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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10591 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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The constitution vests the power of determining electors in the legislatures of each state, Congress can't touch it. For example, California prohibits the checking of IDs in their elections (for all obvious reasons) despite it being entirely constitutional for the California Legislature to redefine their method of electoral college voter assignment as a popular vote open to all persons residing or even just currently in the state.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2:

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.

&

"In McPherson v. Blacker (1892), the Supreme Court affirmed the ability of a state to appoint its electors based on electoral districts rather than a statewide popular vote, describing the power of state legislatures to determine the method of appointment of electors as 'plenary,' and suggesting that it was not limited even by state constitutions.**"

What Congress could do, in the imaginary world of unchecked supermajority power and lockstep ideological alignment, is define federal electoral fraud as an act of war, define the perpetrators of federal electoral fraud as unlawful enemy combatants and/or as guilty of treason, and summarily execute them. A nightmare for many reasons and not hyperbole so much as total fantasy driving the point of "Congress can't really do anything." Not anything within the system; declaring the entire government of a state as fraudulent and criminal, sending in the army to arrest them all and run the state via martial law while they get everything sorted out is within their "power," insofar as the sovereign can ultimately do whatever it has the power to do, but that's not the question.

The constitution vests the power of determining electors in the legislatures of each state, Congress can't touch it.

Weirdly that's only for Presidential electors and not for Congress.

Or at least I'm not aware of any analogous caselaw about the manner of congressional elections.

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