The Kansas Supreme Court offered a mixed bag in a ruling Friday that combined several challenges to a 2021 election law, siding with state officials on one provision, reviving challenges to others and offering the possibility that at least one will be halted before this year’s general election.
But it was the ballot signature verification measure’s majority opinion — which stated there is no right to vote enshrined in the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights — that drew fiery dissent from three of the court’s seven justices.
The US Constitution, on the other hand, does not oblige the federal government to recognize the electoral votes or congressional delegates of a state that does not enfranchise its citizens and submit to their will in the form of their votes.
The Guarantee Clause (article 4, section 4) of the constitution requires that state governments take the form of a republic, versus that of a theocracy or monarchy or dictatorship. (All republics involve some degree of democracy). Section 2 of the 14th Amendment says that if states deny citizens the right to vote, those states shall lose their representation at the federal level- that is, if you’re not a democracy that submits to the will of its voters, you can do that but in the process your electoral college votes and ability to send congressmen to DC goes away- and your state will lose its ability to influence federal law and to elect federal officials.
Of course, the current SCOTUS is likely to find some way to assert that anything giving the GOP political advantage must be what the framers would have wanted no matter how many ways they told us unambiguously they fucking wanted government derived from the consent of the governed.
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;
Calling it right now…the GOP is going to be using this wording to mean only Republicans can be in government.
I am sure the originalists will point out that there was no Republican party when the constitution was written. Therefore that could not have been the meaning.
/s
Well, there was the Democratic Republican party, founded by Jefferson and Madison. Interestingly enough, and perhaps inevitably, that party effectively split into the Democrats and Republicans. There’s Whigs in there and such, the absorbtion of competing parties, etc, but the ancestry is pretty clear.
It wasn’t technically there in 1776 but 1792 ain’t bad.
Something something muskets something 2nd amendment… ah forget it.
because the founding fathers would have regarded it as impossible for people in a democracy to become so braindead as to even ask that question? and yet here we are
“I don’t see a right to breathe air in the constitution either!”
Well the US Constitution does so it doesn’t really fucking matter, does it Kansas?
Does it?
States must have a constitution that guarantees a representative government. I’d love someone to take this to SCOTUS saying Kansas can’t have federal reprentation if they don’t guarantee the right to vote.
For your consideration, here is the text of section 2 of the 14th amendment:
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
A literal reading of this text, apart from the anachronism by which voters must be male and 21 (which should be overridden by the 19th amendment, which enfranchises women’s vote, and the fact that voting age today is 18) says that if your state doesn’t let its citizens vote and abide by the result, its electoral college votes won’t count either, and neither will its congressional delegation be seated.
How funny would it be if Kansas lost statehood?
They would lose their representation, not their statehood. There is no legal mechanism for a state to leave the union.
Yet
Well now that you’ve said that out loud, I could see conservatives being all over finding reasons to disqualify representation from blue states. (By which I mean make up reasons that sound good to a base that doesn’t think good)
Hard to disagree with Republicans trying when Democrats opened that can of worms. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/02/us/politics/trump-ballot-removal-map.html
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How did that remove anyone’s right to vote? If Obama again, would Republicans be right to challenge his eligibility? Or would you argue that that is denying the right to vote to people?
Removing a legal candidate illegally isn’t removing someone’s right to vote? If the GOP party does choose Trump, and you block entire states from being able to vote that candidate. That’s LITERALLY removing people’s right to vote.
If Obama
Served two terms which is the legal maximum. Everyone understands we can’t have a third. If dems forced it through and he ran again (regardless of winning a third or not) You can’t be surprised when the GOP tries for a third for a candidate either.
“trolling” Modlog report by @[email protected]
Grow up dude. Just because you don’t agree with someone’s stance doesn’t make it trolling.
Removing a legal candidate illegally isn’t removing someone’s right to vote?
They challenged the constitutionality of his candidacy< they didn’t remove the right to vote. So no, people can still vote after that. Pretty straightforward.
Also, if the theoretical Obama candidacy was upheld by the court, would you argue that they illegally tried to remove him?
Served two terms which is the legal maximum.
It’s a constitutional restriction, just like someone who took place in an insurrection or rebellion can’t run. Again, basic part of the case here.
Grow up dude. Just because you don’t agree with someone’s stance doesn’t make it trolling.
Take your own advice and realize that just because someone disagrees with you, that doesn’t mean they were the one who reported you.
Isn’t the requirement only that the government be “republican”? A republican government doesn’t necessarily have to be representative. It only needs to not be a monarchy.
Isn’t the requirement only that the government be “republican”? A republican government doesn’t necessarily have to be representative. It only needs to not be a monarchy.
That’s the requirement of the Guarantee Clause (article 4, section 4) of the constitution- in its time, it was about barring non-democracy states from statehood, it was a guarantee of protection of any state from foreign invasion, and protection of any state from internal coup or rebellion.
But, if you look at section 2 of the 14th Amendment, it’s a banger: if the right to vote is denied to citizens qualified to vote, the state doing it will lose its federal representation (as in, it will not just lose its electoral college votes in federal elections, its congressmen will not be seated). The purpose for this section of this amendment was to prevent confederate states from denying the formerly-enslaved the right to vote, and it should certainly apply today if Red-State legislators try to use their power to strip their citizens of their ability to meaningfully vote
Your comment about §2 of Amendment 14 doesn’t seem right. The text states that representation is reduced proportionally to the percentage of male citizens over 21 who are denied the right to vote.
Yes, that was the wording then, it was the qualification to vote (male, citizen, over 21). Since the adoption of the 19th Amendment (which happened after, and supercedes this text) that standard has included women and today you just need to be a citizen and over 18. The proportionality of loss of EC votes and congressional seating (these are apportioned on the same basis, after all) was about states like South Carolina and Mississippi, whose population of enslaved people exceeded that of white citizens- if these states didn’t respect the new citizenship and voting rights of most of their citizens, they’d lose more than half of their federal representation, and that in turn would cost them and their confederates influence in the resulting federal government.
My prior comment, made in the context of a Kansas court declaring that voting is not a right according to the Kansas constitution, was intended to point out that if nobody has that right in Kansas, that may be well and fine in Kansas politics, but if Kansas conducts itself in that way it will cost them influence federally, and that sets the stage for another round of Voting Rights Acts that can be used to guarantee voting rights federally even if states don’t want to do it themselves.
This was an interpretation of the Kansas state constitution, not the federal constitution.
A state Constitution can’t override the federal one. If the federal one says you have the right to vote, then you have the right to vote.
So that fuckhead is basically out of a job. Wtg
