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Did The U.S. Supreme Court Just Save Democracy? It’s Complicated.
In it’s decision today the SCOTUS rejected the Independent State Legislature theory. That is clearly a good thing.
If you weren’t aware that theory basically holds that the state legislature is given unrestricted authority regarding the holding of elections. Meaning that state courts can’t weigh in on political gerrymandering. Nor can the governor or through him the state’s electoral branch.
That might not sound so terrible, but consider the context of how gerrymandered these state legislatures already are. If no one has authority but them to prevent gerrymandering, and they are already thoroughly gerrymandered, there is no possible mechanism to ever draw fair maps again.
In the context of states like Ohio and North Carolina, maps can be drawn that take roughly 50–50 states and render them 10 Rs to 4 D’s in the House of Representatives or State Government. So a state that is evenly divided instead elects roughly 2 to 1 Republicans. And the only hope of undoing it, is to ask the people who created this situation to very nicely let democracy have a chance.
And the SCOTUS rejected that theory 6 to 3. Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch said that on complicated procedural grounds the case was moot and there was no need to reach a decision. Thomas also suggested in his…
