History Homework 2 seperate parts

"But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates."

"The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions."

“A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischief of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

"The legislature is, of all political institutions, the one which is most easily swayed by the wishes of the majority. The Americans determined that the members of the legislature should be elected by the people immediately, and for a very brief term, in order to subject them, not only to the general convictions, but even to the daily passion, of their constituents. The members of both houses are taken from the same class in society, and are nominated in the same manner; so that the modifications of the legislative bodies are almost as rapid and quite as irresistible as those of a single assembly. It is to a legislature thus constituted that almost all the authority of the government has been entrusted.

But whilst the law increased the strength of those authorities which of themselves were strong, it enfeebled more and more those which were naturally weak. It deprived the representatives of the executive of all stability and independence, and by subjecting them completely to the caprices of the legislature; it robbed them of the slender influence which the nature of a democratic government might have allowed them to retain. In several States the judicial power was also submitted to the elective discretion of the majority, and in all of them its existence was made to depend on the pleasure of the legislative authority, since the representatives were empowered annually to regulate the stipend of the judges."

Article I. Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

To establish post offices and post roads;

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

How a Bill Becomes Law

Introduction of Bills. Bills can begin in either the House or the Senate. Different versions of a bill can begin in both chambers concurrently.

· Bills can only be introduced by members of Congress.

· Many bills originate in the Executive Branch and are introduced by a congressional sponsor.

· New bills are numbered and sent to the appropriate committee.

Committee Action. The bill comes under its most intense scrutiny while in committee, and most bills die in committee.

· The bill is considered either by the full committee or a subcommittee

· The committee may order a "clean bill," with a new number, to be introduced.

Floor Action. Next, the bill appears before the entire House or Senate. The two chambers have different procedures for floor debate.

House :

· The House Rules Committee regulates debate for each bill, issuing the "rule" for the bill.

· Members can speak on a bill for a set period of time, as specified in the "rule."

· To speed debate on some bills, the House meets as the Committee of the Whole, which has different rules for floor debate. The Committee of the Whole can amend a bill, but cannot pass it.

Senate :

· Senate debate is unlimited. However, today, only the indication that a senator is willing to hold an unlimited debate is enough to prevent a bill from receiving an up-or-down vote (no actual time on the Senate floor). This is known as a filibuster.

· A filibuster may be closed by unanimous consent (which is very unlikely), or by invoking "cloture," which requires a three-fifths vote of Senators present. If all 100 Senators are present, then 60 votes are required to invoke cloture.

· Successful filibusters effectively kills a bill. Today, almost every bill in the Senate requires 60 votes to end a filibuster so the bill can receive an up-or-down floor vote.

Second Chamber. Once one chamber has voted to pass a bill, the other chamber may:

· Pass it with the language intact.

· Refer it to a committee for scrutiny or alteration.

· Reject the entire bill, informing the other chamber of its actions, or

· Ignore the bill, while working on its own version of the legislation.

Conference. When the two chambers pass differing versions of similar legislation, the bill goes to a conference committee to reconcile the differences. A conference committee is convened as necessary. Its members consist of equal members from both political parties. Once the conference committee has crafted a compromise bill, both the House and Senate need to pass it again as it is (with no further changes) before it is sent to the president for signature. The President. The Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate both sign the approved bill and send it to the president, who then has four options.

· If the president signs and dates the bill, it becomes law.

· If Congress is in session, and the president does not sign the bill within 10 days, the bill becomes law without his signature.

· The president may "veto" the bill. The bill then goes back to Congress for a veto override vote. In order to override the president's veto, there must be a 2/3 vote in the House and a 2/3 vote in the Senate. (A 2/3 vote by Congress, overall, is not sufficient.

· If Congress adjourns within 10 days of giving the bill to the president, and he does not sign it, the bill dies. This is called a "pocket veto."

SENATE:

HOUSE:

Standing Committees Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Appropriations Armed Services Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Budget Commerce, Science, and Transportation Energy and Natural Resources Environment and Public Works Finance Foreign Relations Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Judiciary Rules and Administration Small Business and Entrepreneurship Veterans Affairs

Special, Select, and Other Committees Indian Affairs Select Committee on Ethics Select Committee on Intelligence Special Committee on Aging Joint Committees Joint Committee on Printing Joint Committee on Taxation Joint Committee on the Library Joint Economic Committee

Standing Committees Agriculture Appropriations Armed Services Budget Economic Education Energy and Commerce Government Reform Homeland Security House Administration International Relations Judiciary Resources Rules Science Small Business Standards of Official Conduct Transportation and Infrastructure Veterans' Affairs Ways and Means

Special, Select, and Other Committees House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina Joint Committees Joint Committee on Printing Joint Committee on Taxation

Congressional Glossary of Terms

Amendment - A proposal to change the language of a bill, can be offered in Committee or on the Floor. Bill - A legislative proposal introduced by a member of Congress. Bills are designated as HR (House of Representatives) or S (Senate) according to the body in which they are introduced, and assigned numbers according to the order in which they are introduced. Most bills are public bills, dealing with general issues. Private bills deal with individual claims against the government, such as immigration cases and land disputes. Budget Committees - A committee in each chamber that coordinates spending legislation and formulates the overall congressional budget. Cloture - The procedure by which a filibuster can be ended in the Senate. Cloture requires the signatures of 16 Senators and the votes of three- fifths of the Senate (60 Senators). Concurrent Resolution - A statement of opinion approved by a simple majority in the House and Senate but is not sent to the President for approval. Conference Committee - A special committee formed to reconcile differences between differing versions of a bill passed by the Senate and House. Conference committee members, or conferees, are appointed from the bill's sponsoring committees in each chamber. Filibuster - A time-delaying tactic associated only with the Senate and used by a minority in an effort to delay, modify or defeat a bill or amendment that probably would pass if voted on directly. The most common method is to take advantage of the Senate's rules permitting unlimited debate. Hearing - House and Senate Committee session in which testimony regarding legislation is taken from interested parties. Joint Committee - A committee composed of both House and Senate members. Joint Resolution - A statement of opinion approved by a simple majority in the House and Senate and sent to the President for approval to have the force of law. Line Item Veto Act - Gave the President authority to cancel discretionary spending, items of new direct spending, and limited tax benefits, which may only be overridden by a two-thirds vote in Congress. Ruled unconstitutional in 1996. Majority Leader - The leading spokesperson and legislative strategist for the party in control of either the House or the Senate. Majority Whip - The assistant majority leader in the House or Senate. Minority Leader - The leading spokesperson and legislative strategist for the minority party in either the House or Senate. Minority Whip - The assistant minority leader in either House or Senate. Omnibus Bill - A bill containing several separate but related items. Usually used for must-pass issues such as the federal budget. The key for this type of bill is reconciliation, meaning it must receive a floor vote in both chambers of Congress (ie, no Senate filibuster). Override a Veto - A procedure that Congress may enact when the president refuses to sign a bill into law. Requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber. If this vote occurs, the bill then becomes law over the president's objections. Quorum - The required minimum number of members present for the House or Senate to conduct official business (51 in the Senate, 218 in the House). Both chambers usually assume a quorum is present even if it is not. Reconciliation - A rule applied by the leaders of Congress to a bill that must be passed, such as the federal budget. This rule limits debate in both chambers. This is important in that the Senate filibuster cannot be implemented for this bill (usually applied to an omnibus bill). Rider - An amendment, usually not germane, which its sponsor hopes to get through more easily by including it in other legislation. Rule - The instructions on the time and substance of debate on a House bill, which are attached to the bill when reported out to the floor by the House Rules Committee

U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995)

… Term limits, like any other qualification for office, unquestionably restrict the ability of voters to vote for whom they wish. On the other hand, such limits may provide for the infusion of fresh ideas and new perspectives, and may decrease the likelihood that representatives will lose touch with their constituents. It is not our province to resolve this longstanding debate.

We are, however, firmly convinced that allowing the several States to adopt term limits for congressional service would effect a fundamental change in the constitutional framework. Any such change must come not by legislation adopted either by Congress or by an individual State, but rather--as have other important changes in the electoral process [n.50] --through the Amendment procedures set forth in Article V…

In the absence of a properly passed constitutional amendment, allowing individual States to craft their own qualifications for Congress would thus erode the structure envisioned by the Framers, a structure that was designed, in the words of the Preamble to our Constitution, to form a "more perfect Union."

Nothing in the Constitution deprives the people of each State of the power to prescribe eligibility requirements for the candidates who seek to represent them in Congress. The Constitution is simply silent on this question. And where the Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or the people.

Because the majority fundamentally misunderstands the notion of "reserved" powers, I start with some first principles. Contrary to the majority's suggestion, the people of the States need not point to any affirmative grant of power in the Constitution in order to prescribe qualifications for their representatives in Congress or to authorize their elected state legislators to do so.

Our system of government rests on one overriding principle: all power stems from the consent of the people. To phrase the principle in this way, however, is to be imprecise about something important to the notion of "reserved" powers. The ultimate source of the Constitution's authority is the consent of the people of each individual State, not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole…

The Case for Electronic Voting Excerpt from Wired News, the Case for Electronic Voting

Farhad Manjoo

Townsend, who is the registrar of voters in Riverside County, decided to spend $14 million earlier this year to make Riverside an all-electronic voting county.

At the time, she said, not everyone was thrilled about the idea. Some of her colleagues thought the touch-screen voting machines might be too complicated for voters, and that the whole upgrade might be too expensive. Nobody is questioning Townsend's decision anymore.

The deployment of electronic voting equipment in Riverside was a long-time in coming. "The idea came two years ago, after California's 1998 gubernatorial primary," Townsend said.

That year, Riverside spent $1.4 million to print a ballot for each of the county's registered voters -- about 600,000. Only about half of the voters showed up at the polls, and "we had to throw out the rest of the ballots," Townsend said.

A more significant problem than the cost, though, was the error-rate of the county's punch-card system. "In Florida now, they're talking about the problems with 'overvoting'" -- people voting for more than one candidate -- "but this isn't a new thing. I'd see voters all the time making that mistake," she said. Townsend thought there had to be a better way. And she found it, she said, in Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment's AVC Edge touch-screen system.

The new voting machines were first tested in a few small city races, and Townsend said the touch system had two things going for it: It was easy to use, and it eliminated errors.

The public liked it too, Townsend said. "For the city races, we had a 99 percent approval rating of the new systems. The comments were mostly, 'We've finally stepped into the 21st century,' and 'Why has it taken so long for this?'"

"The election business is slow-moving," said Paul Terwilliger, an engineer at Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment. But now, after Florida, "electronic voting is certainly going to explode," he said.

And a lot of firms, both traditional and startup, are jockeying into position for a possible financial windfall.

One such traditional company that has started producing electronic systems is Hart InterCivic, which this year tested its eSlate voting system in a few counties across the country.

The eSlate resembles an "an oversized palm-pilot, about the size of a legal-sized sheet of paper," said Michelle Shafer, a spokeswoman for Hart. Unlike the Riverside County systems, the eSlates don't use a touch-screen. "You vote by turning a wheel on the bottom, and you make a selection by pressing a button," she said…

Everyone who tried the system in Arizona liked it, and more than 80 percent said they would prefer to vote using such electronic terminals...

Electronic Voting is Fraudulent. V Citizens, excerpts.

Secrecy in government has taken a new turn. Elections are now secret from voters. Black-box voting employs touch-screen machines that often produce no printed receipt. Without a paper trail, a legitimate recount is impossible. It's a virtual vote. And that's the point, actually.

Electronic voting is "secret" because citizens curious about how, exactly, electronic votes are counted are barred from analyzing protected software. It's private property. And when states and counties demand access to the software codes the e-voting companies simply pull up stakes and move to other markets. The companies involved in black-box voting include Diebold, Election Systems & Software, and Sequoia, and the large investors in these companies include defense contractors Northrup-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin.

Many Americans, particularly in Ohio, remain suspicious that Ohio forced 800,000 voters to cast "virtual votes," giving them no other option. (Bush won that deciding state by just 150,000 votes.)

Controversy has always surrounded e-voting because it is widely viewed as vulnerable to fraud, hackers, malfunctions and power outages. Perhaps its most unique feature, however, is that e-voting is "virtual" in the full sense of the word: votes hover in cyberspace, not as matter but as energy, quarks akimbo. Then, sometime later, a private company decides to retrieve the votes from a private server - all of the votes, some of the votes, or none of the votes. You will never know.

A question arises: Why can't Halliburton get a no-bid contract to run paperless elections on secret software, off of private servers, and then be in charge of actually counting the votes? Because another Party-backed company, Diebold, already got it.

Elections in America are increasingly privatized, paperless and virtual. Instead of marching, citizen-turned-consumers will register their political will, like drones, on a touch-screen pad.

McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003)

Question

1. Does the "soft money" ban of the Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002 exceed Congress's authority to regulate elections under Article 1, Section 4 of the United States Constitution and/or violate the First Amendment's protection of the freedom to speak?

2. Do regulations of the source, content, or timing of political advertising in the Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002 violate the First Amendment's free speech clause?

Conclusion With a few exceptions, the Court answered "no" to both questions in a 5-to-4 decision written by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and John Paul Stevens. Because the regulations dealt mostly with soft-money contributions that were used to register voters and increase attendance at the polls, not with campaign expenditures (which are more explicitly a statement of political values and therefore deserve more protection), the Court held that the restriction on free speech was minimal. It then found that the restriction was justified by the government's legitimate interest in preventing "both the actual corruption threatened by large financial contributions and... the appearance of corruption" that might result from those contributions.

In response to challenges that the law was too broad and unnecessarily regulated conduct that had not been shown to cause corruption (such as advertisements paid for by corporations or unions), the Court found that such regulation was necessary to prevent the groups from circumventing the law. Justices O'Connor and Stevens wrote that "money, like water, will always find an outlet" and that the government was therefore justified in taking steps to prevent schemes developed to get around the contribution limits.

The Court also rejected the argument that Congress had exceeded its authority to regulate elections under Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution. The Court found that the law only affected state elections in which federal candidates were involved and also that it did not prevent states from creating separate election laws for state and local elections.

http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2003/2003_02_1674/