I think this is really cool. A great historical lesson on the Constitutions as well as what looks like the path it will take.

This 232-year-old power has never been used by Congress — but it could save the republic

Thom Hartmann, Independent Media Institute
December 22, 2021



House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Photo: Screen capture)


The Founders of this nation, and the Framers who wrote our Constitution, created (as Ben Franklin famously said) a constitutional republic: a government “deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed” through citizens’ (then white men) right to vote.

They referred to this as “republicanism” because it was based on the Greek and Roman republics (then thousands of years in the past but still remembered and idealized), and when put into law they called it “a Republican Form of Government.”

Today that form of government in crisis in America, as that core right to vote that defines republicanism is under attack by Republican legislators in red states across our nation.

“In emergency, break glass” is the almost-never-used option available should a building catch fire or otherwise be in crisis. There’s a similar alarm and safety valve built into the US Constitution that, like that glass in so many buildings, has never before been used to protect our republic.

It’s called the Guarantee Clause, and it’s the basis of the Right To Vote Act that has passed the House and is stalled by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

The Guarantee Clause, however, has never been used as a part of our everyday politics or law: most people, in fact, have never heard of it.

It’s never been used or adopted as law by the courts so it’s essentially “potential power,” a powerful but tightly coiled force quietly waiting for a real emergency, buried deep in our Constitution for 232 years.

But it comes alive when Congress activates it for the first time, which could be right now because the Freedom to Vote Act does just that, explicitly firing it up by name.

Joe Manchin is one of its co-sponsors, although it’s mostly an effort by Senators Klobuchar (its main sponsor), Kaine, King, Merkley, Padilla, Tester, and Warnock. On the Republican side, it appears to have support from Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.

And when you understand the background of the Guarantee Clause, the urgency and the consistency of The Right To Vote Act with the Framer’s vision about the possibility of this political moment is unmistakable:

July 18, 1787

It was a brutally hot summer in Philadelphia that year, and a week and a day after a mob chased down Mrs. Korbmacher on the streets outside Independence Hall (then the seat of the Pennsylvania legislature) and beat her to death for witchcraft.

Inside the Hall, the delegates were writing the Constitution for a new nation, and the question had come up whether the new US government should have the power — or the obligation — to “guarantee” that no state could so change its laws as to deprive its citizens of a “Republican Form of Government.”

This was particularly important, as British law at the time specifically outlawed republicanism: only monarchy was allowed, and citizens had to swear fealty to the king. Nowhere in the “civilized world” of 1787, in fact, was it legal for a nation to elect their own representatives and live under their own laws, all made and enforced “by the consent of the governed” through “a Republican Form of Government.”

At the end of the long, intense day, James Madison wrote a short letter to Thomas Jefferson, who was then the US envoy to France and living in Paris, assuring him he was taking “lengthy notes” but couldn’t fill his mentor in on the details because he was “still under the mortification of being restrained from disclosing any part of their proceedings.”

In fact, those notes taken during the Convention wouldn’t see publication for another roughly 50 years, after all the men in the Hall were dead, a concession to numerous delegates who’d essentially sold out their wealthy acquaintances by ensuring a republican democracy or allowing slavery to continue (there were compromises on both sides, some of which, like the electoral college and setup of the 2-votes-only-regardless-of-population Senate, cripple us to this day).

Before them for debate that day was proposed constitutional language: “That a republican constitution and its existing laws ought to be guarantied to each state by the United States.”

An immediate objection came up from both New York’s Gouverneur Morris and New Jersey’s William Houston, because that language would allow the new states to keep laws that some delegates thought weren’t “republican” in nature.

Morris, in particular, was an outspoken abolitionist and (from the left) wanted slavery phased out, and also opposed (from the right) laws like the one Rhode Island’s legislature was then debating that would have equalized all wealth in that state every 13 years. That “Jubilee” idea was a prescription for chaos, Morris believed, and thus a threat to the new republic.

The judgment of history weighed on Morris. Madison later recounted that, “He came here as a representative of America; he flattered himself he came here in some degree as a Representative of the whole human race; for the whole human race will be affected by the proceedings of this Convention.”

Thus it was no surprise when Morris rose to object that the proposed language could keep terrible state laws in place.

“Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS thought the resolution very objectionable,” Madison wrote. “He should be very unwilling that such laws as exist in Rhode Island should be guarantied.”

New Jersey’s William Houston, a mathematics professor and abolitionist who served as a Captain in Washington’s army, concurred — although he was more concerned with not wanting to encourage laws that maintained slavery and debt peonage.

“Mr. HOUSTON,” Madison noted, “was afraid of perpetuating the existing constitutions of the states. That of Georgia was a very bad one, and he hoped would be revised and amended.”

At which point several men rose to point out they were debating the power of the federal government to “guarantee a Republican Form of Government” to all the states — but what if power-hungry people in a particular state were to rise up in rebellion and seize control of that state’s government, thus ending statewide republicanism and creating a minor dictatorship or cult?

And then, what if that state then threatened other states’ ability to have a government reflecting the will of the people?

Or tried to take them over either by corrupting them from within or invasion? (This was not an idle fear: both happened just 74 years later in 1861.)

Massachusetts’ Nathaniel Gorham was particularly outspoken about this, given how there had been attempts by both rich landowners and Pilgrim clergy in his state over the past century to turn the state into a dictatorial theocracy (leading Roger Williams to flee and split off Rhode Island in the 1670s).

If such a thing were to happen again and succeed, Gorham wondered, shouldn’t the federal government have the power to intervene so it could guarantee the states around Massachusetts and its residents a republican form of government where those with political power had to answer to “the people” rather than just the clergy or the rich? What if a wealthy oligarch declared himself a monarch?

“Mr. GORHAM thought it strange that a rebellion should be known to exist in the empire,” Madison wrote, “and the general government should be restrained from interposing to subdue it. At this rate, an enterprising citizen might erect the standard of monarchy in a particular state; might gather together partisans from all quarters; might extend his views from state to state, and threaten to establish a tyranny over the whole,—and the general government be compelled to remain an inactive witness of its own destruction.” [emphasis added]

In response, Pennsylvania’s James Wilson, a scholar of Greek democracy and an abolitionist, suggested different language for the Fourth Section of the Constitution’s Fourth Article:

“[T]hat a republican form of government shall be guarantied to each state; and that each state shall be protected against foreign and domestic violence.”

That did the trick.

“This seeming to be well received,” Madison noted, “Mr. MADISON and Mr. RANDOLPH withdrew their propositions, and, on the question for agreeing to Mr. Wilson’s motion, it passed, nem. con.” The convention then adjourned for the day and Madison went home to write his letter to Jefferson.

That day’s debate is what gave us Section 4 of Article IV of the Constitution:

“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.”

It’s an amazing sentence, that could be as sweeping in its power as the Commerce Clause (which JFK and LBJ used to force integration of the South), but has never really been used in any meaningful way since it was written on that hot summer day in 1787.

The first time this “Guarantee Clause” came before the Supreme Court, slavery was the law of the land and Chief Justice Roger Taney, a former slaveholder, was determined to keep it that way by bottling up that Clause’s power.

Seven years before he tried to cement slavery into the law of every state in the union with his Dred Scott decision, Taney ruled in Luther v Borden (1849) that his Supreme Court would never be allowed to interfere with state’s rights on the basis of the Guarantee Clause.

“Under this article of the Constitution,” Taney wrote, “it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a state.”

In other words, Taney said: The definition of what a ‘Republican Form of Government’ actually means isn’t yet laid out in the law or previous interpretations of the Constitution: therefore, it’s politics. And politics is the province of Congress, not the Supreme Court, which must limit itself to law.

On that foundation, later Supreme Courts repeated Taney’s assertion that the question was political and not one to be decided by the courts: instead it was up to the politicians in Congress if they were going to “guarantee a Republican Form of Government” to — or within — any particular state at any point in the future.

Taney was quoted “lucidly and cogently” in Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph v Oregon (1912) and Chief Justice John Roberts noted in 2019 that, “This Court has several times concluded that the Guarantee Clause does not provide the basis for a justiciable claim.”

Thus, to this day, it’s up to Congress, not the Court, to decide what a “Republican Form of Government” is and how Congress will guarantee it to and/or within every state.

Which brings us to today, and how Congress can end partisan gerrymanders, dial back the power of money in politics, and guarantee the right of every American citizen to vote without undue difficulty.

The opening of the Freedom To Vote Act lays it out clearly:

“Congress also finds that it has both the authority and responsibility, as the legislative body for the United States, to fulfill the promise of article IV, section 4, of the Constitution, which states: ‘The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a “Republican Form of Government.”’” [emphasis added]

The proposed law even notes as justification for its existence how the Supreme Court has dropped — or laid down — the ball and therefore Congress must pick it up:

“Congress finds that its authority and responsibility to enforce the Guarantee Clause is clear given that Federal courts have not enforced this clause because they understood that its enforcement is committed to Congress by the Constitution.”

The Freedom To Vote Act ensures a “Republican Form of Government” in America by providing:

• Automatic voter registration and online registration for 16 year olds who will be 18 and thus eligible to vote in the next election
• Same day voter registration nationwide
• Ends partisan gerrymandering
• Limits campaign contributions to a maximum of $10,000
• Criminalizes “pass through” groups to get around campaign finance laws
• Requires companies to fully and rapidly disclose all election spending over $10,000
• Requires all websites (like Facebook) with more than 50 million users to create a publicly available and publicly searchable archive of political ads
• Brings web-based election expenditures under the same disclosure rules as TV
• Makes it a federal crime to prevent a person from registering to vote
• Requires 14 consecutive days for early voting, at least 10 hours each day
• Requires easy access to polling places for rural and college campus voters, and easy access to voting for all voters by public transportation
• Guarantees that all voters, nationwide, can vote by mail with no excuses necessary
• Guarantees that all voters can put themselves on a permanent vote-by-mail list and automatically receive a ballot in the mail
• Requires states to give voters the ability to track their mail-in ballots to be sure they’re counted or contest any challenge to their ballot
• Forbids states from forcing mail-in voters to have their ballots witnessed, notarized or jump through other onerous hoops
• Requires secured and clearly labeled ballot drop boxes in all jurisdictions
• Requires the Post Office to process all ballots on the day they’re dropped off and without postage
• Requires states to keep voting lines shorter than 30 minutes in all cases and places
• Allows people waiting in line to vote to receive food or water from others
• Gives the right to vote to all felons who have served their sentences, in all states
• Prohibits voter “caging” where failure to return a postcard gets you purged
• Prohibits states from deleting voters from the rolls because they haven’t recently voted
• Empowers voters to sue in federal court any state or local officials who interfere with their right to vote
• Criminalizes intimidating, threatening or coercing any election official or election worker
• Requires federal prosecution of anybody who tries to harm or undermine public officials by doxxing the personal information of an election worker or their immediate family
• Makes it a federal crime to publish or distribute false information about elections (when, where, etc.)
• Increases federal penalties for voter intimidation or otherwise interfering with your absolute right to vote
• Keeps partisan “poll watchers” at least 8 feet from voters in all circumstances, including while voting
• Requires paper ballots in all cases and all elections (there are exceptions for disabled voters)
• Requires post-election audits
• Provides criminal penalties for any candidate or campaign that fails to fully and immediately report any interactions with foreign governments
• Gives lower income individuals $25 they can use to give to candidates in $5 or more increments

The Freedom To Vote Act is more urgently needed with every passing day, as multiple Republican-controlled states openly (and ironically) tear down actual “republican principles” of representative government by continuing to pass laws that pre-rig election outcomes.

Some have even gone so far as to introduce laws that authorize their legislatures to ignore or reject votes they don’t like, in anticipation of the 2024 election.

Passing this law must now be the Senate’s first priority because, “It’s a republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.”

https://www.rawstory.com/voting-rights-2656094670/

 

This isn't the state of Pennsylvania's election investigation, it's being done by the GOP.

 

Now the election workers in Georgia have filed suit against Giuliani. Can Trump be far behind?

 

I should have added the two election workers suing Giuliani are also suing OAN. That is personally funny to me.

 

That's a real hoot...

 

Just a few discoveries that were found in a few counties in Arizona's broken voter system...that were sent to the AG office.

voter pop. 182....registered voters ---282

voter pop. 1375.. registered voters----2762

40 voters live at a business address...the Business is the County election board

a college frat house ...27 registered voters....average age is ...45.

62 early ballots where the voter is not a resident of that household....

45% of early ballots that were mailed to several different households stated the addressed ballot had a name on it that the household resident was unknown.

 

So out of the 50,000 dead voters Trump said voted in Georgia they managed to find 4.

 

Trump claims 5,000 dead people voted in Georgia – but the real number is four

Martin Pengelly
Tue, December 28, 2021, 9:03 AM



Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Donald Trump has claimed 5,000 dead people voted in 2020 in Georgia, a state he lost to Joe Biden on his way to national defeat.

Related: Capitol panel to investigate Trump call to Willard hotel in hours before attack

He was off by 4,996.

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Monday, state officials have confirmed four cases of dead people voting.


All involved family members submitting votes for the deceased, cases in which the state has the power to levy fines.

In one case detailed by the paper, a widow submitted an absentee ballot for her husband after he died in September, two months before polling day.

An attorney for the 74-year-old woman reportedly told officials her husband “was going to vote Republican, and she said, ‘Well, I’m going to cancel your ballot because I’m voting Democrat.’ It was kind of a joke between them. She received the absentee ballot and carried out his wishes.

“She now realises that was not the thing to do.”

Even if Trump’s claim about dead voters were true, it would not have saved him from being the first Republican to lose Georgia since 1992. Biden won the state by nearly 12,000 votes. Nor could Georgia alone have overturned Trump’s electoral college defeat, by 306-232.

But Trump included his claim in a notorious call in which he pushed the Georgia secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to give him victory.

“Dead people,” Trump said. “So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.”

He also claimed that “a tremendous number of dead people” voted in Michigan, adding: “I think it was … 18,000. Some unbelievably high number, much higher than yours, you were in the 4-5,000 category.”

Referring to a claim of “upward of 5,000” dead voters he said was presented to Georgia officials, Raffensperger, said: “The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So that’s wrong.”

Trump insisted: “In one state, we have a tremendous amount of dead people. So I don’t know – I’m sure we do in Georgia, too. I’m sure we do in Georgia, too.”

Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told Raffensperger: “You say they were only two dead people who would vote. I can promise you there are more than that.”

Related: The View seeks conservative to replace McCain – and angers ‘Never Trumpers’

Raffensperger refused to help Trump, prompting threats to his safety. But the call also placed Trump in legal jeopardy, as a district attorney investigates whether he broke electoral law.

The call was part of scattershot attempts to overturn a defeat Trump insists in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary was the result of electoral fraud.

A few days after the call, on 6 January, Trump told supporters in Washington to “fight like hell” in his cause. Rioters then attacked the US Capitol, seeking to stop certification of Biden’s win, in some cases seeking to capture or kill officials including Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence.

Five people died.

 

Such hack fuck bullshit and propaganda.

You hack fucks have no understanding of a Constitutional Republic, you hack fucks constantly substitute the word Republic with Democracy.

The Guarantee Clause has nothing to do with voting rights...nothing at all, it has everything to do with the federal fucking government providing protection from foreign invasion and domestic violence and not permitting State laws to supersede Federal fucking government law like the infamous sanctuary cities do.

The hack fucks misinterpretation of the Guarantee Clause is exactly that..a hack fucks fucked up wet dream of reality.

 

A distinction without a difference.

 

BULLSHIT.... this country has a rule of law, it's called the U.S. Constitution....not mob rule dickhead.

 

Here is one for ace's..........



Thinskin

 

The scent of blood money is definitely in the water now and all the money sharks are circling.

Now even a Vesilanvian businessman has filed a $250 million defamation suit against the Kraken et al.

 

Hilarious....election fraud before the election!



Thinskin

 

Texas Audit Finds Over 11,000 Potential Non Citizens Registered to Vote, Other Problems
https://yournews.com/2022/01/02/227...r-11000-potential-non-citizens-registered-to/
Voting irregularities—including potentially thousands of votes cast by non-citizens and the dead—were reported during the first phase of the Texas Secretary of State’s forensic audit of the 2020 general election, but critics deemed it more of a risk-limiting audit at this point.

The Texas Secretary of State’s office released its findings on Dec. 31, but the issues found are not enough to significantly impact 2020 election results of the four counties involved in the audit—Collin, Dallas, Harris, and Tarrant counties—which account for about 10 million people, or a third of the Texas population.

Findings include:

• Statewide, a total of 11,737 potential non-U.S. citizens were identified as being registered to vote. Of these, 327 records were identified in Collin County, 1,385 in Dallas County, 3,063 in Harris County, and 708 in Tarrant County. So far, Dallas County has canceled 1,193 of these records, with Tarrant County canceling one. Neither Collin nor Harris have canceled any potential non-voting records.

• Since November 2020, 224,585 deceased voters have been removed from the voter rolls in Texas. Collin County removed 4,889 deceased voters, Dallas County removed 14,926 deceased voters, Harris County removed 23,914 deceased voters, and Tarrant County removed 13,955 deceased voters.

• Statewide, a total of 67 potential votes cast in the name of deceased people are under investigation. Of those, three were cast in Collin County, nine in Dallas County, four in Harris County, and one in Tarrant County.

• In a review of each county’s partial manual count report required under Texas law, three of the four counties reported discrepancies between ballots counted electronically versus those counted by hand. The reported reasons for these discrepancies will be investigated and verified during Phase 2 of the audit.

Taylor said the state’s audit, currently moving into its second phase, was a first-of-its-kind for Texas.


Secretary of State John Scott portrayed the audit as the country’s “most comprehensive forensic audit of the 2020 election,” according to a November press release. He added the audit will use “analytical tools to examine the literal nuts and bolts of election administration to determine if any illegal activity may have occurred.”

 

Biden/harris may have shot himself in the foot with his focus on testing.

 

First phase of Trump Texas vote 'audit' finds the usual result: Nothing to see here

Ray Hartmann
January 01, 2022



. (Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com)


Texas officials today released the first-phase findings of an election ‘audit’ demanded by Donald Trump in three counties in which President Joe Biden (along with a fourth) and to the surprise of no one, it was a waste of time and money.

Here’s reporting from TV station 5NBCDFW in a story headlined, “Preliminary Findings of 2020 Election Audit Finds Little Trouble in Big Texas Counties”:

“The office of John Scott, who was appointed Texas Secretary of State in October 2021, said Friday 3,885,875 votes were cast in the November 2020 election in Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, and Harris counties and that those nearly 4 million votes represent approximately 35% of the roughly 11.3 million votes cast statewide.



“The preliminary report found that out of those nearly 4 million votes in those four counties, there were 17 deceased voters and 60 cross-state duplicate votes. The report also confirmed that the counties were removing deceased voters from voter rolls as expected.”

And there was this from the Texas Tribune:

“First part of Texas’ 2020 election audit reveals few issues, echoes findings from review processes already in place: An initial review of four counties’ election results — launched after pressure from former President Donald Trump and touted by GOP leaders — showed few discrepancies between electronic and hand counts of ballots in a sample of voting precincts.”

The Tribune reported:

“The much-hyped four-county review by the secretary of state’s office, the state agency that oversees elections, was announced in September, just hours after former President Donald Trump publicly pressed Gov. Greg Abbott to add election audit legislation to the agenda for the state’s third special legislative session last fall. As part of his baseless effort to cast doubt on the outcome of his failed reelection bid, Trump’s call came despite the lack of evidence of irregularities in the state’s election — and the fact that he won the state.

“The official overseeing the review, Secretary of State John Scott, previously helped Trump challenge 2020 election results in Pennsylvania. Appointed to the position by Abbott, Scott said in an October interview with The Texas Tribune that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election and that he has “not seen anything” to suggest that the election was stolen from Trump.

“In a statement on Friday, Isabel Longoria, election administrator for Harris County, said the Harris County clerk’s office “processed, checked, and balanced a fair and accurate election in November 2020.” After conducting a hand count of mail-in ballots from the 2020 election, Longoria said her office “found no notable concerns.”

“Conducting a hand-count on a scale as large as the November 2020 election is an intensive process,” Longoria said. “The process included manually sorting 179,174 ballots by precinct, followed by a hand-count for 10 precincts that were designated by the Secretary of State. Despite this challenge, our team was able to match the count with a discrepancy of only five ballots.”

In November 2020, votes from the four counties under review made up about 4 million — or about 35% — of the 11.3 million votes cast statewide.



https://www.rawstory.com/trump-vote-audit/