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LetMyPeopleVote

(145,619 posts)
Wed Jul 6, 2022, 10:32 AM Jul 2022

Prof Tribe-The Supreme Court is poised to cut the heart out of majority rule

The independent state legislature doctrine is a load of crap designed to impose minority rule. I am glad to see Judge Luttig also opposed this doctrine



https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-07-05/supreme-court-independent-legislature-theory-north-carolina-case-presidential-electors?_amp=true

The Supreme Court’s extremist justices are aiming their next dagger at the heart of the entire democratic enterprise: voters’ right to pick leaders of their choice.

On Thursday, the court announced that it will hear Moore vs. Harper, a North Carolina case involving gerrymandered congressional district maps drawn by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature. Those maps would probably give Republicans control of 11 of 14 congressional districts in the state......

Hence, according to this baseless notion, state legislatures can do whatever they want in manipulating elections no matter how extreme the results — principles of voter equality and fairness be damned, along with the state’s constitution, its governor and its courts.

Four justices — Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh — had previously signaled support for this idea. One more justice would provide a majority to give state legislatures absolute control of electoral votes in presidential elections.....

Constitutional textualists such as former federal judge J. Michael Luttig, the preeminent conservative jurist, already see what lies ahead.

Luttig recently wrote that the pushers of this debunked theory would also seek to apply it to presidential elections to “‘steal’ from Democrats the presidential election in 2024.” Those pressing the idea claim that state legislators may ignore the people’s vote — not to mention the state judiciary and state election procedures that the legislators have themselves enacted into law — because the Constitution’s electors clause directs each state to “appoint” electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.”....

One possible defense is for Congress to enact the John L. Lewis Voting Rights Act, which could be invoked to defeat the way the independent legislature theory disenfranchises the state’s people. Arizonans and West Virginians must prevail on Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to end their resistance to eliminating the filibuster on that bill. The Constitution gives Congress the power to set elections rules nationally for federal elections, no matter what any renegade state legislature might try to do.
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Prof Tribe-The Supreme Court is poised to cut the heart out of majority rule (Original Post) LetMyPeopleVote Jul 2022 OP
Judge Luttig agrees with Prof Tribe LetMyPeopleVote Jul 2022 #1
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