Hey, I Didn't Vote For This
- The Missouri Compromise was ostensibly about the new state's right for self-determination on equal footing with the original states…but this came with more than a couple o' caveats.
- First, of course, was the geographical boundaries set down by the Compromise. But maybe of equal importance was the Compromise's inclusion of how the voters and representatives would be sorted out.
- The Compromise stipulates, "that all free white male citizens" (3.1) 21 or older and having lived in the territory for three or more months would be eligible to run for office, and therefore vote. This was standard for the time period, as appalling as it might seem to contemporary ideas of gender and race equality.
- Congress then had a bit of a problem in determining how to build an entire state's political system from the ground up.
- So rather than muck about and make the process any more complicated, they decided to let the Missourians sort all this out themselves: Congress set up a sort of mini Constitutional Convention on a state scale, and portioned out the representatives by county.
- Lines 3.2 through 3.15 are essentially this: an accounting of how many representatives would come from which counties. Sure, not terribly important so far as the history of the U.S. as a whole goes, but it was an absolutely vital issue to Missourians at the time.
- The Compromise then goes in to detail about the timeframe of these elections and how each election must be consistent with whatever laws are chosen for its previous elections.
- Basically, while different counties are voting, the Compromise stipulates that each county's vote has to be similar to the way every other county votes in order to prevent voter manipulation or fraud.