That it should go without
saying that a constitution providing a government with its basic framework and
procedures should not contain any conflicts of interest makes it all the more
astonishing when an actual constitution is found to contain a obvious yet undetected
conflict of interest that could be exploited by an institutional or
officeholder and yet is easy to obviate, or fix. The implication in such a case
is that a society can be too comfortable with institutional conflicts of
interest without realizing that if such a conflict is exploitable, it is likely
that it eventually will be even if not right away. Because U.S. President Don
Trump’s pressure on his vice president, Mike Pence, on January 6, 2021 to
refuse to certify the votes of the electors in some of the states did not
result in any serious proposals to have another office than the vice presidency
preside, a societal tolerance for even known conflicts of interests in general
and in a constitution more particularly can be inferred. I submit that such a
tacit willingness to continue with the status quo can eventually put even a republic
itself at risk.
The full essay is at "Certifying a U.S. Presidential Election."
