Category: Vote

…by killing it? Really?

Colorado Supreme Court says Trump is ineligible to run again

This is a tough case. The section of the Constitution’s 14th amendment cited by the Colorado Supreme Court in justifying their decisions was designed to prevent those who previously served the United States but then served the confederacy from once again holding U.S. office. It reads in part:

Section 3
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
…
Section 5
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

The question really is this: What due process is required to conclude that a prior “officer of the United States … engaged in insurrection or rebellion”? Has Congress passed “…appropriate legislation…” to determine the required due process? Or was their intent to leave this determination to partisan, elected officials of the individual states – like the Colorado Supreme Court? Can you image the political “nuclear winter” that will follow if the Colorado Supreme Court ruling stands?

I am not a lawyer, but my guess is that the unstated right to participate in our government (“…government of the people, by the people, for the people…”) is a right that should not so lightly be curtailed. It is my belief that either proof of service with an entity at war with the United States (such as holding office under the Confederacy – what this provision was meant to address) or a conviction under U.S. law (or impeachment proceedings) for insurrection or rebellion should be required to deprive one of this right.

It is partisan attacks such as this that are the true danger to our democracy. The power must remain with the people via their right to vote for the candidate of their choice – not with those politicians who wield the law as a dull scythe to unjustly cut down their opponents.

PS: If you’re interested, a good overview of both sides of the Trump insurrection argument can be found here:

2023 National Lawyers Convention: Insurrection & the 14th Amendment

I’m not a fan of ranked choice voting. In this case I expected it to benefit the Republican candidate (especially in Alaska, where a Republican has held this seat for nearly 50 years). But, alas, people really hate Trump:

Peltola wins U.S. House race, first woman and Alaska Native to represent Alaska in House

The Trump-endorsed candidate (“I can see Russia from my house”) didn’t win 50% of the vote as required in the first round of vote counts – and, in fact, wasn’t even in the lead (the Democrat candidate was ahead by a significant margin). However, the third place candidate – eliminated under ranked-choice and whose votes were redistributed to their 2nd choice candidates – was a Republican. It was expected that their votes would go to the remaining Republican (and Trump-endorsed candidate), Sarah Palin, and give them the win. But, alas, people really hate Trump: only ~50% of these voters actually chose Palin as their 2nd choice. Roughly 21% of these votes had no 2nd choice candidate, and nearly 29% chose the Democrat candidate instead. It was enough for Democrat candidate and native Alaskan Mary Peltola to win the election, replacing the now-deceased Republican congressman (since 1973!) Don Young.

This was an interesting race, in part because ranked choice voting really didn’t change the election results; under the old “majority wins” rule the Democrat would have won anyway. But it does show that some voters will switch parties for their alternate choices if they simply don’t like one of their own party’s candidates. In the words if the iconic Mr. Spock: “Fascinating.”

I still don’t like rank choice voting; I can think of several ways such a system can be gamed (no need to cover them here and give people ideas…!).  But the willingness of voters to change parties for a 2nd choice candidate is intriguing.

Oh, yeah – and moderate voters simply don’t like Trump. Maybe the Democrat strategy of helping Trump candidates win primaries will pay off in the end.

Go figure.

The unions have failed to manage their member’s funds responsibly, so we’re going to bail them out? Why should Joe Taxpayer be on the hook for the union’s failure to invest member’s retirement funds responsibly?

Biden’s union pension bailout: What it means, and will it work?

Who’s going to bail out my pension fund when I mismanage it? And what incentive is there for a union to manage their retirement funds responsibly (or for union members to demand responsible management) when there are no penalties for failure?

Talk about buying votes with taxpayer funds… but what did we really expect from someone who promised people $2000 checks for voting Blue?

The left’s continued push to pass the “voting rights” bill (H.R. 1) with only the barest majority in the Senate – and that only with the assistance of the Vice President to break a tie – should be concerning to most Americans. Why the push to federalize our elections, and what do they hope to gain? Why is their legislation hell-bent on eliminating voter ID laws when 75 to 80% of Americans are for them? Will the contents of this bill be so beneficial to future Democratic campaigns that they would be willing to risk the use of another “nuclear option”, given how poorly these have worked out for them in the past? Let’s take a look at H.R. 1 and see if we can answer some of these questions. Because it’s an 886 page behemoth, we’ll only be looking at the portion of the bill associated with voting “rights”.

Continue reading “Voting rights my a##…”

Liberals want prisoners to be counted as residents where they last lived, rather than residents of where the prison that incarcerates them resides. The reason: doing so increases the population – and thus the representation – of Democrat-leaning areas. Apparently, prisons are in more Republican-leaning areas, while criminals reside in more Democrat-leaning areas (?!?).

Most Prisoners Can’t Vote, But They’re Still Counted In Voting Districts

But here’s the real hypocrisy: Illegal aliens, who typically migrate to left-leaning areas where they have both financial and political support, are counted as residents where they illegally reside. But using the same left-leaning logic as for prisoners, shouldn’t they be counted as residents of their home country and not as residents of the Unites States?

Talk about gerrymandering…

I wonder how many times Congress can create a state this way? This is simply a power grab, as it grants a clearly left-leaning population their own pair of seats in the Senate as well as a complement of Representatives in the House:

With Stronger Democratic Support, D.C. Statehood Fight Returns To Capitol Hill

The argument is that the 700,000 people living in the district do not have representation in Congress, something that would be rectified by statehood. The plan is to reduce the area of the federal district, which must remain independent, and take the rest of what is now Washington D.C. and make it a state.

But this is an absurd way to fix the problem of representation. The only reason these people don’t have representation is because the land forming the District was originally annexed from Virginia and Maryland, effectively stripping the inhabitants of the representation they had when the land was still part of these two states. The correct solution is not to take this annexed land and turn it into its own state; the correct solution is to return the land to its original status as part of Maryland and Virginia, and in so doing restore the original representation that these people enjoyed. In fact, this has already happen with the territory annexed from Virginia, which was retroceded in 1847.

If we allow the partisan politicians of Washington DC to create states from annexed land, where will it end? What’s to stop the next administration from re-annexing the former Virginia portion of D.C., then forming it into another state complete with two more Senators and an appropriate compliment of Representatives?

If the District wants to reduce its size then the land to be released should be retroceded back to Maryland, which will restore representation originally held by its people. There is no reason to use this land to create a new state – except as a political power grab.