Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
If it's egregious and you are incapable of doing the job, sure. If the qualification you lied about is a legal requirement, you can expect to be fired and sued. But I would also suspect that plenty of people lie, and go on without incident if the lie has not impacted their ability to do the work, perhaps even if the lie gets discovered.
Now politics is different because your only performance evaluation is the next election. Everyone elected is axiomatically considered competent, so there is no mechanism to separate "lie affecting competence" from "lie not affecting competence". You're right that notwithstanding censure and recall legislation you can't fire an elected official. That's just the nature of government, it's how the system works. Calgary can't even fire Sean Chu, because people keep voting for him. That's democracy for you.
Just don't put me in that group. My concerns are around safeguarding democracy, not about protecting the party that seems to have more pathological liars.
I think it should be up to electors, not legislators, what is disqualifying and what isn't. Yet, I recognize that electors need the truth to do that. I'm not saying the idea is fundamentally bad, just that it's something that is dangerous and if it is to be written, needs to be written with extreme caution. It's not a slam-dunk nor is it low-hanging fruit.
Disqualifying your opponents tends to be a feature of states that we wouldn't usually associate with strong democracy. Even normalizing the concept of disqualification could push the USA closer to a dark path at a time when it's already struggling to uphold its institutions.
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As far as I know, voters actually don't have the ability to recall Santos after the vote - so no Federal law allows for recall of a member of congress.
Since the GOP will circle their wagons, there is no chance of the House expelling Santos either, as it would require two thirds of the House to vote for that.
It's pretty clear that Santos committed fraud - knowingly lied about education and work background and family background - to manipulate the electorate.
Any disqualification would occur under bipartisan committees, either the Federal Elections Committee or the House Ethics Committee. Since they are both bipartisan committees, I see no legal jeopardy with that (especially since there's no chance of a bipartisan committee voting the same way).
US democracy is already on a dark path; candidates openly pushing conspiracy theories as part of their campaign platforms, lying (not exaggerating) on their CVs and being rewarded, not to mention the polarization that has gridlocked everything.