The race for the White House and the US Congress could be disrupted if the nine justices decide to let the 50-state legislature organize these federal elections as they wish.
The US Supreme Court on Wednesday, December 7, is examining an electoral law file that is raising strong fears among those on the left – but not only – that it could revolutionize the way elections for the White House and Congress are organized. The hearing will focus on a new legal theory proposed by Republican congressmen in North Carolina that, if adopted, would give lawmakers in all 50 states free reign to organize federal elections.
Voting by mail, office hours, documents required for registration on the electoral roll…: the Constitution gives each state’s legislature the task of determining the “time, place and procedure” of elections. However, their laws are subject to review by local courts and possible veto by their governor. Elected officials in North Carolina want to change that. For them, the constitution “puts the regulation of federal elections in the hands of the state legislature and no one else”.
This theory of so-called “independent state legislatures” has “never been validated by the Supreme Court, although it has been around for some time,” noted attorney Amy Mason Saharia during a presentation of the case to the Legal Institute. Four of its nine judges expressed an interest in this reading, “and there is a possibility that the court will adopt this doctrine,” says Me Saharia.
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Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper believes such a closure “could fundamentally transform American democracy,” which has already been weakened by former President Donald Trump’s attempts to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election, wrote in one column published by the New York Times. The governor accused his state’s elected Republicans of “rigging the election process for political gain” and was pleased that the local judiciary was able to block their efforts.
One of those fights is at the heart of the Supreme Court case. With the 2020 census, which recorded an increase in North Carolina’s population, the state gained an additional seat in the House of Representatives. Its parliamentarians then redrawn the contours of the constituencies. In February, her card was struck down by the state Supreme Court, which ruled that it favored the Republican Party by dumping Democratic voters in certain counties to dilute their votes elsewhere. A second card didn’t seem fairer, so the local high court appointed an independent expert to deal with it.
This extreme interpretation of the constitution would help local elected officials disenfranchise some voters, divide constituencies at their discretion, and potentially sabotage election results. »
Sophia Lin Lakin, ACLU
North Carolina lawmakers then turned to the US Supreme Court, accusing the local judiciary of usurping its role. Her sages refused to intervene urgently, and the expert’s map served well in November’s midterm elections, which won seven representatives from each party. But the court wanted to deal with the substantive issue.
Ahead of the hearing, President Joe Biden’s administration, the Democratic state and senators, law professors and all major civil rights associations (ACLU, NAACP, ADL, HRW) wrote to the court to dissuade them from adopting the new theory. “This extremist interpretation of the constitution would help local elected officials disenfranchise some voters, divide up constituencies as they see fit, and potentially sabotage the outcome of the election,” Sophia Lin Lakin told ACLU reporters.
Our political system would suffer greatly if the slaughter of constituencies were left out of control. »
Former Republican Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger
The Republican Party deemed this alarming speech “absurd”. He reasoned that North Carolina’s elected officials “will not give carte blanche to state legislatures” whose work can always be challenged in federal courts, he pleaded in an argument sent to the Supreme Court. But in the conservative ranks, the theory is not unanimous. “Our political system would suffer greatly if the slaughter of constituencies got out of control,” said former California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The court must make its decision before June 30.