I’ve written this Common Ground Democracy [Substack] essay to summarize what’s important about James Madison’s 1823 letter that I analyze in the new law review article posted on SSRN, to be published in the Wisconsin Law Review. The key point is that America’s Madisonian democracy faces its current crisis because it failed in its essential purpose of preventing a would-be authoritarian from gaining power when that potential autocrat is not even “the real preference of the Voters,” to use Madison’s phrase in the letter–and further failed to have the Senate serve its role as a check against an abusive president because the Senate too is elected in a faulty system that does not reflect “the real preference of the Voters.” If Madisonian democracy is to survive this crisis, we must understand what’s significant about his letter and implement the necessary change to the Madisonian system we’ve inherited.