There are two things I wish to comment on in this post. The first is that I’ve observed that there are a lot of American People who are somewhat deficient in understanding how the election system works. The second is the left’s sudden escalation of screaming about “defending our democracy!” These two subjects are, in the end, interrelated.
It is first necessary to understand how elections are supposed to be run in the United States. It’s kind of scattered and convoluted the way it is laid out in the Constitution. And there is one particular phrase in it that really will twist your wits unless you understand the terms. So I’m going to extract the relevant points and present them and explain them in modern layman’s terms. I offer my most sincere apologies to those who already know this, for explaining it to you again.
One thing you have to know in order to understand the Constitution at all, is that if a power is not specified as belonging to the federal government, within the Constitution itself, it is none of the federal government’s business to be involved with it. Thus we have the Tenth Amendment; “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
In the Constitution an Elector is a person who is qualified to vote for someone or something. If you vote in an election you are an Elector. An Elector is a voter.
The Constitution says that if you are qualified to vote for a State Senator or Representative, you can vote for a federal Senator or Representative. That’s pretty simple.
So who decides who can vote for the State Senators or Representatives? Well, the Constitution doesn’t specify that, so it’s a Tenth Amendment issue, which means the States decide who is qualified to vote for State and federal Congressmen.
This is what the Constitution says about electing members for the House: Article One, Section Two; “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.” [Emphasis mine]
This is what the Constitution says about electing members for the Senate: Seventeenth Amendment; “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.” [Emphasis mine]
So the upshot of this is that members of the Congress are chosen by the States in State held elections. Got it? That’s more important than it seems!
Then there is this next thing from Article One, Section Four; “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” [Emphasis mine]
So the legislatures of the States set the regulations as to how an election is to be held, except for this little thing here: “…but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.”
The States then, have the authority to regulate, under the Constitution, the Times, Places and Manner of the elections but the federal government can make or alter the Times, Places and Manner of the elections. The States also have the authority to regulate who can vote for their own legislatures and thus also the federal legislatures.
Anything not mentioned is by default a Tenth Amendment issue.
Thus, the federal government does not have any authority over who can be elected by the People of the States, how many times any individual can be elected, who is or is not qualified to vote for them or what any person has to do to be qualified to vote in an election. Those powers are all left to the States to decide. The only regulations the federal government can impose is with regards to the Times, Places and Manner in which an election is to be held.
It is very clearly up to each individual State, on their own determinism, to decide who is qualified to vote and who is to be sent from the State as a Representative of the People, or Senator, to the federal government.
For presidents elections are a bit more straight forward.
An elector for president is again a person who is qualified to vote for the president. It is very important to understand that a presidential elector is not the same thing as an elector for Congress!
Article Two, Section One; “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.” [Emphasis mine]
The key phrase here is “…in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct….”
They, the States, legislators could decide who the electors are in absolutely any way that they want. And I do mean ANY WAY THAT THEY WANT! They could choose the county dog catchers. They could choose the city mayors. They could decide who the electors are by the use of tarot cards, crystal balls or visions of psychics. They could toss coins, draw lots or roll dice. They could vote amongst themselves. They could decide based on the size of their respective investment portfolios. Or they could use the historical predictions of Punxsutawney Phil.
The most common method the States use in deciding who the Electors are is by popular vote of the People within that State. The People of the States vote to choose Electors to vote for who they want to be president.
The Twelfth Amendment; “The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President,” [Emphasis mine]
Now one may be inclined to wonder why I kept emphasizing the word “States” in the preceding paragraphs. Thus the first part of this blog post comes to a head.
The States decide, in State held elections, who the federal Representatives will be.
The States decide, in State held elections, who the federal Senators will be.
The States decide, in State held elections, who the president will be.
“What’s the point?” one might ask.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FEDERAL ELECTION.
That’s right. All elections are held by the States.
It is the People of the States, thusly, who rule over the federal government. It is the will of the People who decide who is sent to represent them, in service to them.
And that is an important distinction!
I said this in my last post and I will repeat it here because it is also the main thrust of the next part of this post: “It is a logical contradiction to say that we elect the people who rule over us. If that is the construct then sooner or later the people who you think you are electing to rule over you will just cut out the election part of the process and simply rule over you; because under that model the people you elect control the rules regarding their own elections.”
There are three things that I see in common practice, or requested by a lot of people who don’t understand how the election system is supposed to run, that could destroy our republican way of life in the United States.
You may have noticed that lately the Demoncrap Party has been screaming a lot about democracy, Democracy, DEMOCRACY!!! Save our democracy!
This is the first of the three ways.
Article Four, Section Four of the Constitution says; “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government….”
Some people might try to tell you that a republic is a kind of democracy. I could go into that argument much further but I think I’ll just keep it short for now and say that it isn’t. The main component of a republic is that there are representatives who represent the public. REpresentatives who REpresent the PUBLIC. RE+PUBLIC. REPUBLIC.
As ridiculous as the way I just put it in the paragraph above seems, it does actually mean that, except originally in Latin. “Res” in Latin means “entity, concern” and “publicus,” also Latin, means “of the people.” Together republic means “entity concern of the people.” In other words, a person concerned with the People or a representative of the people.
That the People vote is what confuses some people into thinking that the United States is a democracy. Well, people vote in republics too. Just because people vote in several different types of government does not make them all into democracies. If a monarch occasionally allows people to vote, it does not make a monarchy into a democracy. The historical examples where different kinds of governments allowed voting would comprise a very long list. Even Iraq under the dictator Saddam Hussein had elections too.
This confusion is not by accident. Someone is out there pushing the false narrative that the United States is a democracy. And they recently are pushing this idea VERY hard.
Why they are doing this is very simple to understand. They are trying to undermine the Constitution to the point where the People can’t even properly identify what kind of government they have.
If it is widely accepted that the United States is a democracy all of the parts of the Constitution I’ve mentioned in this article get tossed aside as obsolete and we no longer have a constitutional representative republic.
The second way to undermine our republic is through federal voter ID laws. It is perfectly okay under the Constitution for States to decide who does and doesn’t vote. It is perfectly okay under the Constitution for the States to decide what form of ID would be required to vote within their State. But federal voter ID laws would also undermine all of the mentioned parts of the Constitution quoted above.
People might be tempted to argue that the elections can’t be trusted if people don’t identify themselves. Yes. I completely agree that the States should do it because they are State held elections.
In this day and age just imagine what it would be like if the federal government passed federally regulated voter ID laws. You would have to have a federally approved voter ID card. So you’ve got your voter ID card, complete with a chip in it. You stick it in the machine and that chip tells the machine who you are and records how you vote. That information is added to a national database where everybody’s voting history is recorded. It also counts the votes and decides which ones of them are valid and which ones aren’t. It also counts the votes from the voters that are defined within it as valid. The rules as to how it is decided which votes are valid or not, and how those regulations are enforced, are determined and enforced by exactly the same people who are running for reelection into the federal government.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, I’ll tell you what could go wrong. The people in charge of the database, in the federal government, would decide the outcome of all of the elections to the federal government of the United States. Hell, if I had the hacking skills I could decide by myself that the semi-rotten potato in my kitchen cupboard would be a better president than Biden. While the preceding statement is completely true the point remains that I should not be making that decision.
The point is that you absolutely and emphatically do not want the people in the federal government deciding for themselves who is and is not qualified to vote in elections in which they are the beneficiaries of the outcome of the election. It’s an obvious conflict of interest. More generally you do not want the federal government to have any more power over the States as to who the States can elect to be part of the federal government.
This is why the Constitution was written with the States having election authority. It’s much more difficult (though not impossible) to cheat and corrupt enough State’s elections to swing the outcome one way or another.
Which brings me to the third thing that would destroy the constitutional election system in this fantastically successful republic of ours.
I know a lot of people, both Demoncraps and Republicans alike, are going to disagree with me on this. My oath is to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic. So be it.
It is the States who decide who can and can’t run for a position within the federal government. It is the States who decide who can and can’t vote for someone running. These, as in the references from the Constitution above, are State powers.
Any of those powers transferred from the States to the federal government, with regards to elections, are unconstitutional.
It is unconstitutional for the federal government to decide for the States who should and shouldn’t represent them in Congress. That is power named to the States by the Constitution.
So what is the third thing, that people are screaming for, that would destroy our republic by undermining the constitutional election system?
Federally imposed term limits.
It’s perfectly okay, per the Constitution, for the States to decide who they do or don’t want to represent them. It is perfectly okay for the States to impose term limits on their own representatives that they elect for their State. I don’t think it would fix a damn thing, mostly because it is currently a two party system, but I am only one person, with one vote, in my own State.
It is not okay under the Constitution for the federal government to do it. It is not okay under the Constitution for the federal government to restrict who can and can’t serve in the federal government in any way other than the ways already mentioned within it.
I’ve written a lot previously about the problems with federal term limits. I do not wish to rehash all of those arguments here. The only thing I wish to add to them is what is above. It is the right of the States and People to decide who they want to represent them. For the federal government to regulate that, as term limits are really regulations that restrict who you and other people can vote for, would represent a huge transfer of power from the States to the federal government. By precedent federally imposed term limits would give the federal government even more power (unconstitutional) to regulate the States.
It has far too much power as it is.
I think that liberalism within this country has advanced to the point where they can almost take total control of the federal government and use that power over the States to toss aside anybody who might challenge them. The evidence supporting this supposition is all around us.
Controlling elections at the federal level is how they would grab that power.
I strongly urge you, do not give the federal government control of the constitutional election system.
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