What an amazing week for civics lessons
People complain that we don’t teach civics in our schools anymore.
That may be true, but I give President Donald J. Trump credit where credit is due – his presidency, and especially the way he is going out, has been a fantastic fouryear civics lesson for us all.
Who even knew or thought about the counting of the electoral votes by Congress?
Who knew that state legislatures controlled by the losing party could – at least theoretically – submit competing slates of electors that could totally thwart the will of the voters in their states?
Who remembered learning about the Compromise of 1877, when Congress awarded 20 electoral votes from three southern states to Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for withdrawing federal troops from the post-Civil War South? That “grand bargain” ended Reconstruction and ushered in 100 years of a new kind of Black slavery known as Jim Crow.
Well, now we all know. But the rioting at the nation’s capital Jan. 6 overshadowed two other civics lessons that were happening at the same time:
1. The election of two Democrats in Georgia brings our U.S. Senate to a 50-50 balance. That means that Mitch “the Grim Reaper” Mitchell will no longer be Senate majority leader and can no longer send every single Democratic bill to die a lonely death in some dark corner of his office as he has for the last 12 years.
2. The refusal of the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Legislature to seat a duly elected and certified Democratic senator
he Republicans would not allow Lt. Gov. John Fetterman to seat Sen. Jim Brewer, elected by 69 votes, because 315 of the mail-in ballot envelopes in that race were undated but had been received by their county election bureaus on time.
They argued that those ballots were invalid despite a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that undated ballots that arrived on time and were otherwise valid could be counted.
Republicans, however, are always looking for ways to disenfranchise Democratic voters, firm in their belief that their voters always turn out and always do everything absolutely correctly, but Democrats always cheat.
After the Capital rioting was over, as the Senate debated objections to Arizona’s electors, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri stood up on the Senate f loor to tell the world that the reason he objected to the counting of the electoral ballots, certified by every state, was “election irregularities” in Pennsylvania’s election.
Hawley said Act 77, our mail-in voting law, was unconstitutional because the state constitution only allows absentee votes for very specific reasons.
It’s funny, I don’t remember anyone bringing that up when the Republican-controlled Legislature enacted, and the Democratic governor signed, Act 77 in 2019, months before the first Chinese gourmet ate the first COVID-infected bat.
I don’t recall anyone talking about that all through 2020 as people decided whether to take advantage of the new system to avoid exposure to COVID at the polls.
I don’t remember anyone mentioning that when the state government set up a system – votespa.gov – so people could apply for mailin or absentee ballots online.
No one brought up constitutionality when Trump was sabotaging the postal system and county election bureaus had to install drop
boxes to help people get their ballots in on time.
Even when the Republican-controlled state Legislature refused time and again to allow the counting of the mail-in ballots to begin before 7 a.m. Election day, even then, no one claimed all those ballots swamping county election bureaus were “unconstitutional.”
Now, after 2.5 million Pennsylvanians, Republicans and Democrats alike, voted in good faith by mail in the presidential election, only now, is Sen. Hawley so concerned about Pennsylvania’s election laws that he led a mob to break into the U.S. capital building.
What a civics lesson! And a history lesson too.
And, bonus time for Pennsylvanians, the lesson goes on. The next chapter
we’ll learn about is “judicial gerrymandering.”
Republicans are still teed off about the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s redistricting of the badly gerrymandered congressional districts two years ago (remember the Mickey and Pluto 7th!) that led to a 9-9 congressional delegation instead of a 13-5 Republican-Democrat split.
They are also so incensed about the Democratic-controlled Supreme Court’s rulings on this year’s elections that increased – not suppressed – voters’ access to the polls, they are pushing through a constitutional amendment to elect statewide judges by districts.
Up to now, the judges of the Supreme, Commonwealth and Superior Courts, which rule on state constitutional matters and appellate litigation, have been elected on the same statewide ballots.
But Republicans are more than halfway to establishing judicial election districts for those courts. They have already pushed the proposed amendment through one session of the Legislature and if they push it through again fast enough in the 2021 session that just started, we voters can vote on it in the May 18 primary election.
In the eyes of Republicans, primary elections are the very best time to introduce constitutional amendments, because so few people vote, only the most committed Republicans and Democrats, and only when there are contested races on their side of the ballot. Thus, an amendment may be added to the Constitution for all time by a very small percentage of the state’s electorate.
They are going to tell you that electing statewide judges by districts will make them look more like the population of the state. Don’t believe them. It’s just an attempt to seize Republican control of yet another branch of government, the judiciary, for a very long time to come.
Take this civics lesson to heart and vote down this proposed amendment. Psst: You can vote on a ballot question in the primary election even if you are not registered Democrat or Republican. Very few people know that.