The Supreme Court will hear arguments in its fall 2022 session on whether state courts play any role in judging the constitutionality of election laws and legislative district maps passed by state legislatures.
The case of Moore v. Harper is brought by Republicans in the North Carolina state legislature who claim that state courts have no say on whether the voting laws they write or the district maps they adopt are unconstitutional under their state’s constitution.
If the court accepts these arguments, it would wipe out the last remaining protection available against extreme partisan gerrymandering and greatly increase the ability of state’s to adopt highly restrictive voting laws.
It could also play a role in any future attempt by presidential candidates to steal an election, as former President Donald Trump attempted in the 2020 election. Siding with the North Carolina Republicans could effectively give all electoral authority to state legislatures, including in the approval of the winner of the state’s Electoral College electors.
I don’t know how to describe the importance of that without sounding hyperbolic. Ruling for the NC Republicans would truly destroy democracy. Gerrymander the state sufficiently that you can never be voted out of power, enact laws that the legislature determines the electoral college vote rather than a statewide popular vote, and it’s permanent minority rule.
Might? 
Is there really any doubt?
It will indeed be terrible for majoritarian democracy if this court guts state courts’ powers to intervene with gerrymandered legislatures’ intentions.
The only future way out is to pass something like the Fair Representation Act (which admittedly won’t help at the state legislature level) but have no doubt that Roberts and his gang of Trumpies won’t gleefully shoot it down.
Even worse, red state legislatures could also freely take unprecedented acts to suppress voting or even overturn results they don’t like. The past few years have just been a warm-up.
Republicans are becoming increasingly open and non-apologetic about their goals for ending fair democracy.
I have no doubt. Permanent minority rule is what they are going for.
And grift. Who in this country wanted the EPA’s powers gutted? Not ordinary citizens - clean air and water is something everyone wants. Individual voters are not in favor of increased pollution, cancer risks and birth defects. No, the people who are in favor of gutting the EPA are big companies who want to be able to dump their waste into the common environment without consequence. I firmly believe one or more of the so-called “conservative*” justices accepted quid-pro-quos for hearing that case and making that decision.
*It’s a joke to call this court “conservative”. They don’t want to conserve anything. They want to burn it all down.
No. They want to melt it down and reform it in their own vision of society.
Between this and them killing human civilization, I don’t think I can stand to stay informed anymore. I think I just need schadenfreude threads for a while.
One really couldn’t rule out family connections to the fossil fuel industry either:
I am not keen on posting a Salon article since they have a distinct ideological lean but I think this is relevant for this thread (another article akin to the one in the OP).
Full title: “Radical power grab”: New Supreme Court case could allow right-wingers to ignore voting right laws
It will be nothing less than the literal end of democracy in the US (and that is not hyperbole).
I have this feeling we are living through the end of the Roman Republic and the start of the Roman Empire, v2.
Re. The EPA decision: I do not follow their logic about Congress “delegating” authority to the Executive branch. The Executive branch executes the laws. Congress passed the Clean Air Act. It is the Exec’s job to execute that Act which they did by creating an agency to handle the details. How is this not constitutional?? Does the Court claim to think the full Congress should debate allowable exposure limits to each compound covered by the Act rather than allowing a group of experts to handle it? That is clearly ludicrous. Or if the EPA was under the Legislative branch in the government org chart would it be OK?
And states do this all the time. An act says something like “There will be this law and this agency that will set the standards and regulations…” and then the agency comes up with those standards and regulations. This is not new or unusual practice. This court arguing that it is shows its ignorance, arrogance and contempt for the law and the majority of our society.
I have no respect for this court. While I am disgusted by the Proud Boys and their ilk I am beginning to feel like I’d like to smash a few government windows myself.
Might? Might?
There is no “might” about it.
I rather doubt that you would get a majority of, say, Pennsylvania Republicans in the PA state legislature to award the electoral votes to the Republican if the Democratic candidate wins the state by any meaningful margin - such as 53% to 47%.
I think we are way past “they wouldn’t do that” by now.
No way, no how am I trusting that republicans “won’t go there” because it is only a 1% difference. Indeed, the issue is letting them change the election results when the percentage is against them (so -1% or more).
Sadly, I think you’re incredibly wrong. All evidence has pointed to a Republican party that has no bottom.
Maybe not the first time.
But if the D candidate did win the vote, to the R’s that just means they (the R’s) failed to sufficiently prevent D voting and/or failed to properly miscount the D votes that did occur and/or failed to sufficiently stack the design of districts and laws and such so the popular vote is not in fact the vote count that matters.
As to that last point … there is nothing that I know of that prevents a state from setting up a system akin to the electoral college for their own state-level elections. And they can probably weasel in a similar system as it relates to electing their federal legislators. And perhaps even their system for voting for the federal president.
At which point all the anomalies we’ve all discussed about the two-level electoral college voting system come home to roost. The entity that designs the game can preselect the winner every time.
Didn’t you start a thread confidently asserting that Roe wouldn’t be overturned?
Good lord, this has been the plan all along. It will just be under some thinly veiled pretense of “fraud” in Democratic counties in Philadelphia metro but they’ll toss whatever number of votes they need to.
And this is an issue where Roberts is even more in the bag than Thomas and the Trump-appointed idiots.
When a party continually tells you that they support minority rule, believe it.
They give every indication of going out of their way to seek cases that will allow them to issue sweeping decisions. Funny how you don’t hear the usual suspects complaining about judicial activism.
Thanks, to everyone who voted for 3d party candidates and who stayed home because you didn’t want to vote for “the lesser of two evils.”
ISTM that part of the ploy may be to discourage so many Democrats from voting that the Republican actually does win an outright majority of the votes.
Let’s say that Wisconsin’s state legislature announces, far in advance, that “Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes will go to the Republican candidate no matter what.” That could discourage so many Democrats from voting (“what’s the point? WI is going to go red no matter how many of us vote”) that the Republican candidate actually does as a result win over 50% of the state vote, and hence, takes the state the old-fashioned way.
He wouldn’t have to resort to seizing the electoral slate despite having won only a minority of votes.
And at the same time, it could make Republicans be lazy and stay home. “What’s the point? WI is going to go red no matter how many of us vote”
But, of course, everyone seems to always think that the only thing on the ballot is the Presidential election. There’s a whole bunch of other offices and issues to vote for. In your scenario are those also already chosen by the legislature?
I mean, in your scenario, they would have already resorted to seizing the electoral slate before the election.