Term Limits and Electoral College

Term Limits
The rules for eligibility for Congressional office are set forth in the Constitution, but there are no rules that determine term limits for these offices. The case U.S. Term Limits Inc. V. Thornton argues the constitutionality of States determining such limits themselves. Arkansas adopted Amendment 73 to their state Constitution in 1993, which limited Arkansas Representatives to three terms of office and Arkansas Senators to two terms. Supporters of the Amendment argued that the determination of term limits fell under the reserved powers in the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the States’ power to regulate the “Times, Places and Manner of Holding Elections”. However, in the Opinion of the Court, delivered by Justice Stevens, it was pointed out that term limitation does not fall under the reserved powers of the Tenth Amendment because these powers were not held by the States before the Federal Government was created and the Constitution was ratified. The States could not claim this power was “reserved” for them because no representatives were ever formally needed before the centralization of government and therefore no rules existed regarding such representatives. Justice Stevens also argued that even though the States’ do reserve the right to determine the “Times, Places and Manner of Holding Elections”, they cannot decide rules on elections if it goes against the Constitution.
In the previous case of Powell V. McCormack, the Court decided against term limits because the powers to determine eligibility for election are enumerated in the Constitution and should not be further determined. Justice Stevens cited the difference between Powell and U.S. Term Limits was that Powell dealt with nation wide term limits whereas U.S. Term Limits dealt with state-by-state term limits. The case of U.S. Term Limits is more severe because differing term limits for Federal elections in each State threatens the unity of the Federal Government, “Finally, state-imposed restrictions, unlike the congressionally imposed restrictions at issue in Powell, violate a third idea central to this basic principle: that the right to choose representatives belongs not to the States, but to the people.... Permitting individual States to formulate diverse qualifications for their representatives would result in a patchwork of state qualifications, undermining the uniformity and the national character that the Framers envisioned and sought to ensure. Such a patchwork would also sever the direct link that the Framers found so critical between the National Government and the people of the United States.....” Essentially, allowing individual states to determine term limits threatens the unity of the Federal Government. If the rules governing the government are not uniform, how can we expect them to govern effectively as one entity? Stevens argued that such dissention was unconstitutional because, even though term limits might allow for the influx of fresh ideas and change, it could effectively alter the rules of the government without going through the Amendment process.
In 1996, Arkansas did try to get Congressional Term Limits passed as an Amendment, by passing Article VIII of their state constitution. The case of Cook v. Gralike brought the constitutionally of Article VIII into question. The Article was intended to coerce Arkansas Representatives and Senators to pass a term limiting constitutional Amendment by providing those who did not support such an Amendment “an unfavorable ballot designation” by printing statements like “Disregarded Voters’ Instruction on Term Limits” or “Declined to Pledge Support Term Limits” next to the candidates names on the ballot. Ultimately the Court decided that a state could not use congressional election ballots to pressure representatives into following the principles of the state government effectively hindering their 1st Amendment right to free speech.
Each of these cases demonstrates the Court’s opinion that term limits are not constitutional.

Electoral College
The rules concerning the Electoral College are hazy and the controversy over the 2000 election showed that to the American public. It started because George W. Bush won the election in Florida by a margin of 1,784 votes, which was less than .5 % of the total votes cast and so an automatic machine recount was ordered. This first recount resulted in a smaller margin of victory for Bush so his opponent Al Gore used his right to request a manual recount in Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties. The Florida District Court ruled that a 7 day deadline would be put in place, Volusia county could amend its numbers at a later date, and that the Secretary of State of Florida “after ‘considering all attendant facts and circumstances,’ could exercise her discretion in deciding whether to include the late amended returns in the statewide certification.” The Secretary later asked the counties to submit requests to permit late filing of these recounts but she deemed that none of the four counties’ requests were valid. Gore immediately filed an emergency motion in the state court, arguing that the Secretary acted subjectively, but the court denied the motion. Gore appealed to the First District Court of Appeal and then the case passed on to the Florida State Supreme Court, which ordered that the Secretary would halt declaring a winner of the election until further notice from the court. The court ruled on two issues in the court, stating that a difference in sample manual recount and (or a recount only involving a few counties out of the whole state) and a machine count due to the manner in which a ballot was punched was sufficient reason to request a full manual recount, and that because of the Florida Election code which stated that the Secretary “may” ignore late ballot counts it would not rewrite that code but instead extend the deadline for submission on November 26th 2000 and order the Secretary to accept any manual recounts submitted prior to that deadline (effectively extending the original 7 day deadline by 12 days). In the case of Bush V. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, which was the first of the two major court cases regarding the election, the Supreme Court overturned the decision made by the Florida State Supreme Court and subsequently requested clarifications on the decision, stating that, “It is fundamental that state courts be left free and unfettered by us in interpreting their state constitutions. But it is equally important that ambiguous or obscure adjudications by state courts do not stand as barriers to a determination by this Court of the validity under the federal constitution of state action. Intelligent exercise of our appellate powers compels us to ask for the elimination of the obscurities and ambiguities.
However, Gore did not give up his quest to obtain Florida recounts, which resulted in the case of Bush V. Gore. On November 26th 2000 the results of the election were declared and George W. Bush was the winner of Florida’s 25 electoral votes. The following day Gore filed suit under Section 102.168 of the Florida State Constitution, which states that receiving illegal votes or rejection of legal votes in order to change the results of an election is reason for challenge of the election results. Though the Circuit Court ruled there was insufficient evidence to support Gore’s claim, he soon appealed to the First District Court of Appeals and the case moved on to the Florida Supreme Court and then the Supreme Court. The ruling was that Gore did not have sufficient evidence that 3,300 ballots were supposedly not legal, but that he did have sufficient evidence that 9,000 ballots failed to count the votes for president when counted by the machine. As a result of the recount 383 votes were added to Gore’s total count. The recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court because the ruling violated the Florida Election Code by remedying a violation of the safe-harbor provision, which allows the states to choose their own electors by a specified deadline without Congressional interference.
These two cases caused a lot of controversy over the 2000 election, especially because they delayed the declaration of a winner and showed the problems with punch hole ballots.
-Christie