Senate Impeachment rule change? Although a 2/3 majority is required for the Senate to convict an impeached US President, some of the rules governing the Senate trial can be amended by a simple majority of the Senators. Could a simple majority of Senators vote to make the conviction vote a secret ballot? EDIT in light of some interesting answers: By secret, I mean no record exists to ascribe a particular vote to a specific senator. Black balls, pieces of paper with "Convict" or "Don't convict" printed on them, whatever. Obtaining individual "Yays and Nays" to record in the Journal after the secret ballots have been collected and counted could prove impossible, but would that invalidate the result of the original, secret ballot?
Yes the Senate could adopt a secret ballot rule, but other constitutional provisions combined with high partisanship make it practically impossible that the final results will be done through secret ballot. As other answers have mentioned, Article 1, Section 3, provides for the Senate to have sole power of trying impeachments. Similarly by Article 1, Section 5, each House may adopt its own rules. That means that yes the Senate can create its own rules that say the conviction vote will be done by secret ballot. However, adopting these rules only achieves a pyrrhic secret ballot. The very same section that provides for each house to make its own rules (Article 1, Section 5) also states: ...and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the Journal. This means that if any vote is taken including this secret ballot vote, after doing so any member can ask for the Yeas and Nays of all members to be put into the Journal. The journal is the official record of each House. Thus while the vote was first taken in secret at least any member of the Senate will have access to the subsequent recorded vote, provided at least 1/5 of the Senate wishes to have a recorded vote. While not all is lost, the Senate could declare that this record itself is to remain secret, all 100 Senators and most likely many of their staff members will know how each Senator voted. Additionally, the Speech and Debate Clause states that: for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place. Thus if a Senator were to publicly read the vote results into the record of a public committee hearing or during a filibuster or for really any other procedure (as rules of germane debate are very very lax in the Senate, but that is an issue for another question) that information could easily become public record. So while yes the rules can be changed to use secret ballot, a fifth (20 Senators currently) could ask for the Yeas and Nays to be entered on the Journal and this defeats the purpose of the secret ballot. So the only reasonable way to keep a secret ballot as the final dispositive record of a vote is to convince more than 4/5ths of the Senators to not ask for a recorded vote. In this sense it is certainly allowed and possible for the Senate to vote by secret ballot.
It refers to the voters in the state who cast votes. "Elector" isn't a special term invented for the Electoral College, it just means "person who votes in the election." For President, the real election is technically when the Electoral College votes, so those are the "electors." For Senate, the real election is when the people of the state vote, and so every qualified voter in the state is an elector. The provision means that a state has to set the same standards to vote for Senate as to vote for its own legislature; this has always been true for the House, and limits the extent to which a state can undermine the concept of popular election of Congress.
Bob should certainly expect to be impeached by whichever side his testimony injures. Their attorney will confront him with the transcript of his previous testimony, and likely read it out loud for the jury to hear, and force him to acknowledge that he said something different before. This is pretty standard trial tactics. Bob would not be treated as formally admitting that he committed perjury, though I think it's fair to say that he has effectively made that admission. One side will treat him as having lied the first time; the other will treat him as lying now. It's possible that he will have some explanation for the discrepancy -- he was high, he has memory problems, he misunderstood the question -- but in your hypothetical, the explanation would have to be pretty amazing to justify such a complete reversal.
No. There are few if any checks on any President for any Pardons issued (a general Impeachment may be the only check but there has never been a strong call for impeachment for a pardon.). Further more, the protection against Double Jeopardy is in effect meaning future Presidents cannot prosecute the pardon recipient for any crimes that were pardoned by a previous president, though they may prosecute any future criminal incidents perpetrated by the pardoned person that are not related to the events surrounding the pardoned crime.
Yes, so long as you are still a US citizen, it does not matter if you no longer maintain residence in the United States. If you no longer have any sort of residence that can be claimed as a current residence, you simply register at whatever the last residence you used was when you lived in the United States (even if someone else lives there now). You would then have an absentee ballot mailed to you overseas. However, if you don't maintain any sort of residence in the United States, you will only be eligible to vote for federal offices (president, senate, house). You won't be allowed to vote in state or local elections. The keywords you'll need for voting are: UOCAVA, which is a program that allows for easier voting overseas (in some cases the ballot can actually be emailed to you and you are only responsible for printing it out, filling it out, and mailing it back). FPCA, which is the form you fill out. It actually doubles as a registration and an absentee ballot request, so you only have to fill out one form. The absentee request is good for all elections in the calendar year it is submitted, so you only have to fill it out once for both the primary and the general.
The US election authorities already record who voted in which elections, and that information is a matter of public record. When I was active in politics some years ago, and at one point a candidate for local office, my campaign and others routinely purchased from the state a &quot;voter list&quot; for each district. This list showed each registered voter, with that person's name, address, age (to the nearest year), party of registration if any, and in which of the last several (I think 10) elections that person had voted. These were delivered in electronic form, and could be sorted and analyzed in whatever way the purchaser pleased. I understand that similar lists are available in every US state, I think from a legal point of view, a picture would reveal no more information than these already-public lists, and since they have not been successfully challenged as unconstitutional, I don't see that the pictures would be subject to such a challenge, unless it could be shown that taking such pictures had a chilling effect, that is, that taking them made certain categories of voters, such as minority voters, less likely to vote. I am not aware of any specific federal or state laws on taking pictures of voters. But if there were a chilling effect, that would probably violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Federal Fourteenth amendment. That clause has been central, or at least significant, in most challenges to voter restrictions, both successful and unsuccessful. But since, as far as I know, no state or other US jurisdiction has tried this, there is no caselaw on point, and one cannot be sure how such a case would be resolved. Whether this would be good policy is a very different question, and where it would be politically acceptable is yet another. Neither of those are on topic here on Law.se, although they might be on Politics.SE.
They are not given independence from statute. This clause just says that conviction is not the end goal of the prosecutor. If in light of the evidence, the prosecutor comes to believe a person is not guilty, they are not to proceed with the prosecution. They must not hide exculpatory or mitigating evidence in order to get a conviction.
The 24th Amendment states: Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. But, no one in incarcerated in prison (and hence loses the right to vote) merely for failing to pay taxes. Usually, one is incarcerated in prison on tax charges for fraud in connection with one's tax obligation which is different from failure to pay. (A misdemeanor conviction does not result in the loss of an ability to vote, even while in jail.) Refusal to pay, on grounds other than lacking the money (inability to pay isn't a criminal offense), when done without full compliance with other tax return filing obligations, is tantamount to tax litigation abuse and abuse of process, not mere failure to pay a debt.