An Evans man is seeking to have the election of Georgia Senators John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock overturned.
Brian D. Swanson says the two senators were elected unconstitutionally. His complaint alleges that Georgia violated two articles of the Constitution.
The first constitutional provision he cites is Article 1, Section 3, which provides for state legislatures to elect senators. The second is Article 5. That article guarantees each state equal representation in the Senate.
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“’State’ in Article 5 means ‘state legislature,’ the state government or the State in its political capacity,” Swanson wrote in his complaint. “It does not mean a geographic location.”
The lawsuit names the state of Georgia as the defendant and specifies Attorney General Christopher M. Carr as the named party. It was filed in the Augusta branch of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.
Swanson grounds his argument in Georgia’s failure to ratify the 17th Amendment in 1913. The 17th amendment calls for the direct citizen election of U.S. senators. Georgia was not among the 41 states that ratified the amendment. Swanson believes the General Assembly should still be choosing U.S. senators.
“The State of Georgia did not ratify the Seventeenth Amendment and therefore it did not consent to be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate,” Swanson wrote. “If the State of Georgia loses all of its suffrage then it has certainly lost its equal suffrage.”
Swanson’s complaint asks for the court to declare the election of Warnock and Ossoff “unconstitutional and void,” and to order the General Assembly to elect two senators to fill Georgia’s seats.
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The first attempt to change how U.S. senators are elected came in 1826 when the U.S. Rep. Henry Randolph Storrs of New York introduced a constitutional amendment to provide for direct election of senators. According to the National Archives website, hundreds of “similar resolutions” would be introduced over the next 90 years.
While several attempts have been made to pass legislation that would keep states from being bound by amendments they did not ratify, none has ever become law. In 1861, Congress asked states to pass a measure that would prohibit amendments that interfered in their internal affairs. Only three states ratified that article before the Civil War erupted, making the measure irrelevant.
Swanson will be representing himself in the lawsuit. He has 90 days in which to serve his complaint on the state. He specifies in the lawsuit that he is not seeking a jury trial.
Swanson could not be reached for comment on his case.
Debbie Reddin van Tuyll is Editor-in-chief of The Augusta Press. Reach her at debbie@theaugustapress.com
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