The Definition of Consciousness:
Me, I, My and Us, the MIMU of Self

I Have a Gripe

For almost two years now I have been trying to understand the claim by some Republicans that the 2020 election was rigged and corrupt. I finally figured it out after reading about the trial of Oath Keepers leader Steward Rhodes.

Rhodes took the stand in the group’s seditious conspiracy trial on November 3, 2022 and said he believed the election was “unconstitutional”. This is the first time I have heard of someone making a reasoned argument about a fraudulent election. But exactly what is an “unconstitutional” election?

Step back a moment and ponder the Boston Tea party which occurred on December 16, 1773 at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston. The Sons of Liberty raided the three ships containing bulk tea from England and dumped 342 crates of the stuff into the harbor. By the time of the tea party, the phrase “no taxation without representation”, coined five years earlier, had become sort of a litmus test of republican governance.

Now step a little closer to America. When the U. S. Constitution was adopted on June 21, 1788, it left voting rights, hence representation, up to the states. Only white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males over the age of twenty-one and who owned property qualified as voters in almost all the states. This is where things get really interesting. Remember that phrase, “No taxation without representation”.

Closer still. On July 9, 1868 the 13th Amendment freed a bunch of people from slavery who were definitely not Anglo-Saxon. The amendment granted them citizenship. States still had the right to determine who could and could not vote and just being a citizen was not enough for some States. Then, on February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment was passed granting Black Men the right to vote and Congress the power to make sure the right was not infringed upon by the States. Black women were left out of this change in civic participation. Women, both Black and White, were subject to taxes but were not represented. In the colonial American heritage of representative democracy, this was blatantly unfair. Fifty years later, on August 18, 1920, women were granted the right to vote under the 19th Amendment. Still, some southern states did not allow Black women to vote. Finally, on July 1, 1971 the 26th Amendment was adopted granting 18-year-olds the right to vote. This last granting of voting rights seems to be based on a variation of the “No taxation without representation”, to “No taxation nor maimed body nor sacrificial death in war without representation”. (For a more detailed discussion of these voting-right changes, go to HISTORY STORIES ). So what is an “unconstitutional” election.

We have gone from Anglo-Saxon male property owners 21 years and older with the right to vote to any American citizen over eighteen years old. So the constitutional question of the 2020 election cannot be a question of constitutionality. In a representative democracy, we would like anyone eligible to vote to in fact vote. However–and I will take flak for this–if we are relying upon a classical republican principle of “No taxation without representation” then minors below 18 years of age, including the paperboy and baby-sitter who relinquish part of their earnings (through their parents most likely) to taxes are not being represented. This does not make the 2020 election “unconstitutional” but it does make it a highly questionable implementation of elective representation. But I digress.

Now, there are some restrictive laws in the States which may disqualify a citizen from voting. What Mr. Rhodes may have been thinking when he said the 2020 election was “unconstitutional” is that some States changed the procedures by which citizens could vote. Mail-in ballots, drop-boxes. Next thing you know States could allow voters to vote via their computer appliance. What’s the world coming to? Don’t answer that. I have the answer right here. When I started that question it was 1:45 PM when I looked at my watch. It is now 1:45 PM and some seconds. You see, things are constantly changing.

Apparently what Mr. Bannon wants to do is go back to the original circumstances of the U. S. Constitution. That’s fair. Only Anglo-Saxon men over 21 years old should be allowed to vote and thus be represented in governance. Fair indeed. But then there is the question of taxation without representation. If America repudiates this fundamental rationale for the establishment of American democracy, then it might as well become one of those “-isms” like fascism or communism or, perhaps more appropriately, a plutocracy.

The first American President, George Washington, said that America seemed to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness. It is an experiment that has lasted for over two-hundred and thirty years. Not all the people have been happy. And it has been messy. But as history has demonstrated, the experiment evolves. Evolve it must. Even now the nation–or at least some States in the nation–has not learned how to efficiently do something as simple as count votes, let alone recognize citizens eligible to vote. Saying an election is “unconstitutional” is an amazingly meaningless statement. If Mr. Bannon had predicated his seditious insurrection upon a contention that the 2020 election was tainted by violations of voting laws, he would at least have had a legal leg to stand on. The leg would be a phantom of course. But phantom legal legs seem to be a thing in the current state of representative democracy. There is something to be said about that. Being a voting American in relatively good standing, I have something to say about it.