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  • Essay / A Comparison Between the Virginia Plan and the Articles of Confederation

    US Constitution Vs. Map VirginiaThe United States of America has existed for almost 250 years. We are still a very young country compared to Italy, Spain and many other countries. The reason this is so important is because the decisions we make to manage and shape our young country are crucial to whether or not we will be able to exist for tens of thousands of years. There is no perfect system for governing a country, but we can try to get closer. The Virginia Plan was a rushed idea aimed at desperately replacing the Articles of Confederation, which were far worse than the form of government we have today. The Virginia Plan is neither good nor bad, but rather a draft of a final document. The majority of the Virginia Plan is closely tied to the Constitution, but the plan itself would not provide the same benefits to the states or citizens of the United States. Additionally, constraints would be placed on citizens of small states if we had ratified Virginia's plan. The plan might have given us fewer veto points, but overall the critic is wrong because we would not have essential elements of our government and way of life that we have today, which include Constitution, the Senate, the Electoral College and our constitutional rights. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Virginia Plan was a step in the right direction by creating a bicameral legislative system. This was a big step forward from the unicameral parliamentary system that the Articles of Confederation had. The Virginia plan had two chambers, a lower chamber and an upper chamber. Each had their representation based on the state's population. Citizens elect the lower house and representatives of the lower house elect the upper house. Dahl states: “The primary reason, perhaps the only reason, that second chambers exist in all federal systems is to preserve and protect unequal representation. That is, they exist primarily to ensure that representatives of small units cannot be easily outvoted by representatives of large states” (47). What Dahl asserts may be problematic in this case because, if each chamber is based on the population of each state, there will be unequal representation between small states and large states. It allows large states to have a majority and unified control in the lower house; however, this is unfair to small states because it diminishes the impact of their voice. Since the lower house elects the upper house, there will be a high risk of corruption because it is not the citizens who choose the upper house and also because there will be more representatives from large states in the upper house. part of the Connecticut Compromise. It gave larger states the House of Representatives and smaller states the Senate, where states had the same number of seats regardless of their population (Connecticut Humanities, 1). Dahl says that one reason the Constitution is undemocratic is that "the senators were to be chosen not by the people but by the state legislatures,...this would help ensure that the senators would be less responsive to popular majorities and perhaps be more sensitive to needs. owners” (17). Even though senators were not directly chosen by the people during the country's first hundred and twenty-five years under the Constitution (The US National Archive and Records Administration, 1), we eventually got the Seventeenth Amendmentwhich allows citizens to directly elect senators. Since 1913, citizens could vote for senators, and this had to happen because, as the United States National Archive and Records Administration states, "several state legislatures have been deadlocked over the election of senators, which led to vacancies in the Senate that lasted for months and even years. In other cases, political machines took control of state legislatures and senators elected with their support were removed from office and considered puppets” (The US National Archive and Records Administration, 1). The Senate was created because small states feared not being heard and being underrepresented. The Constitution is an amazing document that has governed how we have governed our country for the past two and a half centuries. He introduced the citizens of the United States to the Bill of Rights, which gives us our constitutional rights (i.e. freedom of speech, press, religion). The Constitution also ended the coercion imposed on small states by creating the Senate, which gave the fifty states two senators to represent their state. It is more democratic than the Virginia plan because citizens can vote for both houses, not just the lower house. Despite all the great things that the Constitution has brought us, it is not yet a perfect system, but it must be recognized as the best plan that we have decided to ratify. One of the main flaws of the Constitution is the variable number of veto points. James Madison states that if there are more veto points, it increases the chances of breaking up major factions and protecting minority rights (Federalist Paper #10). . Factions are groups of people who come together to promote and protect their individual economic interests and political views according to Madison (Federalist Paper #10). Just because there are large factions that seem to want to work together to achieve their group's goal doesn't mean they will all try equally hard. As Olson likes to say, "even if all individuals in a large group are rational and self-interested, and would benefit if, as a group, they acted to achieve their common interest or goal, they would not act voluntarily to do so ". achieve this common or group interest” (Olson, 2). They also have the "free rider" problem which harms factions since most members leave the work to other members, especially in larger factions (Olson, 5). Having more veto points harms the development of our country by making it more difficult to pass laws. Our nation is the only one among twenty-three long-standing democracies to have four veto points (Stepan and Linz, 844). It's bad because we have problems affecting our nation and it's difficult for representatives to agree with the president and senators to resolve them. For example, our healthcare system is not the best it could be because, compared to other countries with fewer veto points, the United States has a lower life expectancy and has the most health spending (Lesson 1, slide 5). We also have major problems with mass incarceration (Alexander, The New Jim Crow), our education system (Lynch, 1), and income inequality (Lesson 1, slide 2). Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a custom template. article now from our expert writers.Get Custom Essay A system that helps every citizen and every state to have equal representation, which has no flaws and is fully accepted by all citizens of the.