Happy Sunday! Sorry guys, I was alerted to the comments closing and I had to internet to get a new post up. I’ve extended the window on comments so hopefully we won’t have this issue again and I’m all back up and running now and we even have a new post from Stephen! Thank you, Stephen.
Election voting 20180128
Given the ongoing election, perhaps it is time to once again look into an obscure, forgotten, and neglected corner of the Constitution for some modicum of guidance from what some might call the distant past.“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.” Section 4, Article IV, US Constitution.Okay, technically it is an often used passage and one to which I have previously referred on the very pages of this website, so to say it is forgotten and neglected might be a bit of an overstatement; however today’s reference is to the passage in a completely different context and usage than those other references.This passage is often cited as evidence to the ignorant that our nation is indeed a republic and not the democracy that they want to pretend it to be, but in so doing the actual purpose and meaning of the passage is overlooked and neglected. To such purpose I only seed to focus upon the fist part of that passage as the second part clearly relates to the duty of the federal government to protect every state from invasion and may not be permitted to neglect any part of the country in such regard.What does it mean that the federal government “shall guarantee to every state” that such state itself shall have a republican form of government? Why is that a federal responsibility? What does it mean to guarantee a state something regarding that state’s own government?Well, let us start with the latter question. It is very clear from this passage that in the minds of the founding fathers the state was something very distinct and separate from the government of that state. This is important because it breaks with thousands of years of Old World traditional views of the nature of the state itself as being synonymous with the government of that state.In medieval Europe monarchs, and even lesser lords within those nations, would often refer to themselves as the country, or province, itself. One needs only read King Lear to see Lear refer to the king of France as “France”; the dukes of Burgundy and Albany as “Burgundy” and “Albany” respectively; and to the earls of Kent and Gloucester likewise.Clearly the state of Virginia is not the government of Virginia in this language of the Constitution which guarantees to the state a particular form of government. It is a clear expression that the state itself is comprised of the very citizenry of that state, separate and apart from its government.So then why is it a federal responsibility as to what form of government a state may chose to adopt? If it is the will of the people of Virginia to set up a state monarchy, why should the federal government stop them? After all, the prohibition against titles of nobility in the Constitution only applies to the federal government and federal employees.(Yes, I chose Virginia as a random example earlier so I’m going to continue picking on them just to be consistent.)Imagine such a situation where the King of Virginia disputes the rights of the citizen maintaining that those Constitutional rights only apply to federal actions and not to the royal state edicts? Or if a pure democracy were established in Massachusetts which voted to take citizens’ property without compensation as required under the Constitution holding that the taking clause only applies to federal actions?Regardless of they type of government a state may decide to create for itself, if it is fundamentally different in philosophy from that of the federal republic and fails to adhere to the elevation of the rule of law above other concerns, then the republic would be reduced into a confederation rather than a true republic. They had suffered enough increasing dissension and acrimony between the states in the twelve years under the Articles of Confederation and an inconstancy under the first eleven Presidents before the new Constitution.Thus the essence of the Constitutional guarantee by the federal government that each state should maintain a republican form of government is a federal assurance that the rule of law be applicable at every state level.The law was viewed as essential to proper governance of a free people and any state which refused to follow its own laws, or applied such laws in a biased or arbitrary fashion threatened not only its own citizens but could potentially threaten the stability of the union itself.It was just such an experience which lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 opposing some of the laws created by southern states which restricted voting of minorities under the pretense of reading qualifications or poll taxes which may have been facially fair but which were applied systematically to the disadvantage of black minorities in favor of the Democrat party.Fifty-five years later, and a couple generations removed, in various regions across the country largely in the north and the west, there again appears to be a systematic effort to deprive the citizenry of their suffrage through ballot stuffing and electronic miscounting enabled by unverified mail-in ballots and proprietary voting computers, along with what appears obviously illegal actions within polling places dominated by the Democrat party in urban areas.Oddly, people who applaud the federal government’s involvement with the Voting Rights Act are bemoaning the possibility of federal involvement with systemic election fraud of a more modern methodology.Those who understand the concept of a balance of powers, as I spoke of in a prior post regarding the 17th Amendment’s check on federal power, can clearly see this provision as a check on the potential abuses of a state government upon their own citizenry by denying them the rights and liberties due them under a republican form of government.What is the check of the people against a state which conducts fraudulent elections if the courts of that state collude with the executive officers of that state to not follow the election procedures established by the state legislatures?Of course one of those checks is that the state legislatures must themselves certify the results of the elections within their state to the federal government. This is an action which President Trump has recently implored them utilize in the current election much to the cries of “treason” by many leftist adherents who do not understand that while extreme it is a legal action available to the state legislatures if they are convinced that election fraud has occurred. The state legislatures are, in essence, the juries of their own state’s election process as carried out by their state’s executive offices.However, another check is the role of the federal government in the constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government in every state, which thus authorizes federal oversight in an election which might be provably violating that state’s own rules.The legal precedent of the Lake Eire Doctrine prohibits the federal government from imposing its own election standards upon the states, but this provision of the Constitution does authorize the federal government to hold the state to that state’s own proclaimed standards.If such a scenario and potential legal conflict sounds extreme, it is supposed to be so. This is not a question of routine but a provision of authority of last resort. It is the extremity of the legal process designed to prevent insurrection or dissolution caused by a systemic lack of confidence not in the general direction of the country but in the very internal legal processes of the nation itself.This is the grounds upon which the present election could end up in federal resolution should the states, particularly certain “swing states” fail to follow their own rules in assuring the rest of the nation of the integrity of the election. It is a federal concern because if the actions of a half dozen states are seen by the rest of the nation as unlawful, then it undermines the stability of all the other states.
