The Founding Fathers did two things at the same time, Dave. They put a limit on our political expression at the Federal level and they empowered the People directly while telling government to not deny or disparage these powers.
That means there is a larger setup in which we can then find the smaller setups that are not discussed by themselves in the US Constitution.
Long story short, State and local government caved to power (for whatever reason) and entered the realm of power of the People more than they should have.
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A Tiered Democratic Governance system would still need to abide to the larger framework that the Founding Fathers set up.
So, if you can establish that within the framework then you are good to go.
As I see it, TDG as currently proposed does not follow the overall framework because voters are not equals in the outcome. It is still a system that limits who gets to sit in the seats.
With Thomas Jefferson the person who devised proportional voting, I am quite certain that the Founding Fathers discussed voting systems. This did not make it into the outcomes and is therefore less of a subject matter.
The interesting outcome is their not-discussing the inner parts of government and powers. They left that to the States and to the People.
And that is in a way interesting with TDG as well, because you are stepping into the area where the setup is not declared from the overall setup perspective. You know there is something there that needs addressing. You know there is a political field in which society can be improved.
In Canada, you mentioned that the Federation and particularly the Provinces are the locations where actual political power is found. As such, we see in both nations how the local level is hung up on the larger governmental framework.
The distinction is then that specific empowerment by the Founding Fathers of We The People, and therefore the demand to have (whatever is in place at the local level) to not undermine any individual's power.
In the UK, the government is more all-powerful, and if I am not mistaken it can be seen more as a nation functioning as a whole.
Not so much on mainland Europe, though I am certain that in that European amalgam we can find without effort some nationalist streaks.
Power, however, in Europe tends to be organized from the ground up, which is the opposite of religion which is top-down.
So, cities and lands can be seen as the historical start-ups for political power. Then, their combinations into provinces, counties, or cantons occurred, and next are their subsequent cooperative agreements/(con)federations. It's politics, so I am giving you an extremely clean version here that in reality will have many variations.
The UK stands out as it has in many ways, and Henry the Eight breaking with the church is in my view the true start of the UK story, an independent power, self-based (and acting in selfish manners). It is top-down.
In a way, while Canada remained British for a real long time, the United States became more mainland European. The top-down is still found in the US, but the bottom-up is empowered, per the US Constitution.
Meanwhile, long story extremely short, the United States ended up influencing many European nations.
The Netherlands, for instance, had a prototype constitution which was one of the study objects for the Founding Fathers, and this prototype was replaced later by what we would call a real constitution in response to the US Constitution's much clearer vision and expression.
As such, quite the interesting history of powers, top-down, bottom-up, plus that framework that all by itself declares the rules of the political reality we live in.
