Experts alarmed as Supreme Court weighs giving state legislatures limitless powers to rig elections

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Moore concerns the “independent state legislature” theory: the idea that the Constitution grants state legislatures some level of special authority in administering federal elections that may not be constrained by state courts or perhaps even state constitutions. The idea is, to put it mildly, contested. The conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig, who recently signed on as co-counsel for litigants opposing the independent state legislature theory in Moore, has argued in The Atlantic that Moore represents “the most important case for American democracy in the almost two and a half centuries since America’s founding” and cautioned that the theory is a key part of “the Republican blueprint to steal the 2024 election.” Former Attorney General Eric Holder warned that, depending on how the Court rules, Moore could pose “an existential threat to our democracy.”

Over the past several months, both the litigants and outside parties—known as amici curiae, or “friends of the court”—have filed a mountain of briefs hashing out these issues. These amicus briefs preview how much disruption the independent state legislature theory could really create. But more than that, they reveal a legal landscape in which once-wild arguments have suddenly entered the mainstream—a landscape transformed by Donald Trump, not just through his reshaping of the federal judiciary but also through his influence on the ideas that are burbling up. Moore v. Harper may not be about Trump, but it is of his making.

At the center of Moore is a ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court throwing out an aggressively gerrymandered congressional map put together by the state’s Republican legislature, which the court found violated the state constitution. The GOP lawmakers are now challenging that ruling before the Supreme Court, arguing that, under the independent state legislature theory, the state court lacked the authority to involve itself in the legislature’s work.
Full long article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ef/672281/

Depending on how the Trump Justices and Thomas rule the we could be screwed in so many ways, not just in how we conduct and elect our leaders. Can you just see the havoc a state legislature could cause under the independent state legislature theory.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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