Does it?
States must have a constitution that guarantees a representative government. I'd love someone to take this to SCOTUS saying Kansas can't have federal reprentation if they don't guarantee the right to vote.
For your consideration, here is the text of section 2 of the 14th amendment:
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
A literal reading of this text, apart from the anachronism by which voters must be male and 21 (which should be overridden by the 19th amendment, which enfranchises women's vote, and the fact that voting age today is 18) says that if your state doesn't let its citizens vote and abide by the result, its electoral college votes won't count either, and neither will its congressional delegation be seated.
How funny would it be if Kansas lost statehood?
Well now that you’ve said that out loud, I could see conservatives being all over finding reasons to disqualify representation from blue states. (By which I mean make up reasons that sound good to a base that doesn’t think good)
Hard to disagree with Republicans trying when Democrats opened that can of worms. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Isn't the requirement only that the government be "republican"? A republican government doesn't necessarily have to be representative. It only needs to not be a monarchy.
Isn’t the requirement only that the government be “republican”? A republican government doesn’t necessarily have to be representative. It only needs to not be a monarchy.
That's the requirement of the Guarantee Clause (article 4, section 4) of the constitution- in its time, it was about barring non-democracy states from statehood, it was a guarantee of protection of any state from foreign invasion, and protection of any state from internal coup or rebellion.
But, if you look at section 2 of the 14th Amendment, it's a banger: if the right to vote is denied to citizens qualified to vote, the state doing it will lose its federal representation (as in, it will not just lose its electoral college votes in federal elections, its congressmen will not be seated). The purpose for this section of this amendment was to prevent confederate states from denying the formerly-enslaved the right to vote, and it should certainly apply today if Red-State legislators try to use their power to strip their citizens of their ability to meaningfully vote
thanks for using Leebra!
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Well the US Constitution does so it doesn't really fucking matter, does it Kansas?
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