United States congressional elections

“ By fulfilling their constitutional duty to craft the rules governing federal elections, state legislatures do not consent, ratify, or elect—they make laws. Elections are complex affairs, demanding rules that dictate everything from the date on which voters will go to the polls to the dimensions and font of individual ballots. ”

“ Congress can by law protect the voter from personal violence or intimidation and the election itself from corruption and fraud. [153] To accomplish these ends it may adopt the statutes of the States and enforce them by its own sanctions. [154] It may punish a State election officer for violating his duty under a State law governing Congressional elections. [155] It may also punish federal officers and employees who solicit or receive contributions to procure the nomination of a particular candidate in a State primary election. ”

“ It is contended that Congress has no power to regulate the amount of money that may be expended by a candidate to secure his being named in the primary election; that the power 'to regulate the manner of holding elections,' etc., relates solely to the general elections where Senators or Representatives are finally chosen. Why should 'the manner of holding elections' be so narrowly construed? An election is the choosing of a person by vote to fill a public office. ”

“ As the Washington Post remarked some time since: “The United States has not a single voter, and does not hold elections for any office. All elections are state elections.”
Already there has been too much concentration of power in the central Government. To take away from the states their power of selecting Senators would be nothing short of revolution, and would lead to such a consolidation of power as would entirely change the form and spirit of our Government. ”

“ Only the inefficiency of the State laws or an unfair partisan administration of them could suggest a departure from this policy. It was clearly, however, in the contemplation of the framers of the Constitution that such an exigency might arise, and provision was wisely made for it. No power vested in Congress or in the Executive to secure or perpetuate it should remain unused upon occasion.
The people of all the Congressional districts have an equal interest that the election in each shall truly express the views and wishes of a majority of the qualified electors residing within it. ”

“ Ibid. (citing provisions in Massachusetts and New York) . Subjecting state legislatures to such a limitation “was no more incongruous with the grant of legislative authority to regulate congressional elections than the fact that the Congress in making its regulations under the same provision would be subject to the veto power of the President.” Ibid.; see also Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U. S. 1, 6 (1964) (Congress does not have “exclusive authority” under the Elections Clause, independent of other federal constitutional provisions) . ”

“ Legislatures must “provide a complete code for congressional elections,” including regulations “relati [ng] to notices, registration, supervision of voting, protection of voters, prevention of fraud and corrupt practices, counting of votes, duties of inspectors and canvassers, and making and publication of election returns.” ”

“ It has been found that to require the electors to designate the persons for whom they vote as the President and Vice-President, respectively, has a tendency to secure a choice by the electoral votes, and therefore to prevent the election from being thrown into the House of Representatives; and it has also been deemed expedient, when the election has devolved on the House of Representatives, to confine the choice of the States to the three highest candidates on the list returned by the electors. ”

“ We cannot regard it as any the less the constitutional purpose or its words as any the less guarantying the integrity of that choice when a state, exercising its privilege in the absence of Congressional action, changes the mode of choice from a single step, a general election, to two, of which the first is the choice at a primary of those candidates from whom, as a second step, the representative in Congress is to be chosen at the election. ”

“ Those who have been for years calling attention to the pressing necessity of throwing about the ballot-box and about the elector further safeguards, in order that our elections might not only be free and pure, but might clearly appear to be so, will welcome the accession of any who did not so soon discover the need of reform. The national Congress has not as yet taken control of elections in that case over which the Constitution gives it jurisdiction, but has accepted and adopted the election laws of the several States, provided penalties for their violation and a method of supervision. ”

“ The vote we are about to cast is incredibly important. Now more than ever, the question is, Should Congress override the certified results from the States and nullify the States’ rights to conduct elections?
The vote today is not a protest; the vote today is literally to overturn elections. ”

“ No interest can be truly subserved, whether local or general, by any invasion of this great principle. The wise work of our fathers in constructing this Government will stand all tests of internal dissension and revolution, and all tests of external assault, if we can only preserve a pure, free ballot. [Applause.] Every citizen who is a patriot ought to lend his influence to that end, by promoting necessary reforms in our election laws and by a watchful supervision of the processes of our popular elections. We ought to elevate in thought and practice the free suffrage that we enjoy. ”

“ There is no question our U.S. Constitution empowers State legislatures to execute free, legal, and fair elections. Unfortunately, in several States, the clear authority of those State legislatures to determine the rules for voting was usurped by Governors, secretaries of state, and activist courts. Our laws and Constitution should always be followed, especially in a time of crisis. ”

“ Article II of our Constitution, as modified by the Twelfth Amendment, governs election of the President. Article II created the electoral college, providing that the States would select electors in the manner provided by State legislatures, and those electors would in turn vote for the President. Today, every State selects Presidential electors by popular vote, and each State's laws provide for procedures to resolve election disputes, including through lawsuits if necessary. ”

“ Democrats the simple alternative of defeat or return to sound-money principles. It must zealously push forward the work of organization all over the country, so that when, eighteen months hence, the time for a new Congressional election comes, it may be ready to nominate a candidate of its own in every district. ”

“ In the United States the same thing, in anything like the same degree, would be impossible, because between the periods of the general elections (which themselves come every four years) come the State and municipal elections for the purposes of which the local party organisations are kept in continuous and more or less active existence. A State or a city may, of course, be so confirmedly Republican or Democratic that, even though elections be frequent, the ruling party organisation will become, in a measure, soft and careless, but it can never sink altogether out of fighting condition. ”

“ I hope, as the Nation’s anger cools, we can channel that energy into essential electoral reforms at the State level. America is admired around the world for our free elections. We must—we absolutely must fix this mess and restore confidence and integrity to our elections. ”

“ It will not be claimed that the power given to the Legislature would support a law providing that the persons receiving the smallest vote should be the electors, or a law that all the electors should be chosen by the voters of a single Congressional district. The State is to choose, and under the pretence of regulating methods the [562] legislature can neither vest the right of choice elsewhere nor adopt methods not conformable to republican institutions. ”

“ The electoral college was created to devolve the power of selecting Presidential electors to the States. The electoral college is, without question, an inseparable friend to those who believe that every American across our vast country deserves to be heard.
If Congress were given the power to overturn the States’ elections, what terrible chaos would ensue every 4 years. Imagine the furor against the electoral college if Congress becomes a forum to overturn States’ electoral college slates.
It is one thing to be angry. It is another to focus one’s anger in constructive ways. ”

“ This position the Supreme Court combatted as follows: "It is true that the Amendment says the electors shall vote by ballot. But it is also true that the Amendment does not prohibit an elector's announcing his choice beforehand, pledging himself. The suggestion that in the early elections candidates for electors—contemporaries of the Founders—would have hesitated, because of constitutional limitations, to pledge themselves to support party nominees in the event of their selection as electors is impossible to accept. History teaches that the electors were expected to support the party nominees. ”

“ That convention should have placed the choice of Electors where it placed the choice of Senators,—in the State legislatures. This would not have made the Electors independent, but it would have worked as well as the plan for choosing Senators, which has never been changed, and which it has never been sought to change. The mode of choosing a President by the National House of Representatives, when the people have failed to elect one, is thoroughly anti-democratic. The voting is then by States, the small States being equal to the great ones. ”

“ In addition, the vagaries of the Electoral College will increasingly magnify the risk that candidates who do not secure the popular vote will nonetheless win the presidency and with it the opportunity to appoint Justices to the Court. ”

“ Under the Constitution, if no candidate receives a majority of electoral college votes, this triggers a process where the House of Representatives decides the president. When that happens, each State gets one vote for President, chosen by the Representatives from that state. ”

“ After a full test of other methods, without important division or dissent in any State and without any purpose of party advantage, as we must believe, but solely upon the considerations that uniformity was desirable and that general election in territorial divisions not subject to change was most consistent with the popular character of our institutions, best preserved the equality of the voters, and perfectly removed the choice of President from the baneful influence of the "gerrymander," the practice of all the States was brought into harmony. ”

“ Nothing is so fundamental to the integrity of a republican form of government as honesty in all that relates to the conduct of elections. I am of the opinion that the national laws governing the choice of members of the Congress should be extended to include appropriate representation of the respective parties at the ballot box ant equality of representation on the various registration boards, wherever they exist. ”

“ After such an example, it can not be said that indirect popular election is never advantageous. Under certain conditions it is the very best system that can be adopted. But those conditions are hardly to be obtained in practice except in a federal government like that of the United States, where the election can be intrusted to local bodies whose other functions extend to the most important concerns of the nation. ”

“ The right to vote for a representative in Congress at the general election is, as a matter of law, thus restricted to the successful party candidate at the primary, to those not candidates at the primary who file nomination papers, and those whose names may be lawfully written into the ballot by the electors. ”

“ But if I am wrong thus far-if the word 'elections' in article I, section 4, of the Constitution must be narrowly confined to the single and definitive step described as an election at the time that instrument was adopted-nevertheless it seems to me too clear for discussion that primary elections and nominating conventions are so closely related to the final election, and their proper regulation so essential to effective regulation of the latter, so vital to representative government, that power to regulate them is within the general authority of Congress. ”

“ If threatened danger had bred an artificial harmony among the Republican factions of the State in 1878, the presence of a real peril, growing out of the control of both branches of Congress by the Democrats, tended to bring them closer together in 1879. During a special session of the Forty-sixth Congress the Democratic majority had sought, by a political rider attached to the army appropriation bill, to repeal objectionable election laws, which provided among other things for the appointment of supervisors and deputy marshals at congressional elections. ”

“ However awkward or difficult it may be for Congress to resolve difficult electoral disputes, Congress, being a political body, expresses the people's will far more accurately than does an unelected Court. And the people's will is what elections are about.
Moreover, Congress was fully aware of the danger that would arise should it ask judges, unarmed with appropriate legal standards, to resolve a hotly contested Presidential election contest. Just after the 1876 Presidential election, Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana each sent two slates of electors to Washington. ”