The Right Side of Life "But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good." — 1 Thes. 5:21

As of the date of this posting, the Supreme Court has been officially silent on the results of its Friday, December 5 Conference in which cases like Donofrio v. Wells were being considered (see my “Supreme Court Info” section on the sidebar for docket info). As explained in a previous posting, the odds are honestly against Leo Donofrio having his case heard; there are plenty of folks on both sides postulating on the results.

So, let’s say that the case gets denied, thereby theoretically meaning that the lower courts’ decisions hold. What then? As TexasDarlin speculates, does the Constitution mean anything? How do we go about ensuring that we never get into this type of situation to begin with?

Originally, I had posted that while a background check on candidates may be unconstitional and that we need to focus on the State level for a long term solution, we probably need to go further with this concept.

Here’s the situation regarding candidate eligibility as I now see it:

• Most of the nation’s Secretary of State lawsuits have been denied on the premises that (1) the Plaintiff(s) lack standing: the legal ability to petition the court for a redress of grievances; and (2) the Secretary of State office has no jurisdiction to verify candidate eligibility.
• Since America is a federal system, we have State-based elections for federal officeholders; historically, Congress has been loathe to tinker too much with requiring a federal, overarching policy requiring all States to direct their elections in a certain manner. In theory, this could be unconstitutional as well. This would indicate that Congress prefers to delegate such issues to the State or local levels.
• If the Supreme Court were to begin denying the eligibility cases that are currently or may be before it, that would send the signal that a citizen’s redress of grievances will not be heard by the nation’s Judiciary. However, this would also indicate that the Supreme Court is expecting the States to handle the situation, since Congress would probably want to side-step the issue.
• Citizen action at the State level via the State judiciary or State legislative branches would be, in theory, where such redresses would need to go.

If you read through Berg v. Obama’s documenation from when it was in Philadelpha federal court, you will see that the defense, in part, uses the fact that there is currently no enforcement mechanism in place for court jurisdiction to enforce constitutional eligibility requirements. Frankly, this is unacceptable and must be addressed as soon as possible.

Everyone is pointing fingers: the Secretary of State tends to say the political party is responsible for vetting; the political party merely receives a self-ascribing document wherein the candidate declare themselves eligible (how bizarre is that?); and the State judiciary is saying that the Secretary of State rules.

Therefore, should the Supreme Court decide to not hear any of the cases that are currently or will be before it, then it would be up to the American citizens — especially those of “We the People” who are willing to wage “The Art of Conservative Political War” — to get back to the State level and create the mechanism (as being tracked here and here) to enforce the fact that our Constitution requires candidates for federal offices such as the Presidency to be eligible.

-Phil

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