Lawrence Hall, HSG
You Have Never
Voted for a President
You have never voted for a president, and neither have I.
Certain plaintiffs in certain states have recently petitioned
their state courts to bar a certain candidate from standing for the presidency
based on Section 3 of the XIVth Amendment. This states that no one can be a
senator, representative, or presidential or vice-presidential elector, or hold
any public office, civil or military, federal or state, if he (the pronoun is
gender-neutral), as a member of congress, an officer in the United States, a
member of any state legislature, or an executive or judicial officer in any
state if he, having sworn loyalty to the Constitution, “shall have engaged in
insurrection against the same (the Constitution).”
The XIVth Amendment was enacted following the Civil War
and in response to it, but an amendment is not limited in time and place. It is
active law, not a museum curiosity.
But how can a state presume to bar a candidate from a
presidential ballot in that state?
That leads us back to Article II, which states clearly
that presidents are elected by electors from each state, not by a popular vote.
Further, these electors from each state are appointed by the legislature of
each state, “…in such Manner as the Legislature may direct…”
The fifty states and the too-much-indulged District of
Columbia can, as a matter of states’ rights, choose their electors in any
manner they chose. Hey, it’s in the Constitution. And do we follow our
Constitution or not? As practiced the popular vote in each state is for
electors, not for candidates, and the electors then vote for the president.
Some states do not allow their electors to vote against the will of the
electorate, but some do.
Our clumsy system of voting sounds illogical, but its
function is to ensure that sparsely-populated states and districts are not
subjected to the votes of heavily-populated cities. Without our electoral
college (they don’t have a football team, though) our presidential elections would
always be decided by the west coast axis and the east coast axis.
This protection is similar to the constitutional
requirement that while the states send a number or representatives to the House
based on population, they each send two senators to the Senate regardless of
population.
All this is a little awkward, but it means that the great
population centers cannot use the rest of us – “flyover country,” “deplorables,”
and so on – as simply a source of raw materials for their industries and recruits
for their many undeclared wars, and dumping grounds for their garbage.
Under the Constitution the citizens of a state may indeed
appeal to their state legislature for barring a candidate from the ballot in
that state only based on the XIVth Amendment in that same federal
Constitution. It is a matter of states’ rights not only in the XIVth amendment but
in the Xth.
The argument that the President is not mentioned as an
officer in the amendment is specious, even a little desperate. No one in over
two hundred years has ever denied that the office of the presidency is in fact
and function the office of the presidency. The President is not in a position
of employment or contract; he is an officer.
The argument that the amendment does not apply if the
candidate has not been convicted might carry some weight except for the fact
that the authority for granting eligibility rests with a ¾ vote of the House of
Representatives.
Where the petitioners may have gone off those
metaphorical rails is presenting their petition to their state courts instead
of to their state legislatures. The state courts under the Constitution should
bounce this to their legislatures.
So why isn’t this taught in school? Well, it is; it’s
just that no 16-year-old is in the least interested in civics class. Nor does
he (the pronoun is gender-neutral) give a rat’s rear end for Shakespeare,
sentence structure, molecular theory, physics, algebra, or the food pyramid.
Geometry is kinda fun, though.
But they’re kids. They’re learning. We adults have no
excuses, and the language of the Constitution is clear enough. We have a duty
to perceive issues rationally as adults, come to conclusions based in law, and
participate in civilization as citizens of a great republic.
There are many elementals in civilized behavior – one is
that when we vote we often don’t get our way. That’s the deal. That’s our
Constitution.
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