That would solve this problem, yes, haha.Hey we can just pack the court no problem! Problem solved!
The question at hand is whether or not state legislatures are beholden to basically anyone else when conducting federal elections.
This is known as the "independent legislature theory" and is strongly supported by the more hardcore right leaning election denying crowd.
i don't see how a texas AG has any standing in the matter...should get dismissed pretty quickly.Any relation to this? I ask because it was the only legal challenge I was aware of.
AG Paxton Sues Battleground States for Unconstitutional Changes to 2020 Election Laws
December 08, 2020
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today filed a lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the United States Supreme Court. The four states exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws and unlawfully enacting last-minute changes, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election. The battleground states flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.
Sounds different....
Any relation to this? I ask because it was the only legal challenge I was aware of.
AG Paxton Sues Battleground States for Unconstitutional Changes to 2020 Election Laws
December 08, 2020
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today filed a lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the United States Supreme Court. The four states exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws and unlawfully enacting last-minute changes, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election. The battleground states flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.
Sounds different....
If Republicans take both the House and Senate in 2022, it doesn't mean the end of democratic republican elections in the future, but it sure won't be a step in the right direction.
More important is Moore v. Harper. If that is decided to allow a state legislature to gerrymander as much as it wants, there's no reason for any state legislature to ever give the minority party more seats than it wants, which essentially is the end of democratic republican elections.
Maybe Roberts attempts to "preserve the integrity" of the court and grabs Barrett or Gorsuch to prevent it, but I'm not counting on it.
Pretty much what it comes down to for me. Maybe Kavanaugh surprises us, but I doubt it.
The conservative members of the court forfeited any credibility and trust they had some time ago. Gives me a bad feeling no matter how ridiculous ISL theory is.
Counsels explained in these briefs that the standard interpretation of “legislature” over several centuries broadly includes the state’s entire lawmaking process—not only state courts and the parameters of state constitutions, but also the governor’s signature or veto.
I posted a month ago that this case was going to be far more important in determining the future of democratic republican government than the 2022 midterms.
I'll quote myself.
And the answer remains the same. If a state legislature is allowed to gerrymander a minority party into an infinitesimal minority of seats, then State legislatures and the federal House of Representatives is going to become a facade of democratic republican fair elections.
Given this particular court, I can see a 6-3 decision allowing the legislature to essentially crack-n-pack districts to hilariously tragic levels, with little room for state or federal courts to unfuck the fuckery. Maybe Roberts attempts to "preserve the integrity" of the court and grabs Barrett or Gorsuch to prevent it, but I'm not counting on it.
Seems to me it's a case study in whether it's ever possible to write a Constitution that doesn't have dangerous loopholes.
One would think the "framers" would have been a bit more careful in how they worded things, rather than just referring to 'state legislatures'. I mean, in theory, a strictly literal interpretation of the wording would mean once a state assembly was elected the first time, it could subsequently rule like a dictator, including picking the state's electoral college votes.
Every system of democratic governance relies on the good faith of all parties involved - if you don't have that then the writing is on the wall. I think this is shown in recent years where Republicans no longer entirely act in good faith when it comes to elections and it's getting worse. For that reason I think you're right that a written constitution is not particularly important.Supreme Court Oral Arguments in Moore v. Harper Discredit Election Theory That Could Undermine Democracy
Litigants’ oral arguments, along with questions from Supreme Court justices, revealed that the independent state legislature theory is meritless and should be rejected.www.americanprogress.org
I do wonder if it's like that Godel incompleteness theorem stuff - in any reasonable mathematical system there will always be true statements that cannot be proved. Maybe it has a political analog with regard to written Constitutions as well. Taken solely on their own terms Constitutional systems can always be undermined, as they always have self-destroying loopholes. They hence always rely on factors outside themselves to sustain them.
(Which once again makes me wonder what the point is of having a written constitution at all - if the outside factors aren't conducive for sustaining a democracy, having a written constitution won't make any difference...as with Wiemar Germany)
The whole thing is a bad joke. Basically NC is arguing their state supreme court has no standing when its their state Constitution that creates the state legislature, giving it it's power in the first place. The SC is who interprets their Constitution.Ah, this is a redistricting case.
That !@#$ is bloody awful.
And the question is if the State has the ultimate authority over... elections?
Well that escalated quickly.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_v._Harper
Throughout the litigation, the General Assembly argued their case based on the independent state legislature theory (ISL). This theory is based on language from the Elections Clause in the Article One of the U.S. Constitution, stating: "The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof." The theory is based on the reading that Article I imply that only state legislatures may make any decisions related to election law and prevent any actions from courts or the executive branch from challenging it. This would allow the state legislature to set redistricting as well as other voting choices. While the Supreme Court and other courts had already rejected this concept, including as late as Smiley v. Holm (1932),[8] the theory gained more traction with Republicans and conservatives since Bush v. Gore, thus making it a potentially landmark case according to legal experts.[9]
Yep - I think this is true of every democracy though. Things in the US are getting pretty bad with how the Constitution is being twisted though.The problem the United States will always have is that it was never founded to be this egalitarian, participatory democracy that we keep striving for day by day.
It was always meant to be this hyper exclusive club and all of our fixes have been the systemic equivalent of duct-tape applied by lobotomized monkeys.
The whole thing really works because we believe it works, otherwise anyone can really read a whole lot of anything into the constitution as its written or come up with whatever conclusion they want. We've been lucky that on average the read has been toward a more open and inclusive society, but that's not really enshrined in our constitution like counting slaves as 3/5 of a person is.