Yesterday, I joined with 38 other legislators and elected officials in support of the lawsuit that Texas has filed to preserve the integrity of the 2020 Presidential Election.
The United States Constitution, in its very first sentence, does not speak of forming a “Perfect Union”, but rather “a more perfect Union“. In that spirt, the Constitution makes few guarantees to Americans. It does, however make one guarantee. In legal circles this has come to be known as “The Guarantee Clause.”
In Article, IV, Section 4, we find the following guarantee:
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”
Every American, whether residing in Rhode Island, or Alaska, or Texas, is guaranteed the fruits and privileges of living under a Republican Form of Government. There were many types of government the Founders could have chosen to guarantee. They could have chosen monarchy, or democracy, or oligarchy, or technocracy. Alternately, they could have simply left it up to old and new states alike to choose whatever form of government they fancied. If some states had wanted to dispense with constitutional government, the Founders could have chosen to let them do so.
They didn’t.
While states may experiment with any number of new technological and sociological innovations, they are limited by the Constitution to only those innovations which may be achieved under a Republican Form of Government.
This is fundamentally what the lawsuit between Texas and Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin is all about. And this is what we have highlighted in our submission to the Supreme Court.
If you would like to read it, our Amicus Brief can be downloaded from the Supreme Court’s Website using the link below:
Photo by Frank Huang on Unsplash
