A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties (18 page)

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.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

This amendment, ratified in 1920, finally gave women the right to vote in America. It is sobering to realize that the
United States of America, today a bastion of liberty and justice, was so backward in its thinking less than a century ago. Fortunately, we have made tremendous progress in political freedom for women in a relatively short period of time. But we should not rest; we should elect wise and vigilant legislators who will notice any other failures and propose appropriate remedies.

Until this lengthy amendment was enacted, there was a several-month gap between the time congressmen were elected and the time they actually went to Washington to assume their responsibilities. This amendment drastically shortened the gap, resulting in greater efficiency and less chance of mischief by resentful lame-duck representatives. There had also been questions regarding the appropriate protocol in the event of the death of the president-elect or the vice president–elect. This amendment answered those questions.

The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in
the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

After careful consideration and much deliberation, Congress decided that it would be better to relegalize alcohol and deal with the consequences than to witness the continued escalation of violence and criminal activity caused by Prohibition. Thus this amendment repeals the Eighteenth Amendment but does allow individual states to retain or enact their own alcohol restrictions.

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

This Article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

George Washington declined to run for a third term, setting a precedent for future executives that lasted until Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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The circumstances of his third election were quite unusual; the United States was on the brink of becoming heavily involved in World War II. Dire circumstances meant that there was no time for the usual massive political gamesmanship associated with a presidential election. During the war Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term, but he died shortly after the term began.

After Roosevelt’s death, Americans worried that he had set a bad precedent, and Congress proposed a term-limit amendment. The amendment probably is not necessary, because we have a huge pool of talented and ambitious people in our country, but it guarantees that we will not establish a monarchy or a dynasty within the United States.

The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Washington, DC, became the seat of the federal government over two hundred years ago, and the controversy about voting rights for its residents has raged ever since. This amendment, passed in 1960, finally put the issue to rest. The city now has a number of electors, chosen on the same basis as the states’ electors, who can vote in presidential elections.

Today Washington, DC, does not have senators or representatives in the House, much to the frustration of the city’s population. One possible solution would be to allow the residents of Washington, DC, to affiliate themselves with either the state of Maryland or the state of Virginia. That would at least give them an opportunity to be represented in the same way as citizens in every state. A resolution has been proposed to provide DC residents with appropriate national representation; if passed, it will be the first amendment to the Constitution in over twenty years.

Since Washington, DC, is not a state, there is no state legislature to provide governance. Instead, Congress acts for Washington, DC, in the same way state legislatures do for each of the fifty states. Many DC residents are not happy with this arrangement, because they have little or no influence on the members of Congress, whereas residents of each of the fifty states can elect or dismiss their state legislators as they please. This is one of the reasons why some are advocating statehood for the District of Columbia. This would be incredibly complex and so far seems to be beyond the realm of things Congress is willing to seriously consider. Nevertheless, we must recognize that the people who live in Washington, DC,
are American citizens, and we should diligently search for a way to make sure that they are empowered like everyone else.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

This amendment, ratified in 1964, abolished poll taxes, the fees voters were required to pay before filling out a ballot. Poll taxes were established in many Southern states long before slavery ended, but once blacks gained the right to vote, they were used extensively in many of the former slave states to disenfranchise black voters. Poll taxes created an economic barrier that hurt all people with low incomes but inflicted disproportional hardship on black people because of their economic position in society. Fortunately, this scheme was exposed and was turned aside by the Twenty-fourth Amendment.

Over the years, courts have broadly interpreted the Twenty-fourth Amendment to preclude the use of unusual residency requirements, literacy tests, and other arbitrary barriers to obstruct voting. Any trickery depriving American citizens of their constitutional right to vote should be exposed and vigorously opposed. In recent years, though, some have suggested
that voter-identification requirements are a new version of poll taxes. This suggestion is absurd and an abuse of the amendment.

Those who feel that voter identification is not necessary have probably not taken the time to consider how valuable each vote is. In our society, identification is required for most high-value transactions. Why should voting be different? If voters don’t need identification in order to vote, our elections risk voter fraud.

Every other nation to which I have traveled recently requires some type of official voter identification. I hope that we can convince the enemies of voter-identification laws that their energy currently spent fighting common sense is best spent helping disenfranchised individuals acquire the necessary identification and register to vote.

This amendment also mentions the right of citizens to vote in party primaries. In many states that right is not extended to people who are registered as independents. Other states have open primaries where members of a party can vote in the opposing party’s primary, a situation that can invite unethical mischief. For example, during the Republican primary, Democrats could cross over and vote for the candidate they believe most likely to lose in the general election. This is an area that needs to be studied and addressed by legislators. There should be no incentives for dishonesty built into our electoral process, and cheating should be a federal crime, because the stakes are high.

This lengthy amendment clarifies matters of presidential succession. The topic is covered in Article 2, but the original language was subject to a wide range of interpretations and needed clarification. Before this amendment was passed, presidents and vice presidents made their own informal agreements about how to manage succession and temporary power shifts. This amendment conclusively established the order of presidential succession—from the vice president to the Speaker of the House to the president pro tempore of the Senate, down through all the cabinet members until the last one, the secretary of homeland security—and standardizing the procedures was a wise move.

No sitting president has died in the past fifty years, so we rarely think about presidential succession, but it is more important than ever before. In the age of terrorist threats, we need well-defined succession plans that can be immediately implemented should the unthinkable happen.

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 Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Since the American Revolution, teenagers and young adults have fought for freedom on the battlefields of America. Nathan
Hale began spying for the Americans when he was twenty years old and became an American hero when he was executed by the British. Before his death, he famously said, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” And yet, under the original Constitution, Hale the young spy would have been too young to vote.

Until the Twenty-sixth Amendment was passed in 1971, it was possible for young people to join the military and be injured or killed without having the right to vote. This injustice was so clear that the amendment was ratified within a mere three and a half months after Congress proposed it. The measure did not pass without debate; some states wanted to keep the age of majority at twenty-one in state elections while allowing those aged eighteen years or older to vote in federal elections. This would have been permissible, but states would have been required to have two separate voting systems, a daunting task that no state wanted to take on.

Recently there have been some challenges to the rights of college students to vote. Many students live far from home and face a dilemma—they cannot travel home to vote but cannot register in their college towns. Fortunately, the courts have ruled in favor of those students, declaring that restriction of student voting on this basis is a violation of the Twenty-sixth Amendment. Students may either vote in their college towns or use absentee ballots to vote back home.

It is more important than ever that young people become deeply involved in the political process and exercise their constitutional voting rights. It is their future that is being jeopardized by massive federal debt and inattention to foreign threats. They must recognize that the political establishment will not serve them unless they make the power of their votes felt.

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

The last constitutional amendment, as of the writing of this book, was actually first proposed in 1789 by James Madison. To his disappointment, it did not receive approval of three quarters of the states and therefore was not ratified. It remained dormant for over two hundred years before finally being ratified in 1992.

Congressmen have the ability to vote on their own salaries, which of course are paid through taxes by the citizens of the United States. Many people were wary of a system that would allow the people in power to enrich themselves without oversight. This amendment provides a sensible solution to this danger. By requiring that pay raises not go into effect until after the next election, it ensures that members of Congress must face the voters for approval before receiving that salary.

Members of Congress are accordingly careful not to anger voters by paying themselves excessive salaries. Many of them, however, do not apply fiscal restraint in other areas, spending taxpayer money on pet projects and favors for special-interest groups. When they examine the records of their congressional representatives, voters must be just as careful to look for overspending as they are to look at salary increases. Increased taxation and irresponsible fiscal policies should be rewarded with removal from office by vigilant
constituents. We must remember and we must remind them that it is our money they are spending.

Since the Bill of Rights was ratified, we’ve added only seventeen more amendments to the Constitution. The fact that our governing document has required so few adjustments in over two hundred years testifies to the brilliance of the founders. We should be grateful that they built in mechanisms for amendment, but we should also think carefully whenever new amendments are suggested. The stability of this document and the wisdom displayed within it should make us attentive to its admonitions now and in the future. Let us be quick to learn and slow to change it.