A Short Remedy For Voting Rights Violations.

In my view, the Constitution already provides the tools to remedy abridging of the right to vote in the coming November Elections.

Article II provides that each state may appoint “a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”

The key phrase is “to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”

Section 2 of the Fourteenth A. empowers the Congress to reduce the number of representatives in those States which “abridge” the right to choose electors for improper purposes, including race.

The power of the House to judge the qualifications of its members as set forth in Article I, section 5, means that it is the final arbiter of the reduction of the number of Representatives from any State in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment requirement that the right to choose electors be unabridged.

In my view, the House retains the power to punish any State unlawfully abridging the choice of electors and can thereby reduce not only the representation therefrom but likewise the actual number of electors from those offending states.

The House should make this clear before we start voting: that the refusal to conduct fair elections will be considered abridging the right to choose electors and may not only disqualify states from full representation in the Congress but thereby reduce their respective number of Presidential electors.

-Albert Turner Goins