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To: Tau Food

> What sets the office of the presidency apart is not the unique qualifications. What sets the office of the presidency apart is that the Constitution specifies how a President is to be chosen and specifies that a President is to be chosen by a constitutional group of constitutional actors called Electors. The only function of Electors is to choose a President and Vice-President. It is their exclusive bailiwick.

The electoral process is a political process defined by law.

> There is absolutely no Constitutional basis for transferring any of their duties to courts.

Electors have no authority to decide questions of law. There is no transfer of duties to courts. To the contrary, you wish to transfer courts’ duties to Electors.

> There is absolutely no reason to believe that judges would be any better than Electors at evaluating the worthiness of candidates.

“Worthiness” is not the question, being legally eligibility is the question and such questions are exclusively within the purview of the Judiciary.


166 posted on 11/15/2015 10:04:29 PM PST by Ray76
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To: Ray76

legally eligibility = legally eligible


167 posted on 11/15/2015 10:19:57 PM PST by Ray76
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To: Ray76
Obviously, the fact that the courts avoided becoming involved in the controversy regarding the candidacy of Obama is not enough to convince you that the courts do not believe that they have a role to play in qualifying or disqualifying candidates for President. I am not surprised because I believe that they have no role in qualifying or disqualifying candidates. If the Supreme Court believed that it has such a role and if the Court believed that a candidate is required to be the product of two American citizens to be qualified to be President, I believe that the Supreme Court would have become involved in 2008-2009. Moreover, I want to believe that the Chief Justice would not have volunteered to administer the oath of office to a man that the Chief Justice believed was not qualified to serve as President. (I say volunteered because the Chief Justice is not required to perform that function.)

I think that somewhere you got the notion that only courts can become involved with anything that can be called legal. This is reflected by your statement that "Electors have no authority to decide questions of law." But, of course, every constitutional actor must, at a minimum, "decide questions of law" in order 1) to determine that he/she has a constitutional duty to perform, 2) to determine the proper scope of his/her duty, and 3) to determine what, if any, steps must be taken to properly perform his/her duty. Legal questions are being decided every single day by persons who do not wear robes and many of the resulting decisions are not reviewable by courts.

Obviously, we cannot resolve your claim that the courts have the power to pass upon the qualifications of candidates for the Presidency. That issue can only be resolved if and when a court ever claims to possess that power. I do not believe that that will ever happen. So, when you vote, choose carefully.

170 posted on 11/16/2015 5:33:13 AM PST by Tau Food (Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.)
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