Federalist No. 53 is an essay by James Madison

James Madison

James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...

, the fifty-third of the Federalist Papers

Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles or essays promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution. Seventy-seven of the essays were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October 1787 and August 1788...

. It was published in the New York Packet on February 12, 1788 under the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Publius, the name under which all the Federalist Papers were published. This essay is the second of two examining the structure of the United States House of Representatives

United States House of Representatives

The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...

 under the proposed United States Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

. It is titled, "The Same Subject Continued: The House of Representatives."

Anti-federalists had argued that one-year House terms would be more "democratic" or "representative

Representative democracy

Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...

" than longer terms. Defending the two-year terms adopted in the Constitution, Madison argues that Representatives in the House will need some knowledge of national affairs (how things work in the different states), as well as some minimal knowledge of foreign affairs

Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...

. Because experience in the House counts here, two-year terms are appropriate.

Madison also argued that one-year House terms would increase the amount of election fraud in the election

Election

An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...

of Representatives. His reasoning was that it takes a while for election fraud to come to light. If the elections were annual, a representative could buy an election and serve most of his term before the fraud came to light.

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