This is a strange situation, for sure. The age requirement you bring up is a good comparison. Age is something you are, not something you’ve done, possibly done, or definitey not done, so there isn’t as much to argue about.
However, what if some 33 year-old decided to run and had the support of one of the two big parties, and just lied about her age? Presumably, that would require a finding of fact and would be adjudicated by the federal courts, not Congress or each state legislature or Attorney General.
Your example makes it pretty clear that even something supposedly “self-executing” still needs a back-up plan. Another interesting example is the 2000 election, where it was the Supreme Court that arbitrated the final vote, which decided the winner of the presidential election (incorrectly, it seems, based on later statistical analysis). Nasedon these two examples, I don’t entirely understand their reasoning for pushing the decision about eligibility to Congress. While an election is for a political office, the process of running an election is supposed to be apolitical.
What the US really needs is a non-partisan, apolitical, independent federal electoral commission.
This is a strange situation, for sure. The age requirement you bring up is a good comparison. Age is something you are, not something you’ve done, possibly done, or definitey not done, so there isn’t as much to argue about.
However, what if some 33 year-old decided to run and had the support of one of the two big parties, and just lied about her age? Presumably, that would require a finding of fact and would be adjudicated by the federal courts, not Congress or each state legislature or Attorney General.
Your example makes it pretty clear that even something supposedly “self-executing” still needs a back-up plan. Another interesting example is the 2000 election, where it was the Supreme Court that arbitrated the final vote, which decided the winner of the presidential election (incorrectly, it seems, based on later statistical analysis). Nasedon these two examples, I don’t entirely understand their reasoning for pushing the decision about eligibility to Congress. While an election is for a political office, the process of running an election is supposed to be apolitical.
What the US really needs is a non-partisan, apolitical, independent federal electoral commission.