and one Member of the House of Representatives before the same shall be received.  When all such objections so made to any certificate, vote, or paper from a State shall have been received and read, all such certificates, votes, and papers so objected to, and all papers accompanying the same, together with such objections, shall be forthwith submitted to said commission, which shall proceed to consider the same, with the same powers, if any, now possessed for that purpose by the two houses acting separately or together, and, by a majority of votes, decide whether any and what votes from such States are the votes provided for by the Constitution of the United States, and how many and what persons were duly appointed electors in such State, and may therein take into view such petitions, depositions, and other papers, if any, as shall, by the Constitution and now existing law, be competent and pertinent in such consideration:  which decision shall be made in writing.

It will be observed that all the questions to be decided by this commission are to be contained in the written objections.  Until those objections are read and filed, their contents must be unknown, and the issues raised by them undescribed.  But whatever they are, they are submitted to the decision of the commission.  The duty of interpreting this law and of giving a construction to the Constitution and existing laws is vested in the commission; and I hold that we have no right or power to control in advance, by our construction, their sworn judgment as to the matters which they are to decide.  We would defeat the very object of the bill should we invade the essential power of judgment of this commission and establish a construction in advance and bind them to it.  It would, in effect, be giving to them a mere mock power to decide by leaving them nothing to decide.

Mr. President, there are certainly very good reasons why the concurrent action of both houses should be necessary to reject a vote.  It is that feature of this bill which has my heartiest concurrence; for I will frankly say that the difficulties which have oppressed me most in considering this question a year or more ago, before any method had been devised, arose from my apprehensions of the continued absorption of undue power over the affairs of the States; and I here declare that the power and the sole power of appointing the electors is in the State, and nowhere else.  The power of ascertaining whether the State has executed that power justly and according to the Constitution and laws is the duty which is cast upon the two houses of Congress.  Now, if, under the guise or pretext of judging of the regularity of the action of a State or its electors, the Congress or either house may interpose the will of its members in opposition to the will of the State, the act will be one of usurpation and wrong, although I do not see where is the tribunal to arrest and punish it except the great tribunal of an honest public opinion.  But sir that tribunal, though great, though in the end certain, is yet ofttimes slow to be awakened to action; and therefore I rejoice when the two houses agree that neither of them shall be able to reject the vote of a State which is without contest arising within that State itself, but that the action of both shall be necessary to concur in the rejection.