Constitution – an elitist document for the wealthy?

The founders of our nation assembled in 1787 to revise the problematic and ineffectual the Articles of Confederation, which was created in fear of a tyrannical central government. However, they eventually scrapped the whole document and wrote the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation, unfortunately, became a threshold to a quasi mob rule. An example of this is the Shay’s Rebellion in which a group of armed farmers revolted because they were unwilling to pay taxes. To ending such incident, the founders thoroughly divide up the government into different levels through federalism, controlling and satisfying a variety of factions such as the farmers. Even though their intention was well grounded, the Constitution systematically became a tool for the wealthy to achieve their agenda. All three branches outlined in the Constitution favor the wealthy tremendously under the gilded pretense of preventing uprising against the government like the Shay’s rebellion by deliberating preventing the less wealthy from participating in the government. The poor, evidently, became an intended victim of a stronger government.
The founders wrote the legislative branch into the Constitutional design first, followed by the executive and judicial branch. The order of this outline suggested the idea of democracy. However, even the most popularly controlled branch was oligarchic in nature. In Section two of Article one, the members of the House of Representatives were designated to be chosen every two years. Such frequent elections, however, encouraged a game of money politics because politicians, in order to be reelected, needed a reliable source of support. Hence the so-called “parties,” a conglomerate of what Madison called factions with shared characteristics, were born. Election style evolved into a more money-oriented system. For example, there was no unbiased news source at that time. Politicians operated their own journalistic agencies to sway the public, which required a fair amount of money. During the period following the creation of a two party system, northern newspapers were generally Federalist, whereas southern and western newspapers were Republican. Alexander Hamilton founded the Gazette of America; Jefferson founded the National Gazette, which Hamilton called "an incendiary and pernicious publication." Both newspapers soon entered into a political tabloid war full of unsubstantiated partisan criticisms. Philip Freneau, the editor of the National Gazette “routinely attacked Hamilton.” Hamilton charged that the Gazette was "a news paper instituted by a public officer, and the Editor of it regularly pensioned with the public money” as a clerk for foreign languages.
Besides utilizing the newspapers as a source of political influence, politicians soon realized they needed advertisement; for they, inadvertently, became a product marketable only through strategic and resourceful advertisement. Another reason for more advertisement is that there was a population explosion. To reach out to the rapidly growing population, the politicians needed posters, campaign buttons, and possibly bribery. In a mayoral race in New York City around the1830s, as much as $22 was being paid to an undecided voter. The thirst for money gave birth to political machines, as well, which garnered support from the people through providing benefits and employments, but which also picked their own candidates. President Harry S. Truman was the product of party machine. He was a failed farmer and salesman before entering politics. He was supported by “the notorious political machine of Kansas City boss Thomas J. Pendergast,” who backed Truman’s senatorial election in 1934. Evidently, the candidates only represented the political machines to which they pledge loyalty but not the people. The emergence of political parties and machines occurred within a century after the Constitution was ratified.
The selection of Senators and the president was also oligarchic in nature. Senators were chosen by the state legislature; the presidents were chosen by the electors. The state legislature and the electors both acted as a buffer against a direct democracy. However, a buffer prevented the people from electing the best person they believed in for the position. Presently, 21 states allow electors to vote for whoever they want without regard to the public’s desire. And since the founding of our nation, 156 electors have not voted for the candidates for whom they were delegated to vote.
In addition, a federalist government encouraged a two party system that has survived since Washington was president. Article Two of the Constitution discusses how the president is elected in the Electoral College:
The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately [choose] by Ballot one of them for President.

Because a majority in the Electoral College is required to select the president, third and fourth parties can easily affect the election result by causing no majority in the Electoral College through garnering enough electoral votes. Then the decision would be up to the House of Representatives. However, every state has only one vote, making the election tremendously less of a democracy than of a republic. There is a large possibility that the candidate the majority wants may not become president. The 1824 election was an example of blatant corruption and betrayal of democratic principles by politicians. In this election, there were four major presidential candidates, Andrew Jackson, John Q. Adams, William Harris Crawford, and Henry Clay. Based on result, Jackson was, statistically speaking, the winner of the election because he the most popular and electoral support, with 41.3% of popular vote and 37.9% (99/261) of electoral votes, when the distant second, Adams, attained only 30.9% of popular vote and 32.2% (84/261) of electoral votes, followed respectively by Crawford and Clay. However, because a majority vote of 131 was required to win the electoral votes, the election decision was thrown to the House of Representatives. The Speaker of the House, at the time, was Henry Clay, whom Adams actively lobbied. Adams eventually won the presidency after Clay gave Adams his support, in exchange for a position as secretary of state, while Jackson lost the election even with the most popular and electoral support.
As a result, even though the Constitution did not explicitly provide provisions for establishing the winner-take-all system under which the party with the highest popular support in a state got all of the electoral votes in that state, this system emerged gradually to prevent the third party from creating a majority in the Electoral College. After the election of 1824, states passed laws imposing the winner-take-all system. This system certainly had its benefits, but it stripped the minority of a chance to be represented in the national level. Candidates who desired to win had to align themselves to a party or faced the dire consequence of losing. The minority needed to follow the rest of the party to have its opinion heard. For example, farmers could not have a candidate who was a farmer because farmers compose such a minority in each state that, given the winner-take-all system, the third party had no chance in electing its candidate nationally. However, in a two-party system the farmers, whichever party they belong to, are a minority. Therefore, that clause in the Constitution about having a majority in the Electoral College to elect a president practically created a two-party system in which minorities were not represented. To operate a big party required a large amount of money, which only wealthy interest groups could afford. The less wealthy people could not possibly contribute as much as the wealthy people. Therefore, they became frustrated by the party platform that did not honor their interests and decided not to vote during election, abandoning their last weapon to the wealthy people. The truth was that they became expendable in the two-party system.
Moreover, the judicial system was not alleviating the situation either. The Congress was authorized to create however many courts below the Supreme Court it saw fit. Therefore, under the premise of federalism, the judicial system was divided into different levels, each with its own jurisdiction, and many cases started at the lowest court. Therefore, the legal process became a strenuous crusade. Generally, lawyers cost a fair amount of money, and since the legal process was lengthy, lawyers were not very affordable for poor people. The Constitution also did not have any provision protecting the poor, such as giving them legal counsels in court, both in civil and criminal cases. This proved to be a disadvantage to the poor. In many cases, even though the poor were taken advantage of, they decided not to sue the aggressors because going to court was unaffordable, and hence, useless. The result was stunning, as “90% of lawyers are serving 10% of interest” because of the length of a trial, a claim that President Carter charged in 1978. Here is the excerpt of his speech to the Los Angeles Bar Association:
On the last day of the Administration of Lyndon Johnson, the government filed an anti-trust suit against a major computer company. Nine years have passed; three new presidential administrations have taken office; hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on legal fees. But still the trial is not nearly over, and it has been speculated that the judge who has supervised it for the last nine years may die or retire before the trial is completed, in which case it would start all over again.

Even a trial initiated by the government turned out to be a lengthy battle with no end in sight. To solve the problem, President Carter suggested, “We must remove the economic barriers to justice. When a poor family is cheated by a merchant, unfairly threatened with eviction, falsely accused of a crime, it can very rarely take advantage of the skilled legal talent at reasonable rates.” However, since the lawyers generally charged high legal fee, they would not be willing to help the poor who could not pay as high as lawyers expected. Therefore, the problem emerged, “In the City of New York there [were] 35,000 lawyers, one for every 200 citizens. But only a handful of these lawyers, are available for service to the city's poor — one lawyer for every 5,000 poor people.” That is the effect of the problem that the justice system became accessible to the rich because they could afford lawyers, but those who could not afford lawyers were denied access to the system.
The Constitution was written by a group of aristocratic elites of the nation, and it reflected their interest. In all three branches of government the Constitution explicitly and implicitly protects the interests of the rich and bullies the poor.