Formal request to 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals
to Hear Oral Arguments, April 24, 2012
See the cover sheet listing all Plaintiffs and Defendants
STATEMENT EXPLAINING WHY ORAL ARGUMENTS
SHOULD BE HEARD
Pursuant to Rule 34, pro-se Plaintiffs-Appellants respectfully file this statement explaining why oral arguments should be heard in this election case, which is a first impression, constitutional challenge involving a violation of Plaintiffs’ voting Rights.
Plaintiffs sued the NYS Board of Elections for violating our natural, constitutional Right to public elections. We came to the Judiciary with our complaint that the government was transgressing the People’s document – the federal Constitution, and by extension the State Constitution. Plaintiffs were challenging, as unconstitutional the State’s coercive and oppressive practice of conducting secret rather than public elections wherein the State has begun, and intends to continue announcing the results of votes cast in Plaintiffs’ polling places after recording and counting Plaintiffs’ votes in secret, not allowing Plaintiffs to know their votes were accurately counted by preventing Plaintiffs from observing and examining the recording and counting of their votes – a practice that denies Plaintiffs their Right to know and leaves them to a blind trust of Government and political operatives.
We expected the United States District Court to listen to us. We expected the Court would speedily get to the merits of a complaint that was so important. We expected the Judiciary to be the independent, co-equal branch of our government that we the people, through our Constitution, set it up to be. We expected the Court to fulfill its primary role – to apply a check and to be a balance, seeing to it that the will of the People as expressed in their Constitution, was applied to the everyday behavior of the government.
Instead, the Court said that we lack standing and the Court lacks jurisdiction, a seeming excuse in America these days that echoes across our Land as individuals and small groups stand up for their Constitution as Courts seem unwilling to do.
The Court, by its ruling, has abdicated its fundamental responsibility as guardian of the People’s intent, through the Constitution, to limit government’s power over them. The Court has made it necessary for Plaintiffs to raise our voices, in this document, so that the issues and the dangers involved can be spread before the People.
The Court has created two agonizing problems for the People. First, that we cannot defend our fundamental Rights in the institutional forum created specifically for that purpose. Second, that public officials and their operatives can record and count our votes in secret, supporting any whim or purpose, without public observation or examination – gutting a fundamental, essential principle underlying our system of governance.
The Court has retreated from the bright, dispassionate light of constitutional principles into the dim light of statute and purported case “law” viewing, as through dark glasses, every aspect of this case except its finding that Plaintiffs lack standing. In this appalling procedure the Court did not even have the grace to cite correctly a section of the Constitution under which we had brought our case.
We view the Court’s escape from rationality as verbalistic. It used language loopholes; in refusing us standing the Court joined the rest of a panicked government, clutching at straws to avoid the rough justice of bad governmental policies and programs. In doing so, the Court joined itself to a system of governmental anarchy.
We the People sense there is a concerted strategy at work within the councils of power. The purpose of this strategy is to silence our voice. The architects of this strategy hear the public clamor of citizen anger and helplessness being raised throughout the land. This strategy holds that in order to perpetuate “club” privileges, every effort must be made to silence any effective citizen advocacy or resistance. One way to do this is through an unconstitutional denial of the only significant forum available to citizens today – short of riot in the streets – the courts. But here, in the Court, the citizens have once again been denied, by trick of language, the “standing” necessary to obtain a hearing on their Petition for a Redress of their Grievances “on the merits.” In this way, the Court says that we the people cannot appear in court to defend our fundamental Rights.
Government has been indulging itself for the political and self-serving purposes of its leadership, until it has become a public circus – a spectacle of degeneration.
The State’s program of secret elections at any cost promises nothing less than a continuous expansion of the People’s confusion and frustration - a continuous increase of freedom undermining obligations upon the citizen.
The citizen is in a position where he must stand up for his Rights. He is anxious and aroused. He can do nothing less than fight. He is not a member of the club – the only advantage of which is that he is not forced to play by club rules.
It is widely said abroad that the members of the Court are serving the club that appointed them rather than the Constitution they have sworn to uphold and the people shielded by that Constitution. We leave this point as moot, but as one which, were it true, would have the Court selling the birthright of the people for a personal plate of beans.
The People know the implications of the Court’s ruling. The Court has spoken, not only to Plaintiffs, but also to all the other People who have brought similar constitutional challenges against the government’s headstrong and unconstitutional war, money, bailout, debt, privacy, property, tax and voting policies, among others. The Courts have said to them all, “when it comes before us we will declare that you have no standing to question the constitutionality of your government’s behavior, in spite of the First Amendment guarantee of your Right to Petition the Government for Redress of Grievances.” (A Right also guaranteed by our State Constitution).
We have learned from history. We refuse to repeat it. We are not resigned to a role of living in fear – of “hiding in the attic,” hoping not to be touched by the despotism of an unrestrained government. We work in accordance with an inner principle that says, “Right is right and wrong is wrong, irrespective of who does it.” We will not be silent. We will not let these principles wane. We will continue the fight against the not-so-casual-anymore tyranny of a government that has lost its moral fiber and is leading us headlong down a path to destruction.
Plaintiffs’ appeal is not frivolous. The dispositive issue has not been authoritatively decided. The decisional process would be significantly aided by oral argument.
Dated: April 24, 2012
___________________
ROBERT L. SCHULZ
2458 Ridge Road
Queensbury, NY 12804
___________________
JOHN LIGGETT
1040 1st Ave #351
New York, NY 10022