Call me old fashioned, but more than anything I would like to get rid of mandatory vote by mail which we have in California. It invites fraud by its nature.
If I were making the rules I would require all voting to be done on a single day, election day, in person with polls open madatorilly from 6 am until 9 pm. Absentee ballots would be available for those who genuinely are unable to get to the polls for reasons of infirmity or absence from the district.
But you, for better or worse, are not; the Founding Fathers did so unambiguously:
> 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, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed! (In other news, have you noticed that “Freddy” is back, and has fallen deeply in love with your state of Tennessee?) Fun times!
Invoking the Guarantee Clause is not an option I'm familiar with. If it's a tool, Trump will use it, IMO. But the remarks by Melissa Slotkin regarding the SAVE Act that "if passed, Democrats will never win another election" (sorry for the paraphrasing), I find both stunning and revealing. Stunning because it is an out and out admission of Democrat dependence on vote counting...irregularities...to win close elections. Revealing because in spite of its overwhelming popularity (even among Democratic voters) the Republican Senate refuses to act on it. Why not? Lack of votes? Nuke the filibuster, the democrats will the moment their new majorities are sworn in. Do they just hate Trump that much? Or are they receiving...compensation...that...influences their votes? Why not both? If we "vote" in a progressive / communist light government (with powerful...theocratic...influences) there will be no hesitation on that government's part to ensure a permanent grip on governing is guaranteed.
Do they (the RINOs in the Senate) really hate Trump that much? To as the question is to answer it; yes, they do, and they DON'T CARE what they do to the country as long as they can damage Trump.
It’s Elissa, not Melissa. And I think you’re reading a hair too much into her remarks. Democrats do depend strongly on the votes of marginally-capable citizens who may well be too marginally-capable to secure ID. At worst that’s just covering rhetoric for the fear you describe, but I know Democratic voters who have said something similar.
Personally I will not weep if people who are incapable of securing ID do not vote. But I would not oppose determined efforts to get IDs for everyone; it might make it easier to recognize illegals.
"Reading a hair too much". Possibly. When an ex-CIA member who is now a sitting U.S. senator says something, I do try to pay attention to her words. It's all I can do, as I can't read her mind and am forced to rely on what she said, the audience, and the context. Since I can't read your mind either, any thoughts on the Republican Senate majority's handling of the SAVE act?
Well, she didn’t talk about cheating, just the effect SAVE would add on the Dems’ chances. There are a lot of Dems who sincerely believe SAVE is about the suppression of legal Dem voters. I don’t, though I freely acknowledge it might have some small effect in that direction, which could be greatly ameliorated by efforts comparable to get-out-the vote programs.
As for reading my own mind, I think the GOP Senate’s handling has been…unfortunate to say the least. I’ve always been a big believer in the filibuster; I advocated an amendment to preserve it back when Trump was first elected and the Dems might be scared enough to be on board. Still, I wrote to Thune asking that he nuke it to pass SAVE. I’m not distraught that he hasn’t, but the fact that he hasn’t forced the Dems to *use* it, to stand up and get sweaty talking for hours, is shameful.
I concur. Go for it. At 81 yo, I don’t have many elections remaining to participate and vote in. I’d like to think at least one might be somewhat fair. Heading to Costco tomorrow to stock up on popcorn! If President Trump pulls this trigger it’ll be fun to watch.
Nice Glenn. I have been pushing this ever since I appealed my own guarantee clause case all the way to the Supreme Court back in 2000 (unheard of course).
I discovered then that in election law cases that are not trying to overturn election results (I was trying to overturn a ballot access requirement, so that I could run for Sheriff in Santa Clara County, not trying to contest an election result), the grounds on which SCOTUS was holding the republican guarantee to be non-justiciable was the lack of "discoverable and manageable" standards of adjudication.
This was from Baker v. Carr (1961), where Justice Brennan was under the impression that the founders had left no clear guidance as to what they meant by republicanism. At least nothing that had yet been discovered, so what were the chances that, so much later, any clear such guidance would emerge?
Brennan was apparently unaware of the definition of republicanism that Alexander Hamilton provided at the Constitutional debates in New York.
Franklin had famously declared that the Convention had given America "a republic, if you can keep it," and the constitution itself included a guarantee of republican government, so the debaters were obviously interested in what the authors of the Constitution meant by republicanism.
Hamilton's answer is tightly focused, as if he had a manageable standard of adjudication in mind. It goes directly to election integrity:
"The true principle of a republic," he told the debate audience, "is that the people shall choose who shall govern them. Representation is imperfect [republicanism is imperfect] in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked."
The two most obvious ways to check the current of popular favor in the choice of governors are
1) to have insecure election processes that are vulnerable to election stealing, and
2) weaponization of the powers of government (unequal protection/application of the laws) against political opponents, trying to put them in jail, bankrupt them, and otherwise keep them off the ballot, on in some other way keep them from associating effectively with like-minded others to have their views represented through the electoral process.
The second sentence of Hamilton's definition almost states the implied manageable standard of adjudication directly. A guarantee means the United States has a positive duty to do what it can to insure honest elections and no weaponization against opponents.
Regarding honest elections, that means that any election processes that are either intentionally or unnecessarily vulnerable to vote fraud or election fraud are constitutional.
Note that the states run all elections, both state and federal. Thus any state that has election processes that are either intentionally or unnecessarily open to election stealing are in that respect un-republican.
Under Article IV, section 4, all three branches of the federal government have their own independent and express power, and the duty, to rectify that unconstitutional condition.
The Court's current stance is that it has to defer to the political branches, meaning it would only intervene in those branches' findings of unrepublican state government, and remedies for it, if the two political branches happen to disagree, and the court is forced weigh in, and even then it might decide it has to let them fight it out however they can.
But that is all based on Brennan's false belief that the founders had left no discoverable and manageable standard for adjudicating the republican guarantee.
Once that misconception is corrected, of course the Court has the same duty as the other branches to enforce the clear definition of republicanism that Hamilton declared to the people who ratified the Constitution, and to use the clear manageable standard of adjudication that he directly implied.
Thanks to the failures of Brennan, and of the entire Supreme Court both before and since, Democrats have gotten away with cramming their state election processes full of mechanisms, rules and procedures that are both intentionally and unnecessarily vulnerable to mass election fraud: no voter i.d., electronic voting machines that are inherently vulnerable to manipulation by hackers both foreign and domestic, and most obviously the mass mail-in voting ushered in under cover of the Fauci/Democrat funded Covid epidemic.
(Look up Fauci's love letter to Hillary Clinton if you have any doubt about how politically motivated he was. He told her he cried tears of joy at her bravery when she uttered her infamous words: "what difference, at this point, does it make?" Hahahah. What a freak. A nasty, morally imbecilic freak.)
The Democrats weaponized against all of us. They tried to replace us with illegal aliens who don't share our republican values. Republicanism means the people can always replace their governors with others more to their liking. Incumbent Democrats tried to invert that, trying to replace the people with a new people who would be more supportive of them.
If the guarantee of a republican form of government can be brought out of its state of constitutional desuetude, many such violations could become actionable, but the clearly justiciable starting point is election integrity.
Courts have it is non-justiciable. Of course that will not stop leftist operatives in robes from instantly violating that precedent. But if Trump were to announce it now, there should be plenty of time to run it up the appellate flagpole.
Reynolds, you canny devil! If they didn't have this on the table, they do now. Blue fingers and paper ballots. Jimmy Carter's rules for foreign election integrity!
We may yet have to declare this governance illegitimate to save liberty. Legitimate governance requires consent. Without effective suffrage there can be no consent.
The president’s greatest power is just to ignore frivolous and harassing rulings by lower courts. Presidents have done this on many occasions, I.e. Jackson and Lincoln, and the courts don’t have any enforcement mechanisms to force compliance.
When you say that you suspect Trump "feels vindicated by all the evidence of fraud that has come out," are you referring to the few hundred confirmed cases of illegally cast ballots, consistent irregularities in California, or something else? I'm not well-read on recent developments with this.
Nor do I. As you said, the Constitution certainly permits Congress to pass legislation providing details about how the President should execute this clause. If they don't like what he does on his own they are free to do that, if they have the courage to go on record about it. If the commenter thinks the outrage would be that universal, they could surely put together a veto-proof majority.
Glenn, great piece. No one ever thinks about the Guarantee Clause. We will become very familiar with it, I fear, when CA becomes insolvent.
A few years back when Virginia had a Republican Governor and AG, I called the AG's office to suggest that the Va that generally required Va to adhere to California air regulations was unconstitutional under the Guarantee Clause. Virginia found a way around the issue (temporary perhaps given the change in administrations) but it strikes me that these types of laws where the residents of another state (or another state's legislature) determine what rules apply in a state have to be unconstitutional under the Guarantee Clause. There are other examples - usually related to whacko environmental decrees. Any thoughts?
Call me old fashioned, but more than anything I would like to get rid of mandatory vote by mail which we have in California. It invites fraud by its nature.
If I were making the rules I would require all voting to be done on a single day, election day, in person with polls open madatorilly from 6 am until 9 pm. Absentee ballots would be available for those who genuinely are unable to get to the polls for reasons of infirmity or absence from the district.
> If I were making the rules
But you, for better or worse, are not; the Founding Fathers did so unambiguously:
> 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, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
1) A college-age kid is out of state and their ballot arrives at the house. Their parent casts their ballot for them.
2) A college-age kid convinces their parents to let him cast their ballots for them.
3) An abusive partner votes their abused's ballot.
4) A household gets ballots from former residents who moved out years ago and casts the extra ballots.
I absolutely love vote by mail. But I agree.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed! (In other news, have you noticed that “Freddy” is back, and has fallen deeply in love with your state of Tennessee?) Fun times!
Invoking the Guarantee Clause is not an option I'm familiar with. If it's a tool, Trump will use it, IMO. But the remarks by Melissa Slotkin regarding the SAVE Act that "if passed, Democrats will never win another election" (sorry for the paraphrasing), I find both stunning and revealing. Stunning because it is an out and out admission of Democrat dependence on vote counting...irregularities...to win close elections. Revealing because in spite of its overwhelming popularity (even among Democratic voters) the Republican Senate refuses to act on it. Why not? Lack of votes? Nuke the filibuster, the democrats will the moment their new majorities are sworn in. Do they just hate Trump that much? Or are they receiving...compensation...that...influences their votes? Why not both? If we "vote" in a progressive / communist light government (with powerful...theocratic...influences) there will be no hesitation on that government's part to ensure a permanent grip on governing is guaranteed.
Do they (the RINOs in the Senate) really hate Trump that much? To as the question is to answer it; yes, they do, and they DON'T CARE what they do to the country as long as they can damage Trump.
It’s Elissa, not Melissa. And I think you’re reading a hair too much into her remarks. Democrats do depend strongly on the votes of marginally-capable citizens who may well be too marginally-capable to secure ID. At worst that’s just covering rhetoric for the fear you describe, but I know Democratic voters who have said something similar.
Personally I will not weep if people who are incapable of securing ID do not vote. But I would not oppose determined efforts to get IDs for everyone; it might make it easier to recognize illegals.
"Reading a hair too much". Possibly. When an ex-CIA member who is now a sitting U.S. senator says something, I do try to pay attention to her words. It's all I can do, as I can't read her mind and am forced to rely on what she said, the audience, and the context. Since I can't read your mind either, any thoughts on the Republican Senate majority's handling of the SAVE act?
Well, she didn’t talk about cheating, just the effect SAVE would add on the Dems’ chances. There are a lot of Dems who sincerely believe SAVE is about the suppression of legal Dem voters. I don’t, though I freely acknowledge it might have some small effect in that direction, which could be greatly ameliorated by efforts comparable to get-out-the vote programs.
As for reading my own mind, I think the GOP Senate’s handling has been…unfortunate to say the least. I’ve always been a big believer in the filibuster; I advocated an amendment to preserve it back when Trump was first elected and the Dems might be scared enough to be on board. Still, I wrote to Thune asking that he nuke it to pass SAVE. I’m not distraught that he hasn’t, but the fact that he hasn’t forced the Dems to *use* it, to stand up and get sweaty talking for hours, is shameful.
I concur. Go for it. At 81 yo, I don’t have many elections remaining to participate and vote in. I’d like to think at least one might be somewhat fair. Heading to Costco tomorrow to stock up on popcorn! If President Trump pulls this trigger it’ll be fun to watch.
Nice Glenn. I have been pushing this ever since I appealed my own guarantee clause case all the way to the Supreme Court back in 2000 (unheard of course).
I discovered then that in election law cases that are not trying to overturn election results (I was trying to overturn a ballot access requirement, so that I could run for Sheriff in Santa Clara County, not trying to contest an election result), the grounds on which SCOTUS was holding the republican guarantee to be non-justiciable was the lack of "discoverable and manageable" standards of adjudication.
This was from Baker v. Carr (1961), where Justice Brennan was under the impression that the founders had left no clear guidance as to what they meant by republicanism. At least nothing that had yet been discovered, so what were the chances that, so much later, any clear such guidance would emerge?
Brennan was apparently unaware of the definition of republicanism that Alexander Hamilton provided at the Constitutional debates in New York.
Franklin had famously declared that the Convention had given America "a republic, if you can keep it," and the constitution itself included a guarantee of republican government, so the debaters were obviously interested in what the authors of the Constitution meant by republicanism.
Hamilton's answer is tightly focused, as if he had a manageable standard of adjudication in mind. It goes directly to election integrity:
"The true principle of a republic," he told the debate audience, "is that the people shall choose who shall govern them. Representation is imperfect [republicanism is imperfect] in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked."
The two most obvious ways to check the current of popular favor in the choice of governors are
1) to have insecure election processes that are vulnerable to election stealing, and
2) weaponization of the powers of government (unequal protection/application of the laws) against political opponents, trying to put them in jail, bankrupt them, and otherwise keep them off the ballot, on in some other way keep them from associating effectively with like-minded others to have their views represented through the electoral process.
The second sentence of Hamilton's definition almost states the implied manageable standard of adjudication directly. A guarantee means the United States has a positive duty to do what it can to insure honest elections and no weaponization against opponents.
Regarding honest elections, that means that any election processes that are either intentionally or unnecessarily vulnerable to vote fraud or election fraud are constitutional.
Note that the states run all elections, both state and federal. Thus any state that has election processes that are either intentionally or unnecessarily open to election stealing are in that respect un-republican.
Under Article IV, section 4, all three branches of the federal government have their own independent and express power, and the duty, to rectify that unconstitutional condition.
The Court's current stance is that it has to defer to the political branches, meaning it would only intervene in those branches' findings of unrepublican state government, and remedies for it, if the two political branches happen to disagree, and the court is forced weigh in, and even then it might decide it has to let them fight it out however they can.
But that is all based on Brennan's false belief that the founders had left no discoverable and manageable standard for adjudicating the republican guarantee.
Once that misconception is corrected, of course the Court has the same duty as the other branches to enforce the clear definition of republicanism that Hamilton declared to the people who ratified the Constitution, and to use the clear manageable standard of adjudication that he directly implied.
Thanks to the failures of Brennan, and of the entire Supreme Court both before and since, Democrats have gotten away with cramming their state election processes full of mechanisms, rules and procedures that are both intentionally and unnecessarily vulnerable to mass election fraud: no voter i.d., electronic voting machines that are inherently vulnerable to manipulation by hackers both foreign and domestic, and most obviously the mass mail-in voting ushered in under cover of the Fauci/Democrat funded Covid epidemic.
(Look up Fauci's love letter to Hillary Clinton if you have any doubt about how politically motivated he was. He told her he cried tears of joy at her bravery when she uttered her infamous words: "what difference, at this point, does it make?" Hahahah. What a freak. A nasty, morally imbecilic freak.)
The Democrats weaponized against all of us. They tried to replace us with illegal aliens who don't share our republican values. Republicanism means the people can always replace their governors with others more to their liking. Incumbent Democrats tried to invert that, trying to replace the people with a new people who would be more supportive of them.
If the guarantee of a republican form of government can be brought out of its state of constitutional desuetude, many such violations could become actionable, but the clearly justiciable starting point is election integrity.
So who will be the judge who tries to veto Trump this time? Boasberg? Chutkan? Sooknanan?
DC judges, if a guy in Poca, West Virginia, knows your name, you ain't doing your job right
Perfesser- Very thoughtful piece. I like the way you think!
Courts have it is non-justiciable. Of course that will not stop leftist operatives in robes from instantly violating that precedent. But if Trump were to announce it now, there should be plenty of time to run it up the appellate flagpole.
Brilliant. Go for it.
A lot of issues are designated as nonjusticiable, but the courts seldom accept that as limiting on their power to adjudicate.
Reynolds, you canny devil! If they didn't have this on the table, they do now. Blue fingers and paper ballots. Jimmy Carter's rules for foreign election integrity!
We may yet have to declare this governance illegitimate to save liberty. Legitimate governance requires consent. Without effective suffrage there can be no consent.
Would official Washington allow such a thing?
The president’s greatest power is just to ignore frivolous and harassing rulings by lower courts. Presidents have done this on many occasions, I.e. Jackson and Lincoln, and the courts don’t have any enforcement mechanisms to force compliance.
When you say that you suspect Trump "feels vindicated by all the evidence of fraud that has come out," are you referring to the few hundred confirmed cases of illegally cast ballots, consistent irregularities in California, or something else? I'm not well-read on recent developments with this.
I'd expect that the impeachment and conviction votes would be 438-0 and 100-0 if that happened
I don't see why.
Nor do I. As you said, the Constitution certainly permits Congress to pass legislation providing details about how the President should execute this clause. If they don't like what he does on his own they are free to do that, if they have the courage to go on record about it. If the commenter thinks the outrage would be that universal, they could surely put together a veto-proof majority.
Because it threatens the UniParty, and impeachment isn't a trial, it's just politics.
Almost every GOP rep would lose their next election, and they know it.
Glenn, great piece. No one ever thinks about the Guarantee Clause. We will become very familiar with it, I fear, when CA becomes insolvent.
A few years back when Virginia had a Republican Governor and AG, I called the AG's office to suggest that the Va that generally required Va to adhere to California air regulations was unconstitutional under the Guarantee Clause. Virginia found a way around the issue (temporary perhaps given the change in administrations) but it strikes me that these types of laws where the residents of another state (or another state's legislature) determine what rules apply in a state have to be unconstitutional under the Guarantee Clause. There are other examples - usually related to whacko environmental decrees. Any thoughts?