OPINION

The United States of America – The framers of our Constitution weren’t building a pure democracy; they were building a balancing act. And they knew exactly what they were doing.

The original Constitution divided political power among different interests. The People elected the House of Representatives. State legislatures selected Senators. The Executive branch was headed by a President chosen through the Electoral College. Everybody had skin in the game. Everybody had a seat at the table. And nobody got all the power.

That arrangement wasn’t some accident buried in old parchment. It was deliberate.

Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution plainly stated that senators would be “chosen by the Legislature” of each state. According to James Madison in Federalist No. 62, appointment by state legislatures was designed to create a direct connection between the states and the federal government. He wrote that this method would “form a convenient link between the two systems.” The Senate was never intended to represent the passions of the public. The House already did that. The Senate represented the states themselves.

And that’s because the United States was formed by sovereign states entering into a union, not by Washington handing power down from on high.

During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, delegates spent weeks fighting over representation. Large states wanted population-based representation. Smaller states feared being steamrolled. The eventual Connecticut Compromise created two chambers, one representing the People and one representing the States. It was a compromise that helped save the convention from collapse. Benjamin Franklin himself urged concessions to preserve the union.

Madison argued repeatedly that the Senate’s structure would act as a stabilizing force. The upper chamber would provide experience and continuity while insulating the country from sudden swings in public opinion. The U.S. Senate’s own historical records note that senators were intentionally made older and selected by state legislatures to provide stability and restraint.

Then came 1913.

The Seventeenth Amendment fundamentally changed the arrangement by transferring the election of senators from state legislatures to popular vote. Supporters argued it would reduce corruption and legislative deadlocks. It certainly changed things, but it also removed the states themselves from direct representation in Washington. The National Constitution Center describes the amendment as the only major constitutional change affecting the structure of Congress since the Bill of Rights.

Since then, senators have become national politicians rather than ambassadors of their state governments. Their incentives changed. Governors and legislatures may protest federal mandates, but their senators often answer first to national donors, party leadership and television cameras.

That’s a very different system than the one the founders designed.

State governments today have no institutional voice inside Congress. They sue Washington. They lobby Washington. They beg Washington. But they no longer possess representation within Washington itself, which is exactly what the original Senate provided.

Supporters of the Seventeenth Amendment point to corruption scandals that occurred before 1913. Those problems were real. But replacing one flaw with another doesn’t necessarily count as progress, history is full of reforms that created new problems while solving old ones.

The Constitution was built on competing interests checking one another. The House represented the people. The Senate represented the states. The president represented the nation as a whole. It wasn’t complicated.

We’ve drifted far from that arrangement.

Today Washington treats states less like partners and more like administrative districts. Federal agencies dictate policy, Congress spends borrowed money with abandon, and senators spend more time chasing campaign cash than defending state sovereignty.

Maybe the old system wasn’t perfect. Nothing designed by human beings ever is. But the framers understood something modern politicians often forget… Power needs rivals.

Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment wouldn’t weaken democracy. It would restore federalism. It would give state governments a genuine stake in the game again and force Washington to remember that the states created the federal government, not the other way around.

We shouldn’t expect the people who benefit from the current arrangement to voluntarily surrender power. Congress is not likely to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, and senators certainly aren’t inclined to vote themselves out of their present status. The framers anticipated moments like this.

That’s why Article V of the Constitution gives the states another path, a convention for proposing amendments called by two-thirds of the state legislatures. If Americans truly want to restore federalism and return the states to their rightful place in the constitutional order, the answer probably won’t come from Washington. It’ll have to come from the states themselves, from the People. The people created the states, the states created the federal government, and sometimes it’s necessary to remind Washington who’s really supposed to be in charge.

For those who believe the time has come to restore the constitutional balance our founders envisioned, organizations like Convention of States Action are already leading the fight. Visit https://conventionofstates.com/, get informed, and get involved, because Washington isn’t going to limit itself unless the states and the people demand it.

Sources: Article I of the Constitution, James Madison’s Federalist No. 62, Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention, and historical material from the U.S. Senate and Library of Congress.

OPINION

California – Don’t expect a dramatic press conference from the Trump administration declaring California’s elections clean. More likely, the investigations will quietly fade into the background and eventually disappear from the headlines without any grand conclusion.

In my view, that outcome is almost inevitable. The reason is simple. California’s election laws have been written in such a way that many practices critics consider vulnerable to abuse are perfectly legal. If the conduct itself is authorized by law, federal investigators are unlikely to ever establish the kind of “widespread fraud” that many Americans are expecting them to uncover.

President Donald Trump recently accused Democrats of cheating in California’s primary election, prompting First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli to announce that his office and the FBI have multiple election fraud investigations underway in Los Angeles. Essayli’s office also confirmed that Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Renner visited a Los Angeles County ballot processing center to observe the vote counting process. Reports described the visit as routine and similar to those available to members of the public.

Those comments may sound encouraging to voters concerned about election integrity. But they are likely to produce exactly what previous investigations have produced … years of unanswered questions … followed by silence.

California Elections Code Section 3017 allows a voter who is unable to return a ballot to designate another person to do so. The designated person may hand deliver the ballot or place it in the mail. Criminal penalties exist for bribery, intimidation, tampering, and fraud, but the collection and delivery of ballots by third parties is itself legal.

Supporters argue the practice improves access for elderly and disabled voters. Critics call it legalized ballot harvesting.

Under California law, political organizations, activists, churches, unions, or nonprofit groups may legally collect ballots from voters. If investigators discovered nonprofit groups organizing ballot collection efforts among homeless populations, it would not automatically constitute criminal conduct. Unless prosecutors could prove bribery, coercion, or tampering, much of the activity critics complain about would be perfectly lawful.

Fox 11 recently reported that Essayli referenced a case involving a Marina del Rey woman accused of paying individuals, including homeless people on Skid Row, to register to vote. Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, also known as “Anika,” pleaded guilty to one federal count of paying another person to register to vote. She faces up to five years in prison when she is sentenced Aug. 31.

Authorities have not alleged that the conduct affected statewide races. Nevertheless, the case highlights concerns long raised by election integrity advocates.

Even if investigators were to uncover isolated examples involving ballots cast in the names of deceased individuals or by noncitizens, history suggests such cases would be treated as individual violations rather than evidence of a larger conspiracy. Officials and media outlets would almost certainly characterize them as statistically insignificant and insufficient to alter election outcomes.

Likewise, even if prosecutors managed to bring a handful of cases involving illegal voting, supporters of the system would likely point to those prosecutions as evidence that the safeguards are working. Critics, meanwhile, would argue that the cases merely expose vulnerabilities that are impossible to quantify.

That is because proving widespread election fraud requires more than finding isolated violations. Prosecutors would have to establish a coordinated effort on a massive scale. Such a burden is extraordinarily difficult to satisfy, especially after ballots have been separated from identifying information and mixed with millions of legitimate votes.

Critics need look no further than the Los Angeles mayoral race to understand why public confidence has eroded. Councilmember Nithya Raman climbed into second place on June 7, overtaking Spencer Pratt as post Election Day ballots continued to be counted. To skeptics, the distribution of those later ballots appeared anomalous, with Raman benefiting disproportionately while neither Karen Bass nor Pratt experienced comparable gains.

Some election integrity advocates view such swings as evidence that California’s system invites speculation that ballots collected through organized harvesting operations could be strategically submitted over time. There is no publicly available evidence demonstrating that such conduct occurred in this race… but the inability to either prove or definitively disprove those suspicions is itself part of the criticism leveled against California’s election laws.

The real debate, in my view, is not whether California elections are run according to the law. They are. The debate is whether the law itself creates conditions that make abuses difficult to detect and nearly impossible to prove after the fact.

That is why Bill Essayli’s statements strike me as little more than empty words. Announcing investigations sounds impressive, but prosecutors cannot prosecute conduct that lawmakers have already legalized. They cannot declare ballot harvesting fraudulent when California law expressly permits third party ballot collection.

Reuters and other news organizations have noted that election officials insist there is no evidence supporting claims of widespread fraud in the governor’s race or the Los Angeles mayor’s race. They may very well be correct according to the legal standards that currently exist. But that misses the point entirely.

Critics are not necessarily claiming that large numbers of people are breaking California law. They are arguing that California lawmakers have constructed a system that places convenience ahead of transparency and verification.

And if the rules themselves permit the conduct, federal investigators should not expect to uncover some giant criminal enterprise hiding in plain sight.

The most likely outcome is not a bombshell report. It is a slow fade. The investigations will drift out of public view, the headlines will move on, and Californians will continue voting under the same rules that produced the controversy in the first place.

Whether those rules deserve the public’s trust is another matter altogether.

Sources: California Elections Code §3017; Los Angeles Times; ABC7 Los Angeles; Fox 11 Los Angeles; Reuters.

RED OAK, Texas — It was standing room only, overflow rooms packed, and tempers running high. Yet after hours of objections from residents, a divided Red Oak City Council voted around midnight to approve a massive data center project, leaving many citizens convinced their elected officials had already made up their minds long before the first speaker approached the podium.

The May 11 meeting drew such a crowd that even reporters struggled to get inside. According to Fox 4 News, the council chamber seats 136 people, and at least 70 additional residents had to wait outside or gather in a separate room because of capacity limits. The issue before the council was a proposal to rezone more than 800 acres of farmland for what would become another large data center development. Residents packed the meeting to oppose it. By multiple accounts, no organized speakers appeared in support of the project.

According to Fox 4, city leaders allotted one hour for supporters and one hour for opponents to speak. Residents later complained that the process appeared tilted against citizens because there were virtually no supporters present, while opponents continued lining up to address the council.

The proposal ultimately involved rezoning approximately 830 acres and included a tax abatement package approved by a 4 to 1 vote. Fox 4 reported the council entered executive session for nearly an hour before returning shortly before midnight to cast the decisive vote. Residents who remained said they were willing to stay until 2 a.m. if necessary.

Mayor Mark Stanfill and council members Willie Franklin Jr., Ricardo Miller, and Tim Lightfoot formed the majority approving the measure. Councilman Jeffrey Smith cast the lone dissenting vote. Critics say the four officials effectively ignored overwhelming public opposition and pressed ahead anyway.

Residents repeatedly raised concerns about noise, electrical demand, water consumption, and the location of the facility near schools. City officials argued the project would not use city water for cooling and emphasized the economic benefits and tax revenue expected from the development.

Those assurances did little to calm residents.

“How many of these data centers are next to your house, Mr. Mayor? How many are on the east side of town?” resident Martel Edwards asked during the meeting.

Kim Sterman expressed concern about children attending nearby schools.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen to the children who are going to be going to schools,” Sterman said. “All of our schools over there, the high school and the junior high are going to be pretty close to this new patent board facility. Y’all don’t know what’s going to happen.“

Residents also complained that city officials threatened individuals displaying anti-data center signs on their property, allegations reported separately by local media and discussed by residents during and after the controversy. Those claims could not be independently verified by Pipkins Reports.

The battle in Red Oak reflects a growing national trend. Data centers are essential to modern computing and artificial intelligence systems. But communities across Texas and the country have increasingly questioned the rapid expansion of these facilities.

Critics point to concerns over electricity demand, environmental impacts, noise, and the industrialization of previously rural land. Some studies and utility reports have warned that rising AI related power consumption could place additional stress on electric grids and contribute to higher costs for consumers.

Residents expressed frustration that another major project was being approved despite widespread opposition. Some expressed that the process to replace the Mayor and other City Council members, began last night and that the action they have taken regarding the Data Center has sealed their fate.

Sources: Red Oak YouTube; Fox 4 News; City of Red Oak records;