Joseph Sabino Mistick: Pennsylvania perfect site for election battle

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision,” Abraham Lincoln said. That simple principle has been tested before and may be again. This time, the stakes could not be higher, for both the nation and the highest court in the land.

By all appearances, it seems like we hold one big national election every four years to determine our nation’s leader, but that’s not the case. Instead, we have 51 state elections, including the District of Columbia, with each state conducting an election in the manner that suits its needs.

This decentralization is the strength of our electoral process, providing voting systems and practices that are scattered and varied enough that no bad actor could disrupt our civic rite in one fell swoop. As the Founders planned it, this decentralization honors the rights of the states to manage their own affairs.

There are some requirements for uniformity and order in federal elections. There is a national date set for the presidential election, and that makes sense. And our Constitution provides general instructions and a schedule for the selection of the Electoral College, but even that leaves room for the states to vary on how Electoral College votes are assigned.

The U.S. Supreme Court retreated from one area in which we continue to need its help when it decided Shelby v. Holder in 2013. The court declared that states with a history of voter suppression no longer needed oversight by the Department of Justice, as required by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because things had changed and voter suppression is no longer a problem.

They missed that by a mile. As soon as their decision was announced, some of the old Confederate states dreamed up new and clever ways to avoid the “one person-one vote” guarantee that is key to the American promise. Voter suppression is flourishing again as access to the polls is being made inconvenient and long lines on Election Day are used to discourage voting.

And ever since the Supreme Court decided the 2000 presidential election in Bush v. Gore, it is fair to ask whether a court of appointed justices should choose our elected president. The court stopped the Florida recount then, making George W. Bush the winner, and many Americans still believe that their right to choose the president was stripped away by the court.

Even before this presidential election, Donald Trump threatened to send an army of lawyers into states that do not go his way, and he has done that now that voting is over. Pennsylvania has been a favorite target, but his threats rang hollow here, and other states should take heed.

We practically invented the American lawyer in Pennsylvania. Our state Constitution was adopted before the federal Constitution. Our state Supreme Court is older than the United States of America. This is the land of Ben Franklin, the “First American,” and it is the birthplace of the freedoms that all Americans enjoy.

So it is probably best that the big fight happen here. It will be governed by the oldest principle of American politics, as repeated by President Gerald Ford in 1974: “Here, the people rule.”