The US Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to change the electoral law to give states more flexibility in organizing White House and Congress votes.
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By a majority of six out of nine judges, the Supreme Court rejected a theory proposed by Republican lawmakers from North Carolina that their critics said would have weakened American democracy.
Postal voting, office hours, documents to be presented for registration on the electoral rolls…: the Constitution gives each state’s elected representatives the task of determining the “time, place and procedure” of the elections.
However, their laws are subject to review by local courts. North Carolina elected officials wanted to change that.
For them, at this level, the Constitution places “regulation of federal elections in the hands of state legislatures and no one else,” a so-called “independent state legislature” theory.
The constitution “does not protect local legislatures from due judicial review by their state’s courts,” the Temple of American Law countered Tuesday in a ruling immediately welcomed by the left.
The Supreme Court rejected a “marginal theory” that “threatened our democracy and the balance of power,” former Democratic President Barack Obama tweeted.
constituencies
Specifically, the file came from the 2020 census, which recorded population growth in North Carolina. As a result, the state had gained an additional seat in the House of Representatives and its legislature had redrawn the contours of the districts.
However, her card had been rejected by the state Supreme Court, which ruled that she favored the Republican Party by allocating Democratic voters to specific voting districts to dilute their votes elsewhere. A second card didn’t seem fairer, the local high court had commissioned an independent expert to deal with it.
Local lawmakers then turned to the US Supreme Court, accusing the state judiciary of usurping its role.
The Supreme Court had refused to intervene urgently, and the expert’s map served well in November’s midterm elections, allowing seven representatives from each party to be elected.
This election has shifted the balance on the North Carolina Supreme Court, where conservative justices are now clearly in the majority. They subsequently changed hands and felt that they had no authority to desegregate constituencies.
It is therefore possible that local parliamentarians will draft a new map ahead of the 2024 elections. The decision of the Supreme Court would then have no concrete effects.