Do not squander your heritage

[therealUT]

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

That's why I suggested you read the document; it is pretty obvious you didn't finish. Please notice how each provision begins with "The right of the citizens of the United States to vote..." I hate it when people make me do their work for them, particularly when it stems from ignorance and ostinance.

Right, because obviously I have never read through the amendments. You still fail to provide a Constitutional "right to vote". These rights are not provided for in the US Constitution. They are provided at the state level and due to these amendments, they may not be restricted based upon gender, race, poll taxes, or age. Congrats on being able to read, yet having absolutely no understanding of the document and the process.

 

[therealUT]

That's why I suggested you read the document; it is pretty obvious you didn't finish. Please notice how each provision begins with "The right of the citizens of the United States to vote..." I hate it when people make me do their work for them, particularly when it stems from ignorance and obstinance.

I guess the following selection stems from ignorance and obstinacy (oh, the irony):

The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College. U.S. Const., Art. II, §1. This is the source for the statement in McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1, 35 (1892), that the State legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by State legislatures in several States for many years after the Framing of our Constitution. Id., at 28—33. History has now favored the voter, and in each of the several States the citizens themselves vote for Presidential electors. When the state legislature vests the right to vote for President in its people, the right to vote as the legislature has prescribed is fundamental; and one source of its fundamental nature lies in the equal weight accorded to each vote and the equal dignity owed to each voter. The State, of course, after granting the franchise in the special context of Article II, can take back the power to appoint electors. See id., at 35 (“[T]here is no doubt of the right of the legislature to resume the power at any time, for it can neither be taken away nor abdicated”) (quoting S. Rep. No. 395, 43d Cong., 1st Sess.). The right to vote is protected in more than the initial allocation of the franchise. Equal protection applies as well to the manner of its exercise. Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another. See, e.g., Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 665 (1966) (“[O]nce the franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”). It must be remembered that “the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.” Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 555 (1964).

I imagine some kooky Branch Davidian or Weatherman wrote that, though...

 

[cotton]

Right, because obviously I have never read through the amendments. You still fail to provide a Constitutional "right to vote". These rights are not provided for in the US Constitution. They are provided at the state level and due to these amendments, they may not be restricted based upon gender, race, poll taxes, or age. Congrats on being able to read, yet having absolutely no understanding of the document and the process.

Did you miss the "United States" in every one of those ammendments?

The law does not say what you want it to say. I don't know how much clearer the text can be than to say "The right of citizens of the United States to vote...shall not be denied..."

Are you seriously arguing that the Constitution prohibits the restriction of a right that does not exist? That does not pass the laugh test.

 

[therealUT]

You do understand that what I provided in post #52 was in fact a ruling made by the SCOTUS, right?

The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College.

I might just be wanting a bagel with my coffee.

 

[kev20]

You tell him Agent Smecker!

 

[cotton]

You do understand that what I provided in post #52 was in fact a ruling made by the SCOTUS, right?

Is there a state legislature that does not choose a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College? Do you believe that, should a state legislature decide to do it in a different manner, that the alternate process would not be invalidated on Constitutional grounds?

The answer to both is no.

 

[therealUT]

Is there a state legislature that does not choose a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College? Do you believe that, should a state legislature decide to do it in a different manner, that the alternate process would not be invalidated on Constitutional grounds?

The answer to both is no.

I am going to continue to defer to the Constitution as is, today, and the interpretation of that Constitution by the SCOTUS, not some hypothetical in the distant future that you are using to try and save face.

 

[cotton]

I am going to continue to defer to the Constitution as is, today, and the interpretation of that Constitution by the SCOTUS, not some hypothetical in the distant future that you are using to try and save face.

I'm not trying to save anything. Bush v. Gore qualified its statement by tying it to circumstances that will never occur, and the passage you cite was most likely crafted so that the decision was not interpreted as invalidating the election of 1784, where electors in Connecticut were selected based on who had the tallest hat.

I listed three specific instances in the Contsitution where a right to vote is specified. Any effort to try and remove or ignore the right is going to run afoul of at least those three Ammendments, the Equal Protection Clause, the Voting Rights Act, and a forest full of lesser legislation.

Believe what you like. That doesn't make it law.