The early 1990s saw a great deal of interest in term limits. Advocates of term limits argued that long-term representatives grew too cozy with special interests, became out-of-touch with their constituents, abused the power of incumbency, and lacked fresh ideas needed to deal with the problems of the time. Critics of term limits contended that they unfairly discounted the value of experience, discouraged good people from seeking office, and left new representatives even more beholden to entrenched special interests and lobbyists--because they "know the ropes" that the new representatives don't. In 1995, the Court considered in U. S. Term Limits v Hill the constitutionality of an Arkansas law that limited Arkansas representatives to a maximum of three terms (6 years) in the U. S. House or two terms (12 years) in the U. S. Senate. (The law prohibited persons who had served the maximum number of terms from being certified for the ballot, leaving open only the nearly hopeless prospect of running as a write-in candidate.) The Court concluded that the Qualifications Clauses of Article I, Sections 2 and 3 set forth a set of qualifications for federal elected office that could not be altered or added to. The Court saw as central to the framers vision that voters have the right to vote for whomever they wished. The Court also rejected the argument of Arkansas that its ballot access law might be considered a "time, place or manner" regulation of a federal election, such as is authorized by Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution. The regulation, according to the Court, was clearly a "qualification." In dissent, Justice Thomas argued that the qualifications set forth in Article I were a "minimum" set of qualifications and that the states--under the 10th Amendment--had the power to impose additional qualifications. In Cook
v
Gralike
(2001), the Court considered a Missouri law that
"instructed" its
congressional
delegation to "use all of his or her delegated
powers to pass the
Congressional
Term Limits Amendment." Under the Missouri
law, elected
representatives
who failed to take specified actions to pass the
amendment, or
nonincumbent
candidates for Congress who refused to take a
"Term Limit" pledge faced
language next to their names on the ballot that
said "DISREGARDED
VOTERS'
INSTRUCTION ON TERM LIMITS" or "DECLINED TO
SUPPORT TERM LIMITS."
The Court rejected Missouri's contention that the
law was an
instruction
of the sort commonly used early in our nation's
history, noting that
those
earlier instructions carried no formal penalty
(were "non-binding") and
that the framers placed a high value in
maintaining the deliberative
nature
of the National Assembly. The Court saw
Missouri's "scarlet
letter"
law as not a manner regulation, but as an
additional qualification for
office of the sort rejected in U. S. Term
Limits. Justice
Rehnquist, in a concurring opinion, concluded that
the law punished the
content of a candidate's expression and therefore
violated the First
Amendment. State
Photo ID Laws
In 2008, in Crawford v
Marion County Election Board, the Supreme
Court considered a
challenge to
Indiana's strict voter identification law.
In upholding a law
that required voters to present either a driver's
license, a passport,
or a state-issued photo identification card, three
justices (Scalia,
Thomas, and Alito) believed Indiana's law should
be subjected only to
rational basis scrutinty, and that the state's
interest in preventing
vote fraud constituted a rational basis.
Three other justices
(Stevens, Roberts, and Kennedy) allowed that an
as-applied challenge
might have merit for a voter that could show that
the law places a
substantial burden on his or her ability to
vote. In such cases,
heightened scrutiny might be justified, even
though such scrutiny was
not appropriate for a facial challenge to the
law. Three
dissenting justices (Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer)
concluded, using a
balancing test, that Indiana's interest in
preventing voter fraud did
not justify the significant burden that the law
placed on specific
groups of voters (such as the homeless and elderly
residents who did
not drive cars). Voter ID laws are typically
backed by Republican
legislators (all Republican legislators in Indiana
voted for the law)
and opposed by Democratic legislators (all
Democratic legislators in
Indiana voted against the law). Practically
everyone agrees that
the citizens who are most likely to be discouraged
from voting by
strict voter ID laws tend, disproportionately, to
vote Democratic.
State Proof of Citizenship
Requirements
In Arizona v Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (2013), the Court considered whether an Arizona law requiring voters in federal elections to provide actual proof of citizenship was trumped by a federal regulation that provided that it was sufficient for voters to simply assert under oath that they were citizens of the United States. Voting 7 to 2, the Court concluded that the National Voter Registration Act, requiring states to "accept and use" the uniform federal voter law preempted Arizona's law requiring additional proof of citizenship in the form of documents such as passports or birth certificates. Shortly after the decision, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who defended the Arizona law in court, announced that Kansas (which adopted a proof of citizenship requirement similar to Arizona's) would follow Arizona in adopting a two-tier election registration system, requiring proof of citizenship for voting in state elections but not in federal elections. The ACLU promptly sued both Arizona and Kansas, alleging that different treatment of voters in elections violates the Constitution.
Link
U. S. Term Limits |
U. S. Term Limits v Thorton (1995) Cook v Gralike (2001) Crawford v Marion County Election Bd. (2008) Arizona v Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (2013)
Questions 2. What are the prospects for a constitutional amendment imposing term limits? 3. After U. S. Term Limits and Cook v Gralike, what options might remain open for states seeking to discourage elected representatives from seeking more that a certain number of terms of office? 4. How significant is it that the framers of the Constitution voted down a proposal that would have allowed states to impose property qualifications for federal office? 5. How likely is it that a candidate burdened with the language required by Missouri's law challenged in Cook v Gralike would be elected to office? |