How Did James Madison Think About Congressional Elections? A Q&A with Jay Cost

The significance of James Madison’s contributions to creating our representative democracy cannot be overstated. He saw the troubles of the first union as a member of the Congress of the Confederation. He was a major player at the Constitutional Convention, and wrote the Federalist Papers to get the new federal charter ratified. Subsequently, Madison helped get the new government up and running by serving in the House of Representatives in the First and Second Congresses. Later, he twice was elected president.

So how did he think about elections to Congress, the first branch of government? To answer this question, I turned to my colleague Jay Cost. He is the Gerald R. Ford nonresident senior fellow at AEI and the author of the superb book, James Madison: America’s First Politician (2021)…. (Read more)