Professor D,

First, Happy New Year, and I pray that any family you may have residing in or around the Holy Land are safe and secure, and the same for your personal safety and that of your students during the present crisis.

My question sir is about the absurdity of perpetuating the myth that every American adult is entitle to "vote for the candidate of their choice" for President.  I would never presume to lecture you, Professor Dershowitz on the Constitution.  So, please view my comments following as simply an expression of my literal interpretation of the constitution, and I'm asking for you to share where you think I have "gone off track".  The constitution doesn't require any state to hold a public general election at all, or to tie such a "popular vote" to the process determined by the state legislature of each state for how Presidential Electors shall be appointed.  Since the 14th Amendment does not say how the disqualification clause is to invoked, nor does it say by whom, I'd have to conclude that an amendment to a document leaves anything not expressly amended to be as it had been before the amendment was passed.  Ergo, a state legislature can decide who is qualified to be an elector based on any criteria they choose as long as they do not contradict the standards in the Federal Constitution.  This includes, should they choose a popular election as part of that process, having control of who might appear on that ballot.  Because it is not an election of a President.  It is only the process of appointing Electors.  The United States Supreme Court simply does not have the constitutional power to tell a state that it cannot choose its electors according to the process set forth by their own legislature.  If that process were to replicate the original method of appointing senators, that is to say a vote of the state legislature to choose who to appoint as electors every four years, such a state would be acting within the constitution.  If they delegated Elector appointments to the Governor, that would be within the constitution.

I'm a Republican party officer and will support the nominee of my party in November.  But I am a federalist and a patriot first.  Article X, Article II, and Amendment XIV, when taken together seem to resoundingly lead to the conclusion that SCOTUS should repeat its action in DOBBS versus JACKSON.  Our system of Government depends on reasonable state sovereignty.  Our forefathers were afraid of any kind of tyranny, whether an all powerful Monarch, the tyranny of the one, say, Nine Oligarchs in Robes Lording of the Realm, or even the tyranny of the many over the few or the one, a Democracy.  Our system is designed not only to protect the states from the Federation and the Federation from the states, but the branches from each other and the few from the mob.

Unless Congress passes legislation (Article XIV.5), No branch of the Federal Government has the delegated power to intervene in the process of appointment of Electors.  Which means, that if Donald Trump is disqualified under the constitution the first time the federal government would be in a position to enforce that is next January when challenges to Electors can be presented at the time of certification of the Election.

Federation Nations are simply not the same as Nation States.  And the Presidency cannot rightly be, as our national fathers in their wisdom determined, an office that the most populous states should be able to control unfettered.

Thank you for reading my thoughts, Professor, and I look forward to hearing yours, as always.

Dr. G.E. Cummings, PhD (But, you can call me "Jerry")