General Discussion

In an email this morning, he wrote, it’s “important to point out to your readers that the Constitution on the surface says that the states do have 100% power over elections, but (there was an) obstructed console that was not noticed for many many years because it looks exactly like a faded shadow from the line above it, (so) I decided to go back the next day with a high-powered magnifier to add to the microfilm magnifier in order to still barely make out what it said… it said dictate electoral outcomes unfairly and the states cannot do that and then the actual words dictate electoral outcomes is also in that 1995 Supreme Court case and they elaborate in great detail such as the states powers designed by the framers were meant to be procedural, and their actions cannot compromise integrity of the election (to) favor or disfavor a certain class of candidate, or evade constitutional restraints.”

As I wrote to the person who asked me about this, The idea that there is hidden language in the Constitution that vests electoral power in the federal government, in contradiction to the actual vesting in the states subject to congressional override in t elections, is laughable. If this is what the President was referring to as “irrefutable” proof to support an executive order on elections, he’s more gullible and ignorant than I thought.

As to U.S. Term Limits v. Thrornton, that is a Supreme Court case in which the Supreme Court held that states did not have the power, even in the Article I, Section 4 Elections Clause, to alter the qualifications listed in the Constitution to serve in Congress. In the course of discussing how the Elections Clause power does not extended to altering congressional qualifications set forth in the Constitution, Justice Stevens wrote: {snip}

I’ve bolded the language (between the asterisks) that the insane Substack post points to. It does not come close to saying what the substacker implies. Justice Stevens in U.S. Term Limits was commenting on the limited power of states under the Elections Clause to do things like dictate electoral outcomes. That’s surely right. But nothing in the case, or in the Constitution, or in the super-secret part of the Constitution visible only on microfilm in a Florida library, says that the President, acting unilaterally, has the power to make or alter state regulations on the conduct of elections. The elections clause indeed provides that the only body that can override states’ regulations of elections is Congress, not the President.