Super Majority is Just a Bad Idea

The last post dealing with a Bill of Rights for the city of Zephyrhills, Fl. triggered three articles in the local, Zephryhills News. Gary Hatrick, the editor, told me that the whole issue of the deliberations of the Charter Study Committee was, "something that had to come out."

Fact is, the Bill of Rights for the citizens of this small city is just a small item compared to the deeper division that is splitting the Charter Study members. The group is really hung up on how many City Council votes it should take to, say, fire the city manager. As it now stands, a former Charter revision has left the Council hamstrung with the requirement that it must generate a super majority to fire one of its own employes. That is, it takes four out of the the five councilpersons to do the deed.

Half of the committee members favor the super majority because they argue that it gives stability to the managers of the city's business.

But let's look at the other side of the issue: The requirement of a super majority gives undue power to the minority. It takes just one vote to stymie the will of the majority. Don't believe me? Do the math.

Now, I'm going to tip my hand.

At the next Charter Revision Committee meeting I plan to use a bit of history to bolster my position on the simple majority side of the issue. Some of the finest political minds in our nation's history had a lot to say, and they said it a lot better than I can, so, read on and see if you agree.

"Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take it."
Thomas Jefferson to Annapolis citizens, 1809
Memorial Edition, Vol. 16, p. 337

"It has been shown ... that all provisions which require more than the majority of any body to its resolutions have a direct tendency to embarrass the operations of the government and an indirect one to subject the sense of the majority to that of the minority. ....And the history of every political establishment in which this principle has prevailed
is a history of impotence, perplexity, and disorder."
Alexander Hamilton, March 26, 1788
Federalist No. 75

"A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism.
Unanimity is impossible; so that rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left."
Abraham Lincoln, first inaugural address, March 4, 1861

"Majority rule must be preserved as the safeguard of both liberty and civilization. Under it property can be secure; under it abuses can end; under it order can be maintained -- and all of this for the simple, cogent reason that to the average of our citizenship can be brought a life of greater opportunity, of greater security, of greater happiness.
...pioneering for the preservation of our fundamental institutions
against the ceaseless attack of those who have no faith in democracy."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, August 18, 1937

Bottom line, uncomfortable as it may be for some, is that requiring a super majority for anything is a bad idea. Period.

Arjay