The founders created vitally important checks and balances in the Constitution, but it is up to the voters to enforce the checks and balances. Today’s courts, including the U. S. Supreme Court will not do it. The founders and others considered the citizen’s right to vote a vitally important sacred trust.

Voting was held by the Founders and numerous later statesmen to be a sacred trust. Since voting is sacred, it is an act of worship. Voting is an act of worship, because the one casting the vote is not making a personal declaration or even supporting a particular candidate. The voter is casting a ballot to insofar as possible to guard and protect the rights and freedoms that are gifts from God. They are the rights and freedoms enshrined as a partial list in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by the United States Constitution. If none of the candidates will directly guard those rights and freedoms, at least vote for the one who will do the least damage.

Consider these profound observations all reprinted as direct quotation. Note the special emphasis on the voter’s accountability to God and posterity.

Samuel Adams (Founder)—Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual – or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country. Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust be men of unexceptionable characters. The public cannot be too curious concerning the character of public men.

Alexander Hamilton (Founder)—A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large, in voting at elections is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law.

Matthias Burnett Tallmadge (statesman and federal judge)—Consider well the important trust . . . which God . . . [has] put into your hands. . . . To God and posterity you are accountable for [your rights and your rulers]. . . Let not your children have reason to curse you for giving up those rights and prostrating those institutions which your fathers delivered to you. . . [L]ook well to the characters and qualifications of those you elect and raise to office and places of trust. . .Think not that your interests will be safe in the hands of the weak and ignorant; or faithfully managed by the impious, the dissolute and the immoral. Think not that men who acknowledge not the providence of God nor regard His laws will be uncorrupt in office, firm in defense of the righteous cause against the oppressor, or resolutely oppose the torrent of iniquity. . .Watch over your liberties and privileges – civil and religious – with a careful eye.

Thomas Jefferson (founder and president)—The elective franchise (right to vote), if guarded as the ark of our safety, will peaceably dissipate all combinations to subvert a Constitution, dictated by the wisdom, and resting on the will of the people.

Daniel Webster (statesman and senator)—Impress upon children the truth that the exercise of the elective franchise (right to vote) is a social duty of as solemn a nature as man can be called to perform; that a man may not innocently trifle with his vote; that every elector is a trustee as well for others as himself and that every measure he supports has an important bearing on the interests of others as well as on his own.

Vote! Vote! Vote! Vote at every opportunity including seemingly minor local offices. Vote thoughtfully after careful consideration of the record of each candidate and his/her specifically clarified views. Do not fail to vote; do not vote frivolously.

What does it take to wake up the body of believers?

What does it take to wake up the clergy?