CRS Annotated Constitution
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Section 4. Clause 1. The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but Congress may at any time make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of chusing Senators.[p.118]
Not until 1842 did Congress undertake to exercise the power to regulate the “times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives.” In that year, it passed a law requiring the election of Representatives by districts.323 In subsequent years, Congress expanded on the requirements, successively adding contiguity, compactness, and substantial equality of population to the districting requirements.324 However, no challenge to the seating of Members–elect selected in violation of these requirements was ever successful,325 and Congress deleted the standards from the 1929 apportionment act.326 More success attended a congressional resolution in 1866 of deadlocks in state legislatures over the election of Senators, often resulting in vacancies for months. The act required the two houses of each legislature to meet in joint session on a specified day and to meet every day thereafter until a Senator was selected.327
The first comprehensive federal statute dealing with elections was adopted in 1870 as a means of enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment’s guarantee against racial discrimination in granting suffrage rights.328 Under the Enforcement Act of 1870, and subsequent[p.119]laws, false registration, bribery, voting without legal right, making false returns of votes cast, interference in any manner with officers of election, and the neglect by any such officer of any duty required of him by state or federal law were made federal offenses.329Provision was made for the appointment by federal judges of persons to attend at places of registration and at elections with authority to challenge any person proposing to register or vote unlawfully, to witness the counting of votes, and to identify by their signatures the registration of voters and election talley sheets.330When the Democratic Party regained control of Congress, these pieces of Reconstruction legislation dealing specifically with elections were repealed,331 but other statutes prohibiting interference with civil rights generally were retained and these were utilized in later years. More recently, Congress has enacted, in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1970, 1975, 1980, and 1982, legislation to protect the right to vote in all elections, federal, state, and local, through the assignment of federal registrars and poll watchers, suspension of literacy and other tests, and the broad proscription of intimidation and reprisal, whether with or without state action.332
Another chapter was begun in 1907 when Congress passed the Tillman Act, prohibiting national banks and corporations from making contributions in federal elections.333The Corrupt Practices Act, first enacted in 1910 and replaced by another law in 1925, extended federal regulation of campaign contributions and expendi[p.120]tures in federal elections334 and other acts have similarly provided other regulations.335
As we have noted above, although Sec. 2, cl. 1, of this Article vests in the States the responsibility, now limited, to establish voter qualifications for congressional elections, the Court has held that the right to vote for Members of Congress is derived from the Federal Constitution,336 and that Congress therefore may legislate under this section of the Article to protect the integrity of this right. Congress may protect the right of suffrage against both official and private abridgment.337Where a primary election is an integral part of the procedure of choice, the right to vote in that primary election is subject to congressional protection.338The right embraces, of course, the opportunity to cast a ballot and to have it counted honestly.339 Freedom from personal violence and intimidation may be secured.340The integrity of the process may be safeguarded against a failure to count ballots lawfully cast341 or the dilution of their value by the stuffing of the ballot box with fraudulent ballots.342 But the bribery of voters, although within reach of congressional power under other clauses of the Constitution, has been held not to be an interference with the rights guaranteed by this section to other qualified voters.343
To accomplish the ends under this clause, Congress may adopt the statutes of the States and enforce them by its own sanctions.344 It may punish a state election officer for violating his duty under a state law governing congressional elections.345It may, in short, utilize its power under this clause, combined with the nec[p.121]essary–and–proper clause, to regulate the times, places, and manner of electing Members of Congress so as to fully safeguard the integrity of the process; it may not, however, under this clause, provide different qualifications for electors than those provided by the States.346
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