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To: conservative98
This should be very hard for the liberals on the court to twist. It should be a "slam-dunk" 9-0 decision if we had an honest court.

The 14th amendment clearly puts the power to decide what an insurrectionist is onto Congress.

The only power the state has is to choose the method of selecting Electors to the Electoral College.

That said, watch the liberals try to twist the Electors into the modern convenience of being rubber stamps for the candidates. The Framers didn't expect the Electors to be sets of predetermined party insiders for each candidate; they expected the states to choose Electors from leading businessmen, scholars, and land owners in the state, and those people would vote for the President.

Federalist #68 (Alexander Hamilton):

It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

...The choice of SEVERAL, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of ONE who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.

...They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment. And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors. Thus without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias. Their transient existence, and their detached situation, already taken notice of, afford a satisfactory prospect of their continuing so, to the conclusion of it. The business of corruption, when it is to embrace so considerable a number of men, requires time as well as means. Nor would it be found easy suddenly to embark them, dispersed as they would be over thirteen States, in any combinations founded upon motives, which though they could not properly be denominated corrupt, might yet be of a nature to mislead them from their duty.

Given that the Framers intended for the people to vote for smart, influential non-government people to gather to debate, analyze, investigate, and vote for the President, and that this temporary body cannot be made up of people who hold existing offices in the federal or state governments, any court that tries to interfere with this body by putting restrictions on its deliberations (like who they can vote for), is plainly unconstitutional and must be struck down unamimously.

-PJ

p.s. This part of Federalist #68 teases the natural-born citizen requirement to be president. They expected the members of the Electoral College to discover foreign allegiances and reject their candidacies.

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention.

29 posted on 12/19/2023 10:16:14 PM PST by Political Junkie Too ( * LAAP = Left-wing Activist Agitprop Press (formerly known as the MSM))
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To: conservative98
Furthermore...

A system of election more closely aligned with the original intent of the Framers would be this:

  1. There are no "slates" of Electors grouped by the candidate's name. Therefore, there would be no candidate on the ballot that a court can ban from appearing.
  2. Each Congressional district would hold an election for the Elector to the Electoral College. Influential people (business leaders, clergy, land owners, etc.) can all choose to run for Elector as long as they hold no other office of trust in the government.
  3. The state legislature will choose the two statewide Electors derived from the Senate membership. In a bicameral legislature they can choose to let each chamber choose one each, or they can choose two and let the chambers vote, or something else.
  4. On the designated date, the chosen Electors meet at the designated place and deliberate. Each Elector then gets one vote. The votes are tallied, sealed, and delivered to Congress.
There is no room in this process for a court to impose rules and restrictions on the Electors. Without Congress exercising its 14th amendment power to pass laws to enforce the 14th amendment, states that try to influence the outcome of the Electoral College by restricting the people the Electors can choose from is in opposition to what Hamilton wrote in Federalist #68, and is an unconstitutional insertion of a federal office that was explicitly excluded from participating in the Electoral College deliberations.

Article II Section 1

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
If members of the judiciary are excluded from being in the Electoral College, then their power to control the choosing of Electors or whom the Electors can select must be excluded, too, or they might as well just be the Electoral College itself.

-PJ

32 posted on 12/19/2023 10:38:37 PM PST by Political Junkie Too ( * LAAP = Left-wing Activist Agitprop Press (formerly known as the MSM))
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To: Political Junkie Too
Just one more of the problems, we do not have an honest court. We don't even havea complete rational, educated and smart court, let alone a wise one. Oh yes, we have the wise latina.... BFD.

We were once told we have a Republic if we can keep it. Well, we haven't.

Some say the first part of the last century was as bad or worse in threats to the republic by socialism and communism...I'm doubting that. Doubting it very much.

34 posted on 12/19/2023 10:59:12 PM PST by Sequoyah101 (Procrastination is just a form of defiance)
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To: Political Junkie Too
The 14th amendment clearly puts the power to decide what an insurrectionist is onto Congress.

18 U.S. Code ยง 2383 - Rebellion or insurrection, would like to have a word with you.

39 posted on 12/19/2023 11:48:48 PM PST by thegagline (Sic semper tyrannis! Goldwater in 2024)
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