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The Guarantee Clause (Article IV) responds to and prevents oppressive types of governments like monarchies. The Guarantee Clause reflects the framers’ aim to ensure democratic principles in the United States and maintain a representative government in each state. The Guarantee Clause states that every state must have a republican form of government. This ensures that no state inflicts a monarchy, dictatorship, aristocracy, or stratocracy. The clause does not detail the conditions of the republican government (specifically regarding voting requirements), but it does guarantee federal protection to all states from foreign invasions and domestic violence.
Some scholars interpret this clause as a finite check on the federal government’s interference with the states’ autonomy and, specifically, enabled each state to set appropriate requirements for state and local elections. Others interpret this provision to explain that the federal government can interfere with states’ voting requirements if the conditions disenfranchise part of their population. Scholars argue that post Reconstruction Era, specifically in places where African American’s made up at least 40% of the population, the Guarantee Clause was not upheld, disenfranchising African Americans.
Texas v. White (1891) provides some context for this interpretation, as the ruling dictated that the newly freed African Americans would become part of the people; thus, they were included in the republic and entitled to vote. Subsequently, Chin utilizes Ratliff v. Beale, which explained how and why Mississippi disenfranchised African Americans.
They declared that the newly enfranchised race (who were greater in numbers) lacked the intelligence and governmental instinct to complete these public services. This acknowledges Mississippi’s “problem” because African Americans comprised most of the population. Furthermore, the elected government personnel would not reflect who the white people desired to hold power in the state. By claiming that Black people did not have sufficient intelligence, the Mississippi Constitutional Convention addressed this problem by creating literacy tests and poll taxes to prevent African Americans from voting.
With these two cases in mind, African Americans, who made up the majority of the population, did not vote; thus, allowing Mississippi and other former Confederate states to run on the minority vote. Finally, in United States v. Mississippi (1965), the United States acknowledges the systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans and, ergo, states running on the minority vote.
The Supreme Court case Oregon v. Mitchell (1970) ruled that Congress could change the age requirement only for federal elections, not state or local ones, as it was beyond Congress’s authority. This ruling supports interpretations regarding states’ autonomy as it prevented the federal government from impeding Oregon’s rights.
Although the 24th Amendment (1964) abolished literacy tests and polling taxes, Chin’s claim extrapolates to current forms of disenfranchisement like gerrymandering. It provokes readers to question if the federal government’s allowance of states’ gerrymandering violates the Guarantee Clause. The Guarantee Clause reflects Lockean ideas of popular sovereignty in that each state runs on a republican form of government where the people have control through elections. Similarly, the provision incorporates Rousseau’s idea of the general will, as the clause guarantees that states govern according to the majority vote.
