A republic is a form of government maintained by a state or country whose sovereignty is based on consent of the governed and whose governance is based on popular representation. Rule of law is an essential feature of a republic.
The American Republic lives or dies on the ability of the people to control the government. The Framers of the Constitution gave control of our elections (the lockbox of the Republic) to the individual States and not to the United States, to ensure that the dispersed power of citizens as represented by their state governments could check and balance the centralized power of the federal government.
The general public, and most particularly many in the election integrity movement, are blissfully unaware of the dangers posed to our American Republic by a little known entity called the Election Assistance Commission.
This White House Agency was slipped into the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in a late night, behind closed doors meeting, by the architects of that law: Congressman Bob Ney (now a convicted criminal), Congressman Steny Hoyer, Senator Mitch McConnell, and Senator Chris Dodd (now a presidential candidate).
We can only guess at their motivations for creating an Executive agency composed of four White House appointees with the power to control the nation’s elections.
Whatever prompted the HAVA architects to do this – against their own legal counsel’s advice – they certainly didn’t consult the wisdom of the Founders.
Founding father Alexander Hamilton:
"Suppose an article had been introduced into the Constitution, empowering the United States to regulate the elections for the particular States, would any man have hesitated to condemn it, both as an unwarrantable transposition of power, and as a premeditated engine for the destruction of the State governments?" --- Federalist No. 59, 1788
The architects of HAVA are not alone in their disdain for the wisdom of the founders. Several contemporary Congressional and Senatorial leaders are furiously trying to pass legislation to expand the powers of the Election Assistance Commission. The most infamous of the proposed bills are HR811 (the "Holt Bill") in the House, and SB1487 (the "Feinstein Bill") in the Senate.
Congressman Rush Holt, in a July 2007 "town meeting" with constituents:
There should be -- and there has not been -- a federal commission that oversees elections. The Help America Vote Act created one, it has not worked well -- so we, could say, well, that each state could do what they want... You know, you know, a lot of people get nervous at the mention of name [Ken] Blackwell -- in Ohio. He was the Secretary of State... he was also a candidate for office at the same time. He was also the chair of the re-election committee for a Presidential candidate. Even while he was supposed to be the impartial overseer of the elections.
So if we leave it to the states, it's not so good. So what I prefer to do is strengthen the EAC... but it remains to be seen whether we can do that.
The historical imperative to resist granting control over our elections to the federal government might convince subscribers to Mr. Holt's articulated goal of the error of their ways. Common sense alone belies the utter absurdity of handing control of the electoral mechanism itself to those who will subsequently be elected by it. And handing control to the White House is beyond absurdity.
Unfortunately, most American citizens don't even know this coups d'etat has occurred, and is being irrevocably cemented into place. They are unaware that the very foundation of the American Republic is being ripped out and replaced with an entirely new system of governance. Free, fair, and open public elections controlled by The People are being replaced with costly, high tech, complex, opaque, computerized, corporately-owned electoral theatre controlled by the White House, the Legislature, and the Judiciary.
Even many election integrity activists fail to understand the fundamental problem with the EAC. They say, if only the "right" people were appointed to the Commission, all would be well.
