A Libertarian View on Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy

Walter OlsonHow best can we keep America from entering a constitutional succession crisis or suffering a turn toward authoritarianism? As readers may remember frommy post last month (see also), several of us at Cato contributed as “Team Libertarian” to the National Constitution Center’s essay project “Restoring the Guardrails of Democracy” on this topic. This week the Volokh Conspiracy ishosting a symposium featuring participants, with me writing for Team Libertarian, Prof. Ned Foley for Team Progressive, and David French for Team Conservative. Each of us is starting off with a post laying out our affirmative case. Mine ishere.You should read the whole thing, but a few highlights from my point ‐​by‐​point proposals for preventing an election crisis:Electoral Count Act reform should confine each actor to its proper role after a presidential election, clear up ambiguous and confusing terms in the present law, and keep partisans from using the process to re ‐​litigate the underlying election.Congress should move to constrain the executive branch ’s resort to dangerous emergency powers. The law should make clear (or even clearer than now) that presidents do not have unbounded discretion to invoke the Insurrection Act, seize voting machines without a court order, declare martial law when civil order has not broken down, or in other ways use peremptory executive power to overturn or block an election.Counter distrust with a...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs