This report was originally published in the Substack titled “Brutus” on August 6th, 2022.

As most Montanans know, there are a multitude of serious issues with our current voting system. From election fraud to non-citizens voting, the list goes on. But there is another issue with our voting process that I would like to call your attention to: the problem of not having strong enough criteria that disqualifies certain people from voting. Ultimately, it is the problem of complete and unfettered, unrestricted democracy.

Our country was founded as a constitutional republic, not as a “democracy.” Democracy is nothing more than mob rule. Democracy can be defined as an ideology that believes that 51% of the population can decide to cut off the hands of the 49%. It is one of the oldest forms of government. Democracy is egalitarian in nature and egalitarianism is the basis of communism to which the redistribution of wealth is rationalized.

Our Founding Fathers were well aware of the dangers and issues of democracy. In fact, so much so that they believed that only property owning men should be allowed to vote. If unrestricted voting and democracy is so great, why did our founders establish the Electoral College in our Constitution?

“A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

James Madison, Federalist No. 10

When America was founded, only property owners were allowed to vote. During America’s founding, voting was seen as a privilege and not a right. And I agree with that perspective. It is a great privilege and responsibility.

Why is it that the city dweller who rents and owns no property can vote to raise the property taxes of land owners? How is that moral? How is it that someone who does not have any long-term ties to the land to which their voting will affect has the right to decide how another man, who does, should live and how much taxes he should pay?

After commanding the finances and actions of people with a stake in the land through voting, the property-less man can drift to the next town, as he so pleases, without a worry for the property that he does not own. Indeed, he can leave the area that he has bastardized as a result of his poor voting so that he himself does not have to reap what he has sewn.

How is it a “right” that a man can vote to make someone else pay a tax that he himself is not going to pay? What “right” is that? Why should the tax collector that lives off of the taxes that he takes from the productive man be able to vote on matters that will make the productive man pay the tax that the tax collector will not have to pay? Can you see the moral hazard?

How is it that we can accept that there is a need for an Electoral College to balance out our votes at the Federal level, to give rural blue-collar Americans in the heartland of America a voice regarding who will be the President of the United States, but we are not supposed to question the integrity of an election process that gives the City of Portland voting power to dictate who will be the Governor of Oregon? Why is it that we have not made an in-state Electoral College for governors races or state-wide office seats so that two cities within our state do not end up dictating the outcome for the rest of our state?

The necessity of the actions that must be taken to restrict voting privileges to only those that have a stake in the land as well as to restrict voting to only those who are not net recipients of tax payer money, as well as the creation of a local state Electoral College should be self-evident. The massive population increases into Montana in cities such as Bozeman and Missoula pose a threat to the Montana man’s liberty and posterity.

Unless something is done to stop the destructive, uninhibited election and voting process then the more people that these cities pack into themselves through inorganic growth as a result of the bombardment of mass-advertising, international corporate interest, Hollywood obsession with Montana, artificially low interest rates, and dense housing, the more that these small geographical areas will be able to impose their power upon the rest of those that live in Montana.