|
Congress has no direct control over elections. In a Prez election, they don't take jurisdiction over the election until the states have completed the vote count, certified the slate of Prez Electors chosen by the voters for each state, those Electors have voted and then report to Congress. This happens on Jan. 6. Prior to that date, it's a state matter. But on and after that date, Congress can then do almost anything it decides to do. It can even throw out the whole election and vote in a president on its own (in certain circumstances).
Since elections are controlled by state law, I guess Arnebeck was compelled to take it into state court. I'm not sure how federal laws, like the Voting Rights Act, and HAVA, fit into this picture.
HAVA, a Congr. bill, basically told the states to convert to electronic elections, and provided funds for this purpose (and a ticket for Wally O'Dell's yacht cruise...). It set some national standards, such as giving voters a "provisional" ballot when their registration was challenged (because of abuses in FLA in '00). They failed to require a paper trail and open source code (Tom DeLay didn't want any kind of auditability). (Talk about "means, motive and opportunity"! --but I digress.)
The Voting Rights Act of 1965--a result of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s--sought to guarantee everyone's right to vote, and outlawed items like the Poll Tax, used in the South to keep poor blacks from voting. But the laws that implement elections still mostly remain a state matter.
The Constitution calls upon the states to provide Electors to vote for President, and for the states to certify that process. I think the states can actually choose their Electors through their legislative bodies, but all decided to do it with a general election of all eligible voters. But in a disputed Prez election, the state legislature can step in and decide (as almost happened in FLA in '00.)
I'm just not sure what a Voting Rights Act lawsuit in federal court could accomplish--but I think that, since the power to choose Electors remains with the states, it is in state court that the state action (say, Ohio's Bush Electors going ahead and voting) can be overturned.
I'm just not sure of the federal jurisdiction. For instance, say someone filed a lawsuit claiming that Ohio had violated black voters' right to vote (which they most certainly did) under the Voting Rights Act (discrimintory voting procedures). What would the remedy be? Probably: "don't do it next time." Fed judge might order certain state election measures, and might even personally oversee those rules and procedures. But can he/she OVERTURN the current Ohio action of certifying the Prez election and letting the Bush Electors vote? Dunno.
On the other hand, a state court can directly say, "Uh-uh, this violated Ohio's election law." If the state has some state constitutional provisions that parallel the Voting Rights Act, state judge might also rule on that issue (discriminatory procedure).
Anyway, I think this is more or less why we're in state court in Ohio.
It's a jurisdictional question. And, frankly, I don't know if you can go into a federal court and claim that several states (or all states) are violating their state election laws, or are violating the Voting Rights Act. Federal courts reside in certain defined geographical districts, for one thing. (I'm trying to remember by what route the '00 election got to the US Supreme Court--but my main point is that it was about FLA specifically, not multiple states, and I think it went through the FLA state courts to the FLA state Supreme Court, at which point you can then appeal to the US Supreme Court--which Bush did. The US Supreme Court then overruled the FLA state Supreme Court--but it was all about FLA state election law, and how and whether to re-count.)
The matter of the overall national election for Prez in '04--and the multi-state fraud that we are seeing--is a Congressional matter that won't/can't be dealt with (whatever way it will be dealt with) until Jan. 6 and thereafter. Congress can conveniently ignore it, and confine its consideration to Ohio, unless several states' Electors are challenged. (That could happen. FLA's election certainly was fraudulent as well--but someone has to challenge it, gather evidence, prod the Kerry Electors in FLA to act, and bring the matter to Congress, etc.--as is being done in Ohio.)
Arnebeck and Green Party decisions to challenge in Ohio may also have been influenced by available resources (people, money, etc.--maybe they just couldn't do a good job in more than one state), and the egregious nature of the Ohio offenses, especially against black voters. Arnebeck in particular is after discovery--to crack open the whole putrid "black box" scene. It only has to be done in one state, for all to see what a crock our voting system has become. (But I, too, have questions about FLA and why more effort wasn't made there--especially given the Berkeley study (evidence of massive vote stealing--hundreds of thousands of votes--by electronic means). But it could be that Jeb Bush has such Mafia-like power in FLA, it would have been too hard an egg to crack. I dunno.)
I have some experience as a paralegal in public interest litigation, and some education in Constitutional law, but I am not a lawyer.
I hope some lawyers visit this post and can help clarify things. I'd also sure like to a rundown on what the precedents are for Jan. 6, what the Constitutional provisions are and how they've played out in the past, and what's uncharted territory. (However, whatever the precedents and Constitutional provisions are, with Bush Inc., everything seems to be uncharted territory--they couldn't give a crap for the law or history or anything at all.)
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
