SB 2017-056 - Amendment to Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution (Failed)

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

A few thoughts regarding the proposed amendment:

First, I do not agree with the interpretation of the English Only clause as barring citizens with supposedly foreign names from being voted for. It is a dubious assertion indeed that claims certain names to be the exclusive progeny of a particular language, because spelling and naming conventions vary widely even within cultures. If an English-speaking couple christens their son "Mohamed," are they speaking a foreign language whenever they address him directly? What about names like "Clara" and "George," which originated in Germany but are now common in the English speaking world? Simply put, there is no such thing as a foreign name, and it's close to impossible to make a strong legal argument defining which names are English and which aren't. Speaking as the author of this bill and the attorney general for the incumbent administration, I have complete confidence that any case seeking the invalidation of certain ballots on the grounds hypothesized by the Senator from the North would be thrown out of court.

What this bill would do is prevent a ballot naming "Caroline du Nord Yankee" from being counted as a vote for "North Carolina Yankee." Far from being a defect, such is in fact the express intention of this bill; for whatever we might assume about the intention of this particular voter after their ballot is translated from French to English, there is in fact no citizen registered with the Census Bureau under the name "Caroline du Nord Yankee," and assuming that someone intended to vote for a candidate they did not identify is a big leap to make.

Second, if the opinion of the Congress is that the proposal ought be amended, I recommend the phrase "language other than English" be replaced with "script other than the Latin Alphabet." That said:

Third, and most important, the Senate no longer has power to make amendments to this bill. According to the Constitution:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The Senate already passed an earlier version of this bill; it was subsequently adopted with amendments by the House of Representatives, and the amended version has now returned to this, the original house, for an up-or-down vote. If the Senate feels strongly that the aforementioned change ought to be made, the best strategy is to pass the bill as it stands now and introduce and quickly pass an amended version before it is brought up for ratification (doing so would require swift action on the part of the Congressional leadership, but it is technically possible).

Whew, that was long. I ought to be named "Wall of Text Truman."

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I always considered the minimum residency rule to be a "requirement for activity" (i.e. the poster must be an active citizen for a set period of time to be eligible to vote).

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

3) if a chamber adopts something then the other chamber adopts something different from the original bill: it goes back on the floor on the first chamber etc etc until both chambers agree on something similar where then it goes to the president desk.

I'm a little confused by this; are you saying that the Senate and House would continue offering amendments to the bill until they can come to an agreement? Regardless of the merits of that proposal (if such is indeed your meaning), I don't believe such is compatible with the Constitution, which states:

(1) If one house passes a bill and the other house adopts it w/o amendment, it goes to the president
(2) If one house passes a bill and the other house rejects it, it fails
(3) If one house passes a bill and the other house adopts it w/ amendment, it returns to the first house for an up-or-down vote. If the first house then rejects the amended bill, the original (i.e. unamended) version returns to the other house for an up-or-down vote.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Wait, seriously, this is in the constitution?

I've been trying to tell people for months, but nobody listened.