Election Integrity
Is Everything
Election integrity is the elephant in the room that needs to be addressed in North Dakota and in our nation. Free, fair, and transparent elections are the very foundation to our freedom and existence. Our founding fathers kept these building blocks in mind when writing the Constitution. Their foresight established the path to keeping our freedom. Note that keeping our freedom would encompass action by the people. It is on this premise that the people of North Dakota bring forth this Election Integrity Act to the Capitol.
The Gettysburg Address
In the Gettysburg address, Lincoln magnified the power of the people. In November of 1863, Lincoln’s Declaration of Independence connected the sacrifices of the soldiers with a new birth of freedom for the people. It preserved the concept and ideal of self-government. For the time of history, Lincoln’s radical aspect of the speech asserted the Declaration of Independence was the intention of the founding fathers for the new and young nation. Here is his address:
November 19, 1863: Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States of America, making his Gettysburg Address speech at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Painting by Fletcher C Ransom – Via US Library Of Congress
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to the that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resole that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
