Covenanted Christian Voting

• Do you believe God has given us commandments and principles concerning voting in the Bible?
• Are you committed to obeying those commands regarding voting?
• Do you believe we should obey God and leave the consequences of our obedience to him?
• Do you choose candidates first on Biblical principles and only secondarily on pragmatic concerns?
• Do you believe the Bible provides qualifications for civil rulers?
• Would you like to see the church of Jesus Christ speak with one voice?

If so, then you may be interested in covenanting together with us to vote in unison for a qualified candidate.

A Biblically Qualified Candidate
We believe the following scriptures, among others, provide qualifications for civil rulers. Exodus 18:21, Deuteronomy 16:18-19, Deuteronomy 17:15-19, and Proverbs 31:4-5.
Exodus 18:21 requires civil rulers to be able or capable men of truth who fear God and hate covetousness.
Deuteronomy 16:18-19 requires that a civil ruler judge justly and not take bribes or be a respecter of persons.
Deuteronomy 17:15-19 requires that civil rulers be natural born citizens and be knowledgeable concerning the law of God. It forbids them from multiplying horses.
Proverbs 31:4-5 teaches us that wine and strong drink are not for civil magistrates.From these passages we can form a composite picture of a qualified candidate:

1. A civil ruler should be a male born in this country.
2. A civil ruler should have a basic understanding of law of God and the US Constitution. While many evils in our land can’t be eradicated in one term, his solutions should apply Biblical wisdom so as to bring the wheel over more evil and increase the number of well doers who are encouraged and rewarded consistent with enumerated powers in the Constitution.
3. A civil ruler should speak the truth. This means he will call abortion and unjust war, murder; homosexual fornication, sin, and fractional reserve banking and tax based welfare, theft. It also means he will warn the people that the practice of these sins will bring God’s wrath on the land.
4. A civil ruler must be capable, having demonstrated the ability to successfully rule one or more organizations.
5. A qualified candidate will not be without weaknesses. David, Hezekiah, and Josiah are all called good kings by God. Yet significant sins are recorded of each of them.

Issues for the 2012 Elections
The following issues are deemed to be significant issues of the day and will be used as the criteria for evaluation of candidates.
Abortion – must believe that anything done with the intent to kill an unborn baby is murder. Acceptable solutions would include removing state abortion laws from the jurisdiction of federal courts.
Wars of Aggression – must recognize foreign dominion as a sign of judgment and seek to extricate the US from all treaties that cede authority over the US to any party other than duly elected officers in offices established by the Constitution and under oath to uphold the Constitution.  Should seek to end all foreign wars of aggression, collapse the US Empire, and bring US soldiers home.
Federal Reserve – must understand the threat this corporation poses to our well-being and seek to revoke their charter, including any intermediate steps to reduce their power and obscurity.
Federal Spending – must have a plan to balance the Federal budget within his first term and eliminate Federal departments that are not authorized by the Constitution (e.g. Education, Energy, Interior, Health and Human Services, and Transportation). Must recognize existing tax rates are too high.
Homosexual fornication – must believe homosexual fornication to be heinous sin and seek to criminalize this activity wherever the federal government has Constitutional jurisdiction – i.e. armed forces, Washington, DC.
Constitution – must believe the constitution to be the law of the land and be committed to rescinding all existing legislation and vetoing all new legislation in violation of this law.

Party vs. Covenanted Voters
The big difference between this concept and a party is how a person becomes a candidate. With a party a person declares himself a candidate and then tries to accumulate money, often prostituting himself in the process. The candidate then persuades people to vote for him. With covenanted voters, the people persuade a person to be a candidate. The candidate does not need to raise money, because he is not trying to persuade anyone to vote for him. He can spend his time developing real solutions to the problems that face the nation and using whatever stumping opportunities are given to him to present these ideas. Any resources to get someone elected are spent directly by the people who are seeking to elect the candidate.

The goal is not to debate who is the "best" possible candidate. The goal is to find a candidate who meets the prescribed qualifications and is willing to accept the responsibility of ruling. Any candidate, meeting the legal requirements for office, for whom people are able to vote is electable. Whether or not the majority of people in a wicked land would ever be willing to vote for such a person is really irrelevant to our duty of choosing qualified men to rule.
This approach allows a candidate to obey the injunction in Deuteronomy 17:17 (“…neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.”) against accumulating money. It would seem this principle is violated when the first action a candidate takes is to raise as much money as possible.
It is expected people in each state will use their write-in process to get their write in votes counted. In most cases, these are quite simple. In Texas for example, it only takes 34 signatures to get on the write-in ballot. In North Dakota, only three and the filing deadline is mid-October. See the (http://writein2008.blogspot.com/) for details on individual state laws.

Wooden Ballot box used in the northeast US c1870

Thoughts?