To the Editor:

I just finished reading a biography of James Madison. He brought the colonies together in the late 1700s to form the US.

We had people like Jefferson and Madison from the south. Plantation owners who believed they were self-sufficient, wanted no armies, no taxes and guns to protect themselves against Indians and slave rebellions.

Then we had Hamilton and Adams from the north who believed we needed an Army to protect us for trade and taxes to support roads for trade and believed that slavery was inhuman (sound familiar).

Governor Morris wrote the preamble “We the people in order to form a more perfect union.” He and everyone knew the Constitution which was anti democratic and supported slavery was very imperfect. Eleven colonies approved the Constitution before George Washington’s election (NC and RI held out for a Bill of Rights).

Madison had written in an electoral college of elites who choose the President, elites from the states choose the Senate and then those elites choose the Supreme Court.

The people did choose the House of Representatives until Governor of Mass Elbridge Gerry got his hands on it and carved up the districts so he could get the only people he wanted in the House.

They called that Gerrymandering.

This has worked pretty well for over 200 years, only Hayes and John Quincy Adams were elected without the popular vote. But in the last 20 years things have changed.

We had two presidents without winning the popular vote, Bush and Trump, and we have a state like California with 40 times the people of Wyoming, both with two Senators.

We still have Gerrymandering.

That has given us a Supreme Court that has rolled back rights instead of granting additional human rights. We need to vote this November so that our Representatives make this union more perfect again and amend the Constitution.

Richard Eigen

Sandy Hook