The 14th Amendment and its impact on legislation and voting.
Posting to log this train of thought and reasoning. Yes, I should extend this.
The 14th Amendment uses the term “whole number of persons in each state” instead of “whole number of citizens in each state,” as that same amendment introduced a new definition of citizenship. So, the amendment was put in place to be a revelation from the 13th Amendment and where we stood, not a revelation from section to section, 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, as those 4 sections were on the same paper and put into place at the exact same time.
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Amendments are not essays or arguments; they are rules, and rules are changes or additions from the previously established behavior (where the US stood at the 13th Amendment).
Section 1 defined citizen. Section 4 used language from Amendment 13 and prior, as they both are sections of one simultaneous new amendment, a whole and simultaneous revelation after the 13th Amendment. If 1, 2, 3, and 4 built off one another in an unsectioned progressive flow of an argument, it would be different.
The 14th Amendment and the phrasing “ whole number of persons” was intended to turn 3/5 of a vote into a full vote. It would have said “total”, not whole, if they intended for illegal immigrants to be included.
