The SAVE Act dilemma: Federal has no authority over state election roles

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Helping to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, this is the

Constitution Study on the America Out Loud Network with your host Paul Engel.

Our voting and our election systems are critical to remaining a republic. But I had to ask,

are we the people doing more than just casting our votes? If no, why not?

Hello there, Everyday Americans. Paul Engel here with the Constitution Study. We're

reading instead of the Constitution, Teach Horizon Generation be free. Glad you could join

me today. You know, my entire life, I've been encouraged to vote. Well, all right, it was

understood that when I was under the age of 18, I was not allowed to vote. But as soon

I was told, as soon as you turn 18, you need to go vote. I remember as a child, I think

it was a year and like third or fourth grade, it was an election year, presidential election

year. And my public school in New York City was a voting put place. They held it in the

cafeteria. And I remember our entire class was taken down to the cafeteria after they'd

set up the machines. And we were shown how the machines work and and allowed to cast

our own ballots. They were not tallied, right? They were erased. But the whole idea was

even as a child, as a tender age child, we were encouraged to understand how to vote

so that we could vote because we understood how important it was. Nowadays, it seems

people just can't be, they can't be bothered to vote. Now one difference between one

and a child, I mean, I remember as a child, probably that year, I was, I was one my sister

was still a babe in arms. And I remember going with my mother to our school cafeteria

and standing with her in the, in the voting with New York state used voting machine, mechanical

voting machines, not digital ones, mechanical ones at the time. And I remember going in with

her and closing the curtain. And she cast her votes. I remember that. It was that important

that we were told how important it was. Today, many people can't be bothered to actually

show up to vote. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm glad they now have extended voting, early

voting. I love in person early voting for two main reasons. One, they're lost crowds.

I can go when it's more convenient to me. You know, I've got like usually like a two

week window when I can find a time that I can take my wife and we can go vote. Now, remember,

my wife is in a wheelchair, which means we have to deal with wheelchair ramps and, and

all that stuff. And I actually have to help her vote. There's a form that we, that she

signs that it proves me helping her to vote. But it's, it, it, I appreciate that aspect

of it. But I've only mail in a ballot once in my entire life. And that's because I literally

was out of the state for an extended period of time. I was not going to be there to vote.

It's to the point now, there are some states where everybody does mail in vote. He can't

even be bothered to show up at a polling place. And of course, there's all sorts of questions

and issues about opportunities for fraud and exposing weaknesses and all that. Those are

discussions we've already had. I want to look at a couple of other things. And I have to ask,

you know, the American people is all you, is your only duty to this nation to show up every

couple of years or four years if you only do the presidential and vote. Let's start with

something interesting. There was a report out of Great Britain, two years ago, that, that,

that revealed that their voter registration databases had been hacked by the, by the Chinese.

And of course, this became a global scandal that I don't remember anybody actually caring about.

But now there are reports that guess what? US intelligence services had a secret. They've known

since 2020 that Beijing has gained access to many American voter registration databases. This

is according to documents reviewed by just the news. In these documents, you see that certain Chinese

official intelligence officials analyzed multiple US states, redacted election voter registration data,

redacted to conduct public analysis, opinion analysis on the 2020 US general election.

Now, I'll put a link to this National Intelligence Council assessment on the show page when it

hits the website. So you can read it for yourself. But to me, it begs the question. If the,

the, if in April of 2020, the intelligence communities knew that the, the Chinese were

into our voter registration databases, why are we only hearing about it now? Almost six years later.

Now, these are the voter registration databases. These are not the ballots. All right. I want to

be specific. I don't want to, to, you know, fan false scares. It's, it's, it's bad because this

got personally identified, these data registration data have personally identifiable information.

This is information by the many states are refusing to hand over to the federal government.

But we now know that for six years, the communist Chinese have had access to it.

And what are they doing? Could they be doing this to help manipulate the election? And I,

I don't know. But to me, it's certainly a concern. And it's the concern that needs to be dealt with.

Which, of course, brings me to the election news of the day. And that is the Save Act. Now,

I've talked about it multiple times before. The Save Act is one of those, it's, it's our constitutional

partner. Remember, under Article one of the Constitution, Congress has the power by law to set or

modify rules for elections for House and Senate, only for the US House and Senate and only to,

to the time place and manner of those elections. That's important because if you read the Save Act

contrary to a lot of reporting, the Save Act doesn't say that you need to produce photo ID

for every election. It says you have to have photo ID for federal, when you vote for federal

offices. Now, the only two offices the American people actually vote for, the only two federal

offices are House and Senate. No, the people do not vote for president contrary to what they've

been trying to tell you for decades. You don't vote for president. You vote to tell your state

legislatures which panel, which group of electors to send to the presidential vote. It's a

common misconception when I've dealt with multiple times here on the Constitution study. So,

that part of the Save Act is absolutely constitutional. The problem is there's nothing in the

Constitution that gives the federal government the authority to regulate vote, how voter registration

is handled. Now, to my knowledge, every state I've checked in order to vote in their elections,

you have to be a citizen in the United States. It's required by the Constitution of every state

in the union that I have checked. But now the Save Act says, well, we're going to make it a federal law.

Sorry, that's unconstitution. You don't have that authority. Now, of course, that has never been

the discussion ever. The debate I've heard over the Save Act has never actually dealt with that

constitutional question. Now, one that I've heard, I'm not saying it's not out there, but it's

certainly not one that I have heard other than what we've talked about here on the Constitution study.

Now, of course, the Save Act has been very, it's been very partisan, right? The Republicans are

generally forward. The Democrats are generally against it. Of course, the Democrats come up with all

sorts of crazy conspiracy theories nonsense. Oh, it's Jim Crow 2.0. That apparently Chuck Schumer

thought it was such a great deal. More Democrats are using this false line. But that's interesting.

I'm actually talking about, I'm coming back to the debate because they finally started

debating this thing in the Senate. And Majority Leader Thune has an interesting question.

He wanted to say, he wonders why, or I guess he thinks he knows why the GOP can't find 51 votes

to use an actual filibuster for the Save Act. You understand? The filibuster has nothing

to do with the Constitution of the United States. There's no requirement for it. It does say that

each House, the House and Senate, can set their own rules. And they came up with this idea of

that the House will have a limited prescribed time for debate while the Senate will have none.

They can have unlimited debate, which means if you ever watch the movie, Mr. Smith goes to

Washington, I do recommend it. I've watched it a few times. If you can hold the floor, you can

prevent a bill from being voted on. It used to require that a person hold the floor, meaning

they stand up and they speak. It doesn't matter what they say. I think one time somebody

read the stories of Dr. Seuss, you know, just as long as you can keep hold and they cannot get enough

votes to stop debate against you, then you had a filibuster. They're now calling it a talking

filibuster. They set up some rules a bunch of years ago that said, well, rather than actually

having a filibuster, rather than actually having somebody sit up and talk or stand up and talk

for an extended period of time, we'll just assume somebody would do that and you need 50 votes.

I'm sorry, you need 60 votes in order to close debate so that we can vote on it. Even though there's

no debate going on, you had to have 60 votes. This is the modern quote unquote filibuster.

So, Mr. Lee says, well, why can't we get 51 senators to say, we're going to do a true talking

filibuster on the Save Act. We're not going to forget about it. We're going to do a real talking

filibuster. Now, Mr. Thune was at an interview with Fox News's Brett Baer. Let's listen to this.

Mr. Baer brings up this question. So, let's listen. So, why in specific detail, are you convinced

that a talking filibuster doesn't work? Well, first off, the formals, because we're not

the votes for it. And that's again, it's a simple function of the math in the Senate. It would take

even a talking filibuster, it would take 51 votes. We don't have 51 votes for that in the United

States Senate. Okay, let's punch into their server for a second, because again, apparently,

sounds like he said, we do it, we don't have the votes. We don't have 51 votes to have a talking

filibuster for the Save Act. Therefore, we can't do it. But the why? The why was interesting?

Listen to this. But why is that? Well, I mean, the public and colleagues not going to force

the issue. The president's obviously putting his foot here saying, this is the most important

thing that needs to come out of this Congress. Right. And I know people don't like to hear this,

but the talking filibuster, you know, it takes you back kind of basically to the 1800s. You

could go back to the 19th century and the way things were done in the Senate. And we can't find

an example in modern Senate history where a piece of legislation passed via the talking filibuster.

Okay, there's to me the first reason, well, we've no legislation doesn't pass. We have to pass,

that's our job to pass legislation. We set up a process where we can't pass legislation.

I don't know how good their research is. I haven't actually investigated it myself, but he says,

you know, he talked about the 1800s. Actually, it was early 1900s. I think when they got rid of

the the standard filibuster, filibuster, but there's a bit more to this answer. But in the meantime,

what it does, what he would say, if they got tired and exhausted, it would be 51 votes.

It would be at 51 votes, but between now and then, and you're talking about unlimited debate,

and anytime an amendment, for example, is offered and fails if it gets tabled, you start all over,

you reset the clock. And it really favors the minority. When Harry Reid was the majority leader,

Democrat leader in the Senate, same thing with Chuck Schumer, they both looked at doing this and

opted against it. And now we get more clues coming, oh, well, you see, you know, it favors the

minority. We couldn't let our political opponents have, we couldn't actually work with our opponents and

and come to some sort of consensus. We have to have political partisan control, and it's the Republicans

and the Democrats that apparently feel that way. What it would force us to do in the Senate is

vote on all kinds of Democrat amendments, whether it's Epstein or blocking President Trump's tariffs,

or, you know, Obamacare subsidies. You can go right down the list, war powers, abortion,

there are a whole bunch of votes that would be, that we would be forced to take, not only really

hard political votes for a lot of our colleagues, but also votes that in the end, some of which would pass

and go on the bill. And once issues like that are attached to this bill, it's a poison pill. So

interesting. He says Democrats would add amendments. I believe Republicans would add amendments too.

And I'm sure when the Democrats were in power, the Republicans would do amendments. In other words,

the opposing party would find ways to continue to gum up the works because it, well, because

what we have to debate, we have to come to a conclusion. We have to come to some sort of

of majority consensus in order to move legislation forward. My god, we don't pass legislation. What's

going to happen? Well, for the most part, I think not passing legislation is a good thing.

Not always. There are certain things that need to be in there. There are rules about that. Like,

budget and finance things don't go through the 60 vote requirement. But it's all about why

is this control? And would the opposing party be able to do something that we couldn't let that happen?

They're, they're, we've looked at, believe me, we've, we've, we've shopped this out. We've,

we've gained it out. We've done all the contingencies and said, is there a way in the end that we

can get an outcome? Because to me, that's what it's about. If you're going to achieve a policy

outcome, yeah, then the process we're willing to look at. But in the end, this is about really

having a debate about the substance and the substance of this bill is whether or not people

who are in this country illegally, non-citizens ought to be able to vote. And as I've already pointed

out, it's already illegal for non-citizens to vote. Every state is I'm, that I'm aware of.

It's a constitutional requirement to be a citizen of the United States in order to vote.

The problem is not all states are actually enforcing that. And that, to me, is where the,

the problem really shows up. And I'm going to get into that a bit more. But I, I have a break

coming up and I don't want to start, I don't want to break that up in the middle. But I want you

sit there and realize a couple of things here. So on the one hand, yes, we have, we have apparently

reports that foreign entities have gained access to some of our voter registration. And the data

that's included, including person-identifiable information, we have Congress trying to pass

legislation that's only half constitutional. But the debate, the problem seems nothing to do

with the law or the Constitution. It seems to be all about partisanship. And this party wants it,

so we have to be opposed to it. And well, oh, they're opposed that we can't let them add amendments,

because well, they might add something we don't like. And this is all the shows, you know, that,

again, Congress is not supposed to be fast. They're supposed to be thorough. But they're not supposed

to be looking at, well, does it improve my party or my opponents? They're supposed to be looking,

is it constitutional? Is it a reacting, a power vested in us by the Constitution of the States?

You notice that didn't seem to come up anywhere in Mr. Thune's discussion about this debate on

the Save Act. Now, as I said, I've got a break coming up before I go, though,

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Welcome back everybody, Americans. We joined the Constitution today. We're talking about

doing more than voting. Before the break, we talked about the saved act and we have to prevent

non-citizens from voting. And, of course, during that debate, let's just say the opposition had

some interesting statements. For example, Senator Badea, Alex Badea, said that non-citizens voting

is already, in federal elections, is already a felony. So this legislation is nothing but a

misguided solution in search of a problem that does not exist. Here's the thing. If it's already

a felony, then how do we know if people are actually violating the law? In other words, let's say

it's a crime to go faster than the post-it-speed limit. But if there are not police out there with

radar guns, how do you know if someone's actually violating the law or not? Which is what the

save act is supposed to be doing. Again, I have no problem with the photo ID because that's

dealing with the time, place, and manner of voting. I have a problem with the save act and the

voter registration because that's not a power delegated to the United States by the Constitution.

I do have a problem with states that don't follow their own constitution that says,

you have to be a citizen to vote. And so I think Badea's statement is foolish because, okay,

yeah, it's already a crime to vote in elections when you're not a citizen. But if no one's looking,

how are they going to get caught? And that's really what the save act is about, even with the

the voter registration portion. But as I said, you know, he wasn't out there, Senator Padea,

that he called them federal elections or actually election for federal offices. Padea had to

be a details matter. But what about other elections? Again, the save act has no, the federal government

has no legal authority over those. So I remind you that in New York City, well, there's a group that

fought to allow 800,000 non-citizens to vote in municipal elections in direct violation of the

Constitution of the state of New York. Article two, section one says, every citizen shall be

entitled to vote at every election for all officers elected by the people. And upon all questions

submitted to the vote of the people provided that such citizen is 18 years of age or over. And

shall have been a resident of this state and the county city or village for 30 days next proceeding

in election. So New York City was, hey, we'll just violate the Constitution. Now, thankfully,

that didn't actually happen. That move was struck down or that law was struck down by the second

judicial appointment and eventually shot down at the New York State Court of Appeals saying it

violates our Constitution. We can't do that. Doesn't mean that they didn't try, but they didn't do it.

The Washington DC Board of Elections are tied up in court trying to preserve a district law that

permitted non-citizens to vote in local elections. Now, the DC doesn't have a Constitution because

it's not a state. But again, federal law says you have to be a citizen to vote. Oops. Oakland

California voters approved a charter amendment in 2002, permitting non-citizens who have children

to vote in Oakland school board elections. Again, in violation of the Constitution of California.

And these are just a few of the examples of those who have tried to get to allow non-citizens

vote. Interesting, at least the examples I've found so far, all of them seem to be members of

the Democratic Party, which maybe a pattern you find important, maybe not. But the idea that

the states, we don't have to worry about the federal level, guess what? You have state actors

that are trying to deal with elections in state elections. And well, sometimes you're getting

away with it, sometimes they're not. But that's a problem for a state to fix. When it comes to voting

in federal elections for federal offices, like I said, the register is not, you don't register

to vote in a federal office. So Congress has no authority over the registration process.

Which, of course, brings us the question, what are the states doing to ensure the accuracy

of their elections, to ensure that only people legally and constitution-qualified vote, i.e.

citizens in the United States, are the ones voting. Listen to this, this is a debate during

hearing in the Minnesota legislature. Okay, so the answer to my question is yes, under that scenario.

Someone could, they get their driver's license again, because we give them to anybody here.

They register to vote. It doesn't match with the Social Security numbers, so they're flagged,

but they come in as long as they have an ID, which is that driver's license, and they sign

that they're, you know, eligible vote to vote, they can vote. And they're no longer flagged.

They're on the system. Is that correct, Mr. Leno?

Madam Chair, if I could add the, and maybe stepping back from those that are flagged as

CID on the roster, for anyone that's presenting documentation to register to vote, that is

affirmation of their identity. The driver's license has not been used as proof of citizenship

for the purposes of registering to vote. It's affirming that they are, who they say they are. So

in any of these cases where someone were to cast a ballot if they were ineligible to vote,

there are also reports that are generated post-election for voters that are challenged,

that counties will run to show status of voters that had been updated due to the fact that

they've now cast a ballot that can be reviewed and referred to the county attorney.

Okay, so the answer is yes, to my question.

Now, Mr. Lindell, this was actually a poll, I'm trying to let me out. Paul, he is the

Minnesota director of elections that it was answering the question. And I believe the legislators

a little bit of a gotcha, you know, so my answer, the answer is yes, even though it's not exactly

what he said. I don't know, I found it a bit squishy. Okay, so a driver's license is not

proof of citizenship. Okay, that's fine. What is the requirement? What is the proof of citizenship

necessary to register? Because you're telling me that if people cast votes that are not eligible,

then well, if you're, if you have a process to catch them, apparently people are doing it.

And what is the process? How does someone get out of voter registry if they're not a citizen?

And is that, you know, in other words, are there other malfeasances? Is there problems in this?

I don't, I don't know. Considering everything's been going on in Minnesota lately,

this might be a question worth spending some time on, especially if you live in the state of

Minnesota. As again, I live here in Tennessee. When I registered to vote, pretty sure I had to

prove I'm a citizen. Oh, remember, for sure, it was over 10 years ago when I registered.

It's almost 11 now. Wow. But every time I show up to vote, guess what? I have to reduce a

photo ID. I give them my driver's license. My wife gives them their, her driver's license.

I make that point because my wife is in a wheelchair. She needs assistance working the voting machine.

So, you know, she has a hard time, her fingers have a hard time making sure she gets the right

button. So I help her. And of course, every, every time we go through, I tell them, you know,

we're gonna, she's gonna need assistance voting. My wife signs a form that says, yes, it's okay

for my husband to assist me in my voting. And, you know, I go in and then help her vote.

Boom. And she tells me what she wants to vote for. And I make sure the right buttons are pushed.

She verifies it. And then we submit the vote. And la la life is good. But that's at the state level.

And again, you know, the, the question of, of non-citizens voting is apparently something that

is still people are still trying to do this. Now, I always wonder why do you want a non-citizen to vote?

Could it be that, well, you're trying to get, you're trying to, to boost the voting for your

political party? And that's one way of doing it. There are a lot of other ways that, well,

may not be as illegal, but certainly or not, not the right way about doing things.

For example, California right now, there's a race for governor. And one of the candidates,

a Matt Mahan, currently mayor of San Jose, said that their state's high gas prices are becoming

an emergency for working families. I think we got to act like it. Well, yeah, I mean, the California

is crazy. California's gas tax is 61 cents a gallon, the highest in the nation.

The price of gas in California, this is as of, oh, I think it was like middle of March,

March 17th. Oh, same Patrick's Day. So on the California, the cosmic gas is $5.52 a gallon,

the highest in the United States. It's actually 50% more than any other state in the

year, according to triple A, the national average, by the way, is 371. But I want you to think about

that. You have California, which is part of the continental United States, which means you can

have pipelines. It actually sits on a fair amount of its own oil, yet gas there is more expensive

than Hawaii, which is an island that has to import all their gas, meaning they can't

instead of a pipeline to Hawaii, it has to be shipped in on tanker. And it's still less expensive

than California. So this has become, apparently, is becoming a bit of a debate for the,

the governor's race in California. Now we go back to to Mayor Mayan, and he said in an interview,

the truth is we have the highest taxes in the country and a $350 billion budget,

and we ought to be able to pave our roads and enable working families to put food on the table.

Okay, a bit of a hyperbole, but that's okay, this politics. You want to say, I just reject the

notion that the sky is going to fall if we provide temporary relief to working families who are

being pushed to the brink by a war that they didn't vote for. I'm sorry, I didn't ask for.

Oh, I understand now, it's all Trump's fault. Yeah, it wouldn't be surprising that Mayor

Mayan is a Democrat, right? So it's all Trump's fault. And I admit, right, the war has had an

impact on oil prices, which had led to increasing gasoline prices. I see the pumps where I live.

I then again, I've also made some provision to help mitigate against those costs, but that's

that's fodder for another day, which makes me wonder how many of the candidates for

governor of California are going to offer a temporary solution, a temporary relief to working families

during this Iran crisis. Well, if the problem is the taxes, why only a temporary relief?

If the problem is California's high gas taxes, why only temporarily relieve the problem?

Because you say it's temporary, well, that means you're going to go back and put the problem back

in place as soon as what? Nobody's looking. As soon as you're actually governor,

again, this is these are the actions of the people that are asking to be hired to represent

the people of California. Is this really the best we can do? You look at these two at that,

Mayan, or maybe Villagorosa, the Mayor of Los Angeles, who is also running for governor,

and again, both have publicly called for cutting back regulations,

probably to get elected, but will it continue after they're elected? Because they're just saying,

which is just, just temporary, there's going to be temporary relief. This isn't a real problem.

We just need some temporary relief from all of this. I'm sorry, what it shows is that California has

a problem. The gas spike, by the way, yes, this one was caused by Trump's attack on Iran.

We saw a similar one when Russia invaded Ukraine, so it's not solely the president's fault,

but we have to look at it and say, hmm, maybe the problem in California isn't the gas regulations.

Maybe it's the idiots they put in office to represent them. Maybe it's the people of California.

One of two things, either the people of California should hire better people to represent them,

or, well, you've decided you voted for this. This is what you asked for.

Deal with it. I mean, really, you voted for people that is not like these dash tasks appeared

overnight. You voted for these people to come in and represent you in government,

and this is what they've put in place, and you've kept hiring them, and they've kept doing more.

So this must be what the people of California want. You want high gas prices,

because that's what you voted for over and over and over again.

Now, could the system be better to open up to make it easier for candidates with other ideas

to come forward? Absolutely. But then again, the people of California, they have a choice.

You may not realize it, but you don't have to vote only for the names on the ticket.

There's a right-end option. You can write in somebody, meaning if the major political powers

don't support the person you think would do the best job, write their name in, but they'll never win.

Well, not if, then they're not winning this time, but, okay, are you going to vote for someone

who's going to rip your pocket off because they're going to win? Is that really the only standard

you have is, well, they're going to win, so let me vote for them. Well, that's kind of a foolish

way to run a country, at least to my point of view. Now, I got a couple of other things I want to

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exclusive offer. Welcome back every day American to rejoin the Constitution study. Today,

well, we're looking at should we be doing more than voting and an interesting case coming out of

Pennsylvania. See, Pennsylvania passed a law that required on mail-in ballots that the voter

handwrite the date on their ballot. Because again, we have an election day. The Constitution

requires that day to be uniform across all 50 states. That's been a controversy. When is a

mail-in ballot considered cast? If you mail it by election day, does that mean it was cast

by an election day, making the dates uniform, but they're counted after, which gets into

a whole interesting conundrum. Because again, when the Constitution was written, the idea of

mailing in a ballot was ludicrous. It took weeks for mail to get across the country. So,

nah, it made no sense. Of course, now again, we've got people that's like, I'm not saying the

aren't scenarios where mail-in ballot is the right thing to do. They said, I've done it once in my

life when I physically was going to be out of the state on election day when I'd have an opportunity

to vote. So, this is the Pennsylvania says, listen, all right, then just write in the date.

All you got to do is write in the date. Well, in a federal public court decided that no

Pennsylvania must accept mail-in ballots, even if they lack the proper date on the return envelope.

What's the logic behind this? Well, the according to the appellate decision, because

the Commonwealth's date requirement, an inadvertent typographical error, or a flipped number,

or even a straight penmark in the date field, will remove the ballot contained within the return

envelope from consideration, and the voter may never be the wiser. Now, okay, I agree we have a

problem with the date range on mail-in ballots, and I don't know of a really great solution,

one that's going to make somebody unhappy. For example, does the ballot have to be mailed by

election day or must it arrive by election day? Interesting conundrum, especially when you have

states that require that votes be counted, you know, on election day. If you mail an

election day and it doesn't arrive for several days after, well, then how do you count on election day?

Of course, people are obsessed with getting the results right now. We're the instant coffee and

a microwave oven generation. We want everything instantly and immediately, and we don't want to wait

for anything. So, waiting for those ballots that were mailed on a certain date to arrive,

well, that would just, you know, drive some people nuts. Now, I don't think Pennsylvania's solution

is the right one either because I can write any date I want. It could be, you know, let's say,

November, it could be December 15th, and I can write in that I cast this, you know, on election day

in November, I can write in anything I want. We need something a bit more official. So, I'm okay,

personally, the compromise I can live with is it must be postmarked by election day.

That way we know the vote was cast by election day. And that's my problem with the Pennsylvania

is, again, there's no officialness to it. Someone could write in anything they want.

To me, it's not that a ballot will be thrown out. You don't know that it was cast on that

date just because someone said so. You know, the only other thing I could think of is, okay,

you must have mail-in ballots notarized. Now, I'm sure people would go apoplectic about the idea.

You have to go to a note, you might have to pay a notary public. That's a poll tax. No, that's a

fee for the convenience of mailing your ballot in rather than, you know, doing it in person.

So, a notary would be an official mark that, but I guess no one's going to go for that.

So, the only one I see that people accept is, is the postmark from the Postal Service,

which is a agency of the federal government. It makes an official stamp, an official date,

and that's what came to my attention is my home state of Tennessee has joined 20 other states

in asking the Supreme Court to pick up, to look at this ruling, this decision, sorry,

about Pennsylvania's mail-in law because they think it's, I'm assuming they think it's a good idea.

I don't know. But again, we're talking about Pennsylvania. This is a Commonwealth issue,

to state issue. It's not a federal issue. So, I'm not, unless they're talking about an election

that involves House and Senate, U.S. House and Senate, I don't think the federal government

has anything to say because there's nothing under the Constitution that would cover this.

So, again, we're back to the question of the Constitution requires an election day that's

uniform across the Union. And the only way I see doing that is by, for mail-in ballots,

is by a postmark. Only thing I think that works, I think that's penance of anything doesn't work,

even though, you know, again, 21 states want the Supreme Court to look at this.

Now, I want to close out with an interest in Scots because it's one I have frequently. It's one of

the things I know a lot of people don't like about my position. See, there's this, a law professor,

a Queen's University, joined by the name of Bruce Party, argues that federal judges, bureaucrats,

and legislators must serve shorter terms to prevent the establishment of a protected ruling elite.

I wholeheartedly agree with that statement. I disagree with Mr. Party about how we go about

doing this. Now, Mr. Party is a Canadian, so he's talking about what's going on up in Canada,

and they have different rules in Canada, right? But it's something that we keep coming back to

here in the United States as well. And I agree, judges, bureaucrats, and legislators should serve

shorter terms. The problem is, most people I hear say, well, the answer is term limits.

Term limits are not the answer. Why? Well, first of all, remember, term limits are only proposed

by the people that lose. You don't get your way, you want term limits. In other words,

the people calling for term limits are the people that want these, and these offices to share

shorter terms, but they're not happening. So they're the losers. That's why they want this.

We saw here in the United States, right? When FDR was elected for his fourth term as present,

the Republicans ran for Congresses that they would put in term limits, because they couldn't get

the people to vote for somebody else. And that, to me, is really the problem with term limits.

We think of term limits as limiting how often a person can run for office. What it really does

is limit who you can vote for for office. Now, as I said, I agree that people should serve

shorter terms, which means, well, let's start with representatives, right, legislators.

If you think they should serve shorter terms, stop voting for them. That's the answer.

We don't need to be told how long they should, you may, you decide for yourself. This is

enough. Stop voting for them. But Paul, do you expect to vote for the other candidate? If that's

what you think, of course, we have this twisted process where we let the political parties limit

the names on the ballot, but then again, you can always write in your own name. If you think,

you know, this person served long enough, but you don't like the, the candidate for the other party,

write in a name. We need to take responsibility for our votes. Now, when it comes to a bureaucrats

and even federal judges, now I might be open for term limits. Let me understand. Let's start

with the judges, right? Because judges are not elected. They're appointed. And they were given

an appointment during their good behavior for a reason. They didn't want them going through a

political process of being elected. That was the idea is to make them non-political. It hasn't

really worked. But here's the thing. The only reason I'd even consider term limits on judges

is because our representatives in Congress are not doing their job. You see judges at the federal

level do not serve lifetime appointments. Look at Article 3. They serve the judges of both the

Supreme and inferior courts. She'll serve during their good behavior. Problem is Congress almost

never. I can't remember the last time we heard Congress actually impeach a judge for their bad

behavior. So there's a problem. It's our representatives. Our employees are not doing their job.

So we must put our own restrictions on them. And again, pass a constitutional amendment

to limit the terms of federal judges. Of course, it's going to be kind of convoluted

because if someone starts out at the district court, and let's say they can serve 12 years.

And at 11 years, they get appointed to the circuit court. Does that mean that clock starts again?

And now it's like, oh, no, now you've got another 12 years. And then, oh, by the way,

you're going to the Supreme Court. You get another, right? That would have to be worked out. It's why

it should be a one, it needs to be a constitutional amendment. And two, it needs to be something

that's truly thought about and debated. Bureaucrats are interesting because again, bureaucrats are simply

employees. And again, since we don't seem to have a problem with nobody regulating the bureaucrats

that they're behaving properly, okay, maybe that's our problem. But again, putting in, and again,

this would not require a constitutional amendment, but it would require laws that say when we create

these offices that someone can only work in that office for a certain amount of time.

This gets a little weird because you've got, well, you know, what other job do you serve for

a permanent amount of time? Which means we may have to limit it to the political appointed levels

of the bureaucracy. Meaning, you know, when you appoint a secretary or an undersecretary,

anybody that gets appointed by the president would have a term limit. Again, the higher offices

tend to be fairly term limited because when a new president comes in, they tend to want to put

their people in place. But I wouldn't be so upset if they were to put in laws that say, well,

this layer of bureaucrats can only serve a certain amount of time before they have to find work

elsewhere. And that would not require a constitutional amendment. But again, this is a quite

something that comes up frequently in my debates and discussions. I know a lot of quote-unquote

conservatives are really don't like my position because I remind people we get who we vote for.

Every elected office has a term limit if it's imposed by the people. The problem is you have to

convince other people to agree with you and we don't want to do that. When we don't get our way,

we want someone other, we want the bully of government to enforce our will on others because you

may say, well, you know, eight years is enough for a member of the house. Someone else may say 12,

someone may six. Well, who's going to whose will is going to be imposed? It actually destroys

the liberty of your right to vote for who you want to vote for, to put a qualification like that

on there. You know, FDR-1 for elections because the people were happy with them. Not because he

did a good job. He did a real evil job when it comes to the office of president. But he brides people

with lots of goodies, which means the reason he got elected four times is because

well, people were paying off their bribe and it says a lot more about we the people than it does

about FDR or our election process. So I have to ask you, do you do more than vote? Do you show up

every couple of years cast about it and walk away and think your job is done? Or do you look at the

people you vote for, whether they want to lose, whoever wins, whether you voted for them or not,

they're your employees. Do you give them regular job reviews? Do you review their work? Do you hold

them accountable for their actions? These are all things we need to consider. This is the responsibility

of being a citizen of a republic. It's not just showing up and voting. It's holding the people you

hire accountable for their actions. Whether that means whether you vote for them again or whether you

try to get them removed, those terminals become less of an issue if we the people are doing our job.

It also comes back to, you know, if states have a required by their constitution to only let

U.S. citizens vote is the state enforcing that. Again, New York City tried to get around that.

That didn't work because the state courts wouldn't let them. But what about others? DC is doing it

in violation of federal law. No one's holding them accountable. Who's holding them accountable?

See, we love to point the finger at somebody else, but Tony, more often than not, the real problem

is not in Washington, DC. It's not in our state houses. It's in our mirrors. And until we realize that

and start changing how we decide who to vote for and how we deal with them in between elections,

it's going to continue to be a problem for this great United States.

Now again, we do a lot of work here at the Constitution Society. I've got the radio program.

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