A new political party, which exists only in New Jersey so far, has filed petitions to place its nominees for U.S. Senate, U.S. House in two districts, and County Freeholder in two counties on the November 2012 ballot. However, New Jersey election officials have rejected the petitions because the name of the party is the Democratic-Republican Party. It is somewhat likely the group will sue.
The party doesn’t yet have a web page, but is associated with the web page boldtruth.com. That web page presents the case that in the early 1790’s, a constitutional amendment did actually get ratified. That amendment requires a member of the U.S. House for each 50,000 inhabitants.
The party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison was the Democratic-Republican Party. It was one of the two major parties during the period 1792 through 1820. The state won’t permit the name because the state says the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have exclusive title to those two words.
Why do they think that constitutional amendment was ratified?
I’ve been wondering what line those slogan pending candidates on the state election divisions list of candidates were running under. Now my curiosity is satisfied, thanks for posting this!
#1 When the Bill of Rights was proposed in September 1789, it was actually a package of 12 proposed amendments, and States were invited to ratify any or all of them. By 1791, 11 of 14 States (including Vermont) had ratified the 10 amendments that we now refer to as the 1st through 10th Amendments.
The other two proposed amendments had been ratified by 10 and 6 States, respectively. When Kentucky entered the Union, it ratified all 12 amendments – the ratification of of the 10 amendments of the Bill of Rights was technically null, since by the time they entered to Union (ie agreed to become a party to the Constitution), they were already part of the Constitution.
The other two amendments were left with 11/15 and 7/15 ratifications. 11/15 is one short of the 3/4 needed for ratification. Much later, the amendment that had 7 ratifications in 1791, was ratified by 3/4 of the 50 States and became what we now refer to as the 27th Amendment. Somebody had discovered that its ratification was still pending. Because it was fun to participate in ratification of part of the Bill of Rights, and it sends a message of controlling excessive spending by Congress (on itself), without much practical effect, it secured enough ratifications to become part of the Constitution.
The final of the 12 Amendments, which reached 11 of 15, or just one short of the 3/4 needed, never was ratified. The folks at boldtruth.com contend that the Connecticut legislature did ratify the final amendment. The two houses disagreed on whether to ratify the 2nd article (27th Amendment), and then the house rescinded its ratification of the 1st article.
So you get issues of whether concurrent agreement on the set of amendments was needed; or whether it was possible for concurrence to occur for each individual amendment, even though the Connecticut legislature was using a single resolution to selectively ratify individual amendments; and whether rescind ratification. Note, conventional wisdom is that Connecticut failed to ratify any of the Bill of Rights, until 1939, when on the sesquicentennial of their proposal, they along with Massachusetts and Georgia decided that free speech, etc. were actually good ideas after all.
But even if the apportionment amendment was ratified, the version that was sent to the States would require no *more* than 1 representative per 50,000; rather than no less. In other words, it sets a maximum size of the House of Representative based on population, rather than a minimum size. That is, based on a population of 310 million; that the House must have less than 6200 members. 435 is less than 6200.
The folks at boldtruth.com contend that there was a clerical error, and that even if a State legislature was sent an erroneous copy, and formally ratified the text of the flawed copy, they were actually ratifying the version that Congress intended to ratify (Congress never approved an actual complete text, but a text, plus a description of revision. Clerks then produced a “final” version which was written out and sent to the States).
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Jim Riley
What about Canada? I note Article XI of the Article of
Confederation. Looking at that with a read of the Garfield Act of 1877, it is not that clear how the
citizens by that collective naturalization act, are to
be treated if the Crows Nest Agreement is repealed and ends the union of 1867 in Canada. Food for thought.
Also, the Washington Islands of the remainder of the
Territory of Michigan still does not have the 5,000
for a delegate to Congress. That number is closer than
the 50,000 you stated above.
Sincerly, Mark Seidenberg, Chairman, American Independent Party of California
of Canada