Let me begin with a shocking statement that people generally do not know. Read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; you will not find any mention of a right to vote. Surprisingly, nowhere in the original text will you find any mention that U.S. citizens have a right to vote. All the ideas of having a right to vote in our pretend Democracy stems from amendments adopted following the U.S. Civil War and legislation passed during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. So, Constitutionally, this leaves even a grey area that the Democrats are trying to drive the election through, claiming there is nothing in the Constitution regarding any right to vote whatsoever. This has led to some suggesting that as President, Biden can issue an executive order allowing all RESIDENTS the right to vote.
I received a phone call asking my opinion:
“Could the election be positioned?”
Actually, the election can be delayed/postponed but not postponed indefinitely. The ONLY hard deadline spelled out in the Constitution is the END of a president’s term and a vice president’s term on January 20th of the year following a general election. The deadline is restated in the 22nd Amendment. Keep in mind that FDR served more than two terms. That was the purpose of this Amendment.
The Constitution requires that a group of electors, commonly called the Electoral College, choose the next president without mentioning the people voting. If a majority of electors fails to agree on a winner, Congress picks the winner in continental elections held within Congress under the terms of the 12th Amendment. It was the election of 1824 when Andrew Jackson won the most popular votes but the election ended up in the House. The 12th Amendment only stated that the House selects the president by majority with no reference to a candidate who had the most popular or electoral votes should become president. Once again, we can see that the people’s choice does not really matter.
In 1824, the Federalist had collapsed. The Democratic-Republican Party had won six consecutive presidential elections and was the only national political party. It was the fact that this election was decided by Congress that resulted in the split of that party into the Democrats vs the Republicans (South vs North).
Let’s look at Article II, Section 2. It clearly states that “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.” There is no mention of an individual right to vote anywhere in the original Constitution.
Then, Article II, Section 1 delegates the Electoral College deadlines to Congress: “The Congress may determine the Time of chusing [original spelling] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.”
The Constitution’s 20th Amendment also requires the president and vice president to end their terms of office on January 20 at noon in the year following the general election.
“The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January,”
However, Congress controls by statute when electoral votes are counted at the states and at Congress. The statute read that “the electors of President and Vice President of each State shall meet and give their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment at such place in each State as the legislature of such State shall direct.”
The states must send their electoral votes to Congress by late December. Suppose electoral votes are NOT received by the fourth Wednesday in December. In that case, the President of the Senate or the Archivist of the United States can use “the most expeditious method available” to get the votes sent to Congress. The electoral votes received by Congress are then counted in a joint session at 1 p.m. on January 6. If a presidential or vice presidential candidate does not receive a majority of the electoral votes, the House selects the next president, and the Senate selects the next vice president.
Post-Civil War states used public elections to pick the winners of electoral votes in presidential elections. This is NOT A Constitutional REQUIREMENT! For EXAMPLE, Maine and Nebraska divide their electoral votes among districts. Therefore, we do NOT find any standardized requirement to empower people to vote. Each state legislature has a process for selecting the slate of electors that represents a candidate. The states and political parties previously worked together on the presidential primary process. But this year, the Democrats denied the people to have any right to vote for a possible alternative to Biden.
In some cases, disputes about that process are settled by the courts, the most notable example being the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore in December 2000. To be clear, a state under its own laws could postpone the general election date that results in the selection of electors. At least 45 states have statutes that deal with election-day emergencies.
What remains clear is that only the states and Congress can delay that part of the election process. Some states allow the Governor to postpone an election during emergencies, and that could certainly be a domestic terrorist attack staged to accomplish that or the start of World War III, where neither the Constitution nor Congress provides any similar power to the President or other federal officials to change this date outside of Congress’s regular legislative process.
Congress also has the power to change the various statutes to alter the date for an election and the date electoral votes are to be received in Washington and counted in Congress. Such changes would require the consent of the House and the Senate and would be extraordinary since it would require the agreement of the majority in both houses. Congress could even delegate some of its electoral process powers to the Executive Branch in emergencies. That would allow Biden even to pull off an executive order. The fear is that Biden already has the executive power to allow aliens to vote.
All of this taken into account, there is no power to actually delay elections without a deadline. There is no such power to postpone elections indefinitely since the Constitution also requires that Members of the House of Representatives shall be chosen ‘every second year’ according to Article I, Section 2, and Senators to be chosen for terms of ‘six years’ under the 17th Amendment.
In the absence of a clear winner of the presidential election on January 20, the Constitution does allow the Speaker of the House to serve as Acting President. That would end up as a Republican. The 20th Amendment requires that the duly elected president and vice president MUST assume their positions at some point. However, Congress may elect a President and Vice President if they are unqualified to take those positions.
The Justice Department filed a suit against Alabama, claiming that the voter roll purge announcement took place 84 days before the November 5 election and violated the National Voter Registration Act. This could upend the election, and then a host of lawsuits involving alien voting will be challenged nationwide. That guarantees that the 2024 election will end up in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court would have to rule on whether aliens can vote in the U.S. elections.
OK, we have looked at the various requirements and established that (1) you have no Constitutional Right to Vote, and (2) there is no uniform requirement that every state carries out some standardized election procedure. We also know that there are some ways that states could mess up and delay the federal election. There could even be a scenario where the election occurs in Congress without the Electoral College or the people.
HOWEVER, What if Biden resigns on January 19th and Kamal becomes President? The 22nd Amendment would apply if Kamala “acted” as president for over two years. If that would occur, then the Speaker of the House would not assume the acting role as President. All of this confusion is being created for the sole purpose of retaining the power of the Neocons. They do not care about the country, not about the people. This is only about their victory; to them, it is like a football game, and their team has to win.
They cleverly used COVID and instigated the January 6th riot to prevent a count of state votes where a challenge was to be made before the entire Congress. The electoral votes received by Congress will be counted in a joint session at 1 p.m., and Pelosi declared an emergency rule to prevent any challenge to a state’s vote. Then she imposed COVID Rules restricting the maximum number of people on the floor to 53. Thus, Pelosi secured the presidency for Biden, and nobody understood what they did. They got away with it in 2020, and they will pull a fast one in 2024.
By Martin Armstrong for Armstrong Economics