The Constitution for the united States speaks of rights in such absolute terms as, "Congress shall make no law....shall not be infringed....shall not be violated....shall be preserved....shall not be required....shall not be construed...." These rights are only described and defined in the Constitution. They are not a grant from government; they are a gift from God. Or as Thomas Jefferson said in the unanimous Declaration [of Independence], "...all men [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" (which includes the peaceful acquisition of property). It is "We the People" who are the master and government that is the servant.

Down through the years, this doctrine has been perverted, as new ones such as the "Doctrine of Incorporation" and "One Man-One Vote" have been unlawfully added to our legal traditions. We have now been brought to the point that the inalienable rights are now mere privileges that can be taken away by government on a whim. Owning a weapon is supposed to be an absolute right, but all "T"s must be crossed, and all "I"s must be dotted on government forms in order to exercise these former rights. One of the most harmful of these new doctrines has been the Australian Secret Ballot.

When ballots had been cast openly by Electors, no electoral fraud on the part of government was possible. There was no doubt as to the intentions of those casting their ballots into the ballot box, they were a matter of public record. But with the introduction of the secret (the ballot printed by the government) ballot, those in power have been able to manipulate elections through various methods such as ballot access statutes, "stuffing" of ballot boxes, motor-voter statutes, keeping deceased voters on active registration lists, etc. The real damage has been unnoticed: The various governments have given themselves the power to determine who and what appears on each and every ballot, in the interest of "uniformity." This practice remains a serious blow to true political freedom.

The 2000 Florida presidential election witnessed one of the more serious examples of electoral fraud in recent memory. The tightness of the race between the two status quo (Republican and Democratic) candidates seemed to give election officials in several counties cause to "interpret the intentions of the voters," using arbitrary and partisan criteria. Was a vote for Buchanan, a vote for Buchanan, or a vote for Gore? Was a vote for Bush, a vote for Bush, not cast? What were the consequences of a pregnant chad, a dimpled chad, a swinging chad, or a hanging chad?

This issue went all the way to the Supreme Court. In which the Court said, in Bush v. Gore, the judiciary is the final arbiter of a state's Electoral votes. This in spite of the fact that Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, unequivocally states, "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." The decision of the Court apparently did not effect the lawful awarding of Florida's Presidential Electors, as they were awarded to Republican (fascist/socialist) candidate Governor George W. Bush, of the Republic of Texas: both houses of the Florida legislature were controlled by the Republican's, which would have probably awarded them to Bush in a strictly partisan vote-had the legislature decided to nullify the popular vote and name its own slate of electors, as was its lawful right.

Regardless of the near theft of the presidential election in Florida, the results nation-wide were fatally flawed. Because of the tightness of the race, for the first time in history, the question of whether a state was properly admitted, and thus qualified to cast ballots in the Electoral College should have been raised as an issue.

The first of these states, with dubious credentials is Ohio. Although Congress passed a resolution in 1802 allowing its residents to draft a Constitution and form a government, no formal act of admission-inviting the state to send a Representatives and two Senators to Congress-was ever passed, as was done with every other state before, and since. Yet three members of Congress were sent to the District of Columbia anyway; these members were seated; they voted on legislation, sometimes making the difference in whether legislation passed for failed. This error went undiscovered until 1953; the sesquicentennial of Ohio's alleged admission. No effort was made to nullify 150 years ineligible voting by Ohio's congressional delegation. Rather this issue was treated as a joke. Congress passed an act of admission, backdating it to March 1, 1803. The act admitting Ohio was sponsored by Congressman George H. Bender, from Chagrin Falls a suburb of Cleveland-a man who was ineligible at the time to speak or act on the floor of the House. But it was the intentions of the seventh Congress a century and a half before that was really important; not whether Congress had acted properly. How were members in 1953 able to determine the intentions of their predecessors several generations removed? Had anything been written? It could very well have been the seventh Congress would nullified their mistake, not wanting to set a precedent for future generations. Such second guessing of a group of legislators deceased for over a century is just as foolish as trying to determine the intentions of the voters in certain counties, in the 2000 Florida presidential election. The backdating Ohio's admission, by the 82^nd Congress, was an ex post facto law, which is forbidden by Article I, Section 9, Clause 3: a act of Congress may not take effect before it is passed. It is argued in law schools across the nation that the prohibition of ex post facto laws extends only to criminal statutes. But for 150 years Ohioans participated in congressional debate and voted on all kinds of legislation that carried punitive consequences. This argument remains hopelessly naÔve: Ohio is not a state; it remains a Federal enclave; it is not entitled to send members to Congress, Ohioans are not any more eligible to run for President than a resident of Guam or Puerto Rico. The number of Electoral Votes that Ohio was not entitled to in the 2000 presidential election was 21.

This seemingly well-intentioned gaffe on Ohio pales in comparison to the deliberate violation of Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1, concerning the admission of West Virginia: the Constitution requires that "New States may be admitted, by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress." At the time of West Virginia's admission to the Union, in 1863, a savagely brutal war was raging between the States. Virginia was one of those states, which was rebelling against the federal government for greater autonomy. It was the position of the President Lincoln and Congress that the Confederate States were still in the Union. If this were true, they were entitled to all of the rights granted the States under the Constitution. Part of its territory could not have been lawfully carved away, and a new State admitted, or erected, without the consent of Virginia's legislature; at this time Virginia was not being very cooperative with Congress. To pretend to satisfy this Constitutional requirement, the Wheeling Convention was held, composed of Union sympathizers from the occupied portions of Virginia-namely the counties of Alexandria and Arlington (which were across the Potomac River from the District of Columbia), and those counties in the northwest, mountainous portion of the State which refused to break away. It was these Northwest counties that became West Virginia. The convention was intended to act as a State government in exile, but only for the purpose of approving West Virginia's creation as a State; it never met for any other purpose. The rump-state of West Virginia has never been and is not a State-it properly remains an enclave of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The number of Electoral Votes that West Virginia was not entitled to in the 2000 Presidential election was five. In fairness to President Lincoln, he did try unsuccessfully to block what he saw as an unlawful act. But in the interests of political expediency, he signed the act of admission anyway. But Lincoln was able to prevent a second rump state from being carved out of the pro-Union counties of eastern Tennessee.

Just one year after the false admission of West Virginia, came the false admission of Nevada. Through most of the War Between the States, the Union was either losing, or not consistently winning. As the war dragged on, public support for the war kept declining. The casualties the Union was suffering were horrific. Until the Mexican War, the United States has lost less than five thousand in combat. The Mexican War was shocking enough as two and a half times that previous number had died in 16 months of fighting. But with the Battle of Shiloh/Pittsburg Landing, first major battle of the war, more American's died in just two days of fighting than in all previous wars combined. And every major battle racked up similar numbers. By the summer of 1864-probably the darkest period of the war for the Union-there had been 20 more battles as bloody as Shiloh. Two months after he had had been re-nominated for President, Lincoln's own campaign manager came to the President and asked him to step down for the good of the Union; because Lincoln would not win. (By the following October, with the fall of Atlanta, it had become apparent that the war's momentum had decisively and irreversibly turned in favor of the Union.) To pull out a victory the various Republican Party machines around the Union went to work. More electoral fraud was committed in the election of 1864 than probably any other. Congress even got involved by admitting the federal enclave of Nevada into the Union on October 31^st less than one week before the popular election. Only 16,420 popular votes were recorded in the Nevada presidential election of 1864. Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 requires that a State have at least thirty thousand citizens in residence in order to qualify for a Representative in Congress. Although the federal enclave of Nevada has long since met this requirement, Congress has never re-passed an organic act of admission, which would make Nevada's previous 'admission' illegal and unlawful. To this day Nevada lawfully remains a Federal enclave, no different from Guam or Puerto Rico. The number of Electoral Votes that Nevada was not entitled to in the 2000 presidential election was 4.

Just as Ohio is not entitled to representation in Congress, so are residents of Ohio not entitled to serve as President or Vice-President. Yet there have been six presidents elected from Ohio. Every official act, which they performed, is null and void as if it had never occurred. One of these pretenders (to borrow a term from monarchial Europe) to the presidency was William Howard Taft. Taft signed the admission documents for Arizona and New Mexico. Had their organic acts of admission been signed by the lawful president, Vice-President James S. Sherman, their membership in the nation would be entirely proper. And we do not know if Sherman would have signed these acts of Congress. Taft accepted New Mexico's admission without question. But Arizona was forced to change a provision in its constitution, concerning the election vs. appointment of state judges, before the person exercising the powers of the presidency would lend his assent. The number of Electoral Votes that Arizona and New Mexico were not entitled to in the 2000 presidential election was 13.

Probably the greatest violation of the Constitution, and the Federal government's greatest deviation from the intentions of the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution was in the 17^th amendment. Throughout their writings in the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay assured the States that were reluctant to ratify the proposed Constitution, that their participation in the federal government-as distinct governments-would be preserved through the election of two United States Senators to represent them. To preserve this ironclad guarantee, Article V, which set forth the mode of amending the Constitution and special circumstances under which it might never be amended, stated "that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate." Any amendment affecting suffrage in the Senate had to be unanimous. Two states rejected the 17^th amendment, Delaware and Utah. Yet twenty months after the announcement that 17^th amendment had received ratification of three-fourths of the States, the first class of popularly elected senators had been sworn-in. From this point forward Congress became an illegitimate body, with only one house, the House of Representatives having been elected in accordance with the Constitution; it had no capacity to pass statutes, propose Constitutional amendments, confirm presidential appointments, ratify treaties, or admit States, namely Alaska and Hawaii, which were not admitted as states in 1959. The number of Electoral Votes that Alaska and Hawaii were not entitled to in the 2000 presidential election was seven.

In 1961, the 23^rd amendment, which awarded three presidential Electors to the District of Columbia as "if it were a State," was declared as having been properly ratified-event though there was not a lawfully elected Senate that can propose an amendment. The only lawful method of amending the Constitution today is for two-thirds of the states to call for a convention to draft a proposed amendment. The issue of representation of the District of Columbia in Congress and the Electoral College has come to be misunderstood as an issue of race, as the District of Columbia is pre-dominantly of African heritage. The framers and ratifiers had intended the District of Columbia to have no representation in Congress or the Electoral College, because the District was to be inhabited by federal employees; they did not want federal employees voting because of the obvious conflict of interest. The number of Electoral Votes that the District of Columbia was not entitled to in the 2000 presidential election was three.

The final, official tally in the 2000 Electoral College was:
Bush - 271 (41 of which were ineligible), and
Gore - 269. (12 of which were ineligible).

With the exclusion of these unlawful votes, the legitimate winner of the 2000 presidential election was the Democratic (socialist/fascist) candidate Vice-President Albert Gore, Jr. (257 to 230). This is not to indicate any solidarity with Gore's agenda, or any repudiation of Bush. Both candidate were nearly equally irrelevant when it came to addressing constitutional issues. But fair is fair; all "T"s must be crossed; all "I"s should be dotted; the law is the law. "No one is above the law," as the police, prosecutors and courts are so fond of telling us. Neither are the President, Congress or Courts above the law. Good intentions do not count when the law is concerned.

Doctrine of Incorporation
One Man-One Vote
Australian Secret Ballot
Ballot access statutes
Motor-voter statutes
Bush v. Gore
Ohio
West Virginia
Nevada
Arizona and New Mexico
17th amendment
Alaska and Hawaii
23rd amendment
Final, official tally in the 2000 Electoral College