromise' as if it were a bad thing. Letting people hammer out their differences by ramshackle compromises is preferable to any other system of government that I can think of."
I absolutely agree. My objection is only to people amusing the ramshackle compromises that let them put together a narrow majority in the late 1700s continue to be great ideas today.
"Although our own founding fathers used the term democracy to describe the system, they knew they were abusing it. We are not a democracy, but a republic. At risk of being pedantic, we are actually a democracy within a republic, meaning that we have legislators vote in our place, but we at least get to elect the legislators. (At least in most cases -- the Illinois debacle being a glaring exception.)"
Bah! Consult your OED. "Democracy" included representative democracy then as much as it does now. And Republic just means you don't have a King: We're a Republic, China is, Canada isn't.
"Although recent elections have been close in both popular and electoral college terms, one interesting effect (some would say advantage) of the current system is that it can create an impression of an overwhelming mandate for the victor. For example, IIRC, Mondale carried only a single state out of 50, which pretty much gave Reagan enormous honeymoon capital."
You're saying, by occasionally handing victory to the guy who got less votes, and always making a vast number of voters irrelevant, we create a false impression of the peoples will. I can see how one might call that an advantage if they were absolutely desperate to declare the electoral college a good idea, but come on; that's just stupid.
"First of all, they campaign all over the nation. Maybe AK and HI get shafted, but between primaries and all the traveling, even CA gets visits (if for no other reason, than to do inteviews)."
CA gets visits for fundraising. Either of the candidates in the last general election trying to win votes in CA would have been idiotic, and neither were idiots.
"would we allow the peaceful exit of small states that would rather not be governed by LA and NYC?"
If you read the post you were replying to: If the small states are concerned about being dominated by the big ones, it's too late. The electoral college does jack for them.
I can and do hold candidates to high standards. I carefully evaluate who I think will best represent me each time an election comes around. And it's pointless. There has not, in my life as a voter, ever been any doubt about which candidate was going to get 100% of the electoral votes from my state.
It's not that the mechanism is amazing by modern standards that is interesting. It's not not even that the mechanism must have been amazing by the standards of the time when it was manufatured. It's that the mechanism is amazing by the standards of at least 1000 years after it was apparently manufactured. Historians find stuff like that interesting; sorry you're not impressed.
"I honestly know nothing about what is happening in Canada."
Short form: The Prime Minister wanted to suspend parliament to prevent them from voting to remove him from office. The dispute ultimately had to be settled... by Queen Elizabeth II.
"The president today is very much the most powerful and direct representative of the people, but is this a reason to ditch the EC? No, quite the opposite--the stronger the office of the president gets, the more important it is to maintain some abstraction between that office and the mob of direct democracy."
The stronger the president gets, the more important he not be accountable to the people? The EC doesn't provide any significant wisdom on top of the will of the people and the election of the president, assuming you think that would be a good thing. It adds random noise.
"This is a common view of people who really only pay attention to the end of elections, where differences are magnified. But by the time a candidate has won a major party primary, all the truly niche or narrowly focused candidates have been weeded out. For example Ron Paul, for all his narrow fanatical support, did not even come close to winning his primary or the general election."
Gee, I though I was paying attention quite a while ago; guess not, dopey me. In any case, yours is the view of someone not paying attention to what the conversation is about. Of course a candidate must appeal to a broad number of people to win election. The question at hand is how the use of the EC vs a straight popular vote changes the nature of the group they must appeal to. Does it require they appeal to a broader set thatn a popular vote would? Of course not. Assuming we're not changing the primary system (though we should), the main difference the EC makes is that most states voters are irrelevant in the general election.
"John McCain sought to distinguish himself from Obama by exploiting narrow issues, but that was AFTER he had already established himself as the Republican with the broadest national base of support."
The candidate with the broadest base of support amongst active Republican party members in states holding early primaries. He was the presumptive nominee long before most voters had any chance to say anything about it.
If I cared much about small state bias, absolutely. but, eh, worse things have happened. People living in Wyoming might have a better chance of a Senator caring what they think, and in some theoretical sense their vote counts a tiny bit more for President. I don't really object to that strongly enough to get too excited.
I object to people talking about it as an expression of some beautiful and just truth that the founders perceived, wisely disregarding the seemingly simple but naive view that a popular vote would be more fair.
That reflects a troubling lack of critical thinking. Of course a straight popular vote would be more fair. Of course the current system is a strange accident of history based on short term political calculations that ceased to apply long before the civil war. To suggest otherwise is patently ridiculous, yet every grade school civics teacher does, and most of their better students go on to become adults who spout it back authoritatively.
But as government procedures driven by weird historical artifacts go, it's not so bad. I mean, the Parliament of Canada just got suspended by the authority of the Queen of England. I'll take the Electoral College.
If I'm going to care, it's not small-state bias that's the problem, it's winner-take-all. While a Wyoming voter might theoretically have more power than a California one, in reality, neither has any power at all.
"That's the mostly revisionist version of the nature of the compromise."
:) The economics of the time put the interests of the wealthy slave plantation farmers of the south more in line with the wealthy urban merchants, so they cut a deal. The poorer family-farm types of the North got left out in the cold. (To say nothing of non-landowners, women and the slaves themselves, of course. The land-but-not slave owning farmers actually had some political power to be worth uniting against.)
I'd prefer to say a grossly over-simplified version
Anyhow, in my opinion, the by-population-plus-2 formula adds a bit of wackiness to a system that would be best without it, but is not that terrible. Compare, for example, the wacky-accident-of-history based procedures determining the government of Canada in recent weeks.
It's the statewide winner-take-all aspect that really produces injustice. I've voted for President half a dozen times and only in this last election could you reasonably say there was any chance my vote would make any difference. Several of those elections were quite close, but if you didn't live in Florida or Ohio, your vote wasn't significant.
Boycott, not blockade. i.e. the other states stopped trading with them, but didn't do anything to prevent them trading with other countries. Fairly serious economic sanctions in any case, but not military force.
The Constitution had been enacted with 4 states as holdouts, but the other 3 ratified it before it actually took effect. The agrarian party in Rhode Island wanted a liberal monetary policy to benefit farmers, and was concerned that with a stronger federal government, the other states would push the state around economically. Which the other states immediately did. This disagreement between over economics, and the (armed) conflict it had already inspired (Shay's Rebellion) was a major impetus for the constitutional convention in the first place.
So my previous post might have more accurately described the Electoral College as a crude compromise to get Delaware and Georgia on board. Rhode Island wasn't going to be since hadn't even sent anyone to the convention, so they needed the critical mass to steamroller them into it regardless.
If realizing the Constitution is based on a fair bit of crude political deal making disturbs anyone, consider it an improvement on raising a private militia and shooting each other. Because that's what it was (and is). I'm a reasonably big fan of the US Constitution, but that's not because it's perfect. It doesn't have to be to be a lot better than the alternative.
If there is no government mandate to enforce property rights, what are these "courts" are you talking about?