Citizen Pocan is
lucky he didn’t have to take the test you have to pass to become a naturalized citizen.
He would have got at least one question wrong.
The only powers
the United States can constitutionally exercise are those specifically enumerated
powers delegated by the several states and through them by the people. The
power to guarantee the right to vote was not so delegated. It’s not that the
United State does not guarantee the
right to vote; it’s that it cannot.
Only the states can. They retained, they did
not delegate, that power. And it seems to me that for the most part, they
use it; they do guarantee the right in question. The negative guarantees
Constitutional amendments give to former slaves, women, and persons aged 18 or
older are the result of fresh delegations of power by the legislatures of three
fourths of the states.
The constitutional
lawyers the PolitiFact investigators of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel engaged
to confirm Mr. Representative Pocan’s claim of course know this is its
explanation. That does not render the claim itself true. It is rather an obnoxious
piece of ignorance, and as such quite completely false. Publishing it as true
is a disservice to a public already superstitious about such matters.
It is more
difficult to explain why the claim is misleading and false than just to make
it. But the explanation is not something contemporary readers of the Federalist Papers – lay citizens – would
likely have misunderstood. And the difficulty does not afford an excuse either
to Mr. Pocan for making the claim, or to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for
rating it true.
