The Right to Vote Includes the Right to Have the Vote Counted

Posted on by December 21, 2023
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Some defenders of the Colorado decision Anderson v Griswold say that the ruling doesn’t injure the right to vote, because any voter is still free to cast a write-in for Donald Trump; it’s just that the write-in can’t be counted.

But the U.S. Supreme Court in the past has said that the Fourteenth Amendment requires that all voters be treated equally, and that the right to vote includes the right to have the vote counted. In Gray v Sanders, 372 US 368, at page 380, the Court wrote, “The Court has consistently recognized that all qualified voters have a constitutionally protected right to ‘cast their ballots and have them counted at congressional elections’ United Sttes v Classic, 313 US 299 at 315; see Ex Parte Yarbrough, 110 US 651; Wiley v Sinkler, 179 US 58; Swafford v Templeton, 185 US 487. Every voter’s vote is entitled to be counted once. It must be correctly counted and reported. As stated in United States v Mosley, 238 US 383 at 386, ‘the right to have one’s vote counted’ has the same dignity as ‘the right to put a ballot in a box.'”

Justice William O. Douglas wrote in South v Peters, 339 US 276, at 279, “There is more to the right to vote than the right to mark a piece of paper and drop it into a box or the right to pull a lever in a voting booth. The right to vote includes the right to have the ballot counted.”

Tuscarawas County Sheriff Leaves Democratic Party and Will Run for Re-Election as an Independent

Posted on by December 21, 2023
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On December 21, Orvis Campbell, the sheriff of Tuscarawas County, Ohio, said he has switched from being a Democrat to an independent. He will run for re-election as an independent. Ohio, like most states, has partisan elections for county executive offices.

He said he thinks he can perform his job better if he is an independent. He said recently he had trouble working with a crime victim because the victim said he was uncomfortable working with a Democratic Party member. See this story.

Twentieth Amendment Seems to Say that Voters and Presidential Electors May Choose a President Who Doesn’t Meet the Constitutional Qualifications

Posted on by December 21, 2023
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The Twentieth Amendment, passed in 1933 to change the inauguration date for presidents from March to January, seems to say that both voters and presidential electors are permitted to vote for individuals who don’t meet the constitutional qualifications. It says, “If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President has failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified.”

The clause “or if the President has failed to qualify” shows that the authors of this constitutional amendment imagined that the voters might have chosen someone who doesn’t qualify. Therefore, logically, it seems they believed that the voters (and presidential electors as well) should have the ability to vote for someone who isn’t qualified; otherwise there would never been an instance at which the president-elect “failed to qualify.”

In 1972, Linda Jenness, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for president who was only age 31 at the time, waged a court battle to be allowed on the Ohio ballot, despite being under-age. Her attorneys relied on this language in the 20th amendment in their federal lawsuit, Jenness v Brown, s.d., civ-72-204. U.S. District Court Judge Joseph D. Kinneary brushed off this argument by saying, in an unreported decision, that the purpose of the 20th amendment was not to change the age qualification, a statement that is not really responsive to Jenness’ argument.

The December 21 Wall Street Journal has an op-ed, mentioning this language in the 20th amendment, by John C. Harrison and Saikrishna Prakash. It is behind a paywall. It does not mention Jenness v Brown, but it makes the same argument that Jenness had made.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post Says 14th Amendment Should Not be Used to Prevent Americans from Voting to Elect the Candidate of Their Choice

Posted on by December 21, 2023
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Ruth Marcus, deputy editorial page editor for the Washington Post, writes here that the 14th amendment, section 3, should not be used “to prevent Americans from voting to elect the candidate of their choice.” She hopes the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reverses the Colorado State Supreme Court decision Anderson v Griswold.