Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Scalia: You have no right to vote for President
"Dean" Broder may actually be onto something here. During the Republican coup d'etat in election 2000:
Hmm.... In 2000, Florida. In 2004, Florida and Texas?
With more and more unauditable and Republican-programmed voting machines going in, and at least two major state Legislatures in the hands of Rovelicans who have already shown they will do whatever it takes to win and hold power, it looks to me like our Democracy is not nearly as healthy as we like to think it is.
the leaders of the Republican majority in the Florida legislature publicly asserted that if the outcome of the Florida voting were still in dispute on Dec. 12, the deadline for naming the state's presidential electors, the legislature itself would make the decision whether Florida's decisive votes would make George Bush president. They cited the authority granted in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which says that "each state shall appoint in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors" to cast the state's ballots for president.
The legislature did not have to follow through, because the U.S. Supreme Court settled the issue by halting the vote-counting and declaring Bush the winner. But in the course of the hearings before the high court, Justice Antonin Scalia told the lawyers representing Al Gore that "in fact, there is no right of suffrage under Article II."
[Alexander Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government takes the] view, which I share, that contemporary Americans would react with disbelief and anger to the "extraordinary . . . assertion that American citizens have no constitutional right to vote for president."
[Keyssar's] proposed solution: Adopt a one-sentence constitutional amendment stating "All American citizens shall have the right to vote for presidential electors in the state in which they reside."
I remember being astonished at the reminder in 2000 that our votes for president count only if the legislature chooses to count them.
Hmm.... In 2000, Florida. In 2004, Florida and Texas?
With more and more unauditable and Republican-programmed voting machines going in, and at least two major state Legislatures in the hands of Rovelicans who have already shown they will do whatever it takes to win and hold power, it looks to me like our Democracy is not nearly as healthy as we like to think it is.
