Politico: “Conservative attorneys hope to advance a legal idea in front of the Supreme Court on Wednesday that would give state legislatures more control over elections — which could have a dramatic impact on everything from who gets elected to Congress to what rules voters must follow to cast their ballots in 2024.
But it is unclear if the court will embrace the “independent state legislature” theory underpinning the case — and it will likely come down to divisions within the court’s conservative majority when they hear arguments in Moore v. Harper.
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The case stems from a fight over North Carolina’s redistricting maps, but the arguments involved could affect state rules on things like voter ID, mail voting and vote-counting processes. The North Carolina state Supreme Court threw out new political maps drawn by the GOP-controlled legislature on the grounds that they were an illegal partisan gerrymander, and a court-drawn map ultimately replaced the one enacted by the lawmakers.
Republican legislative leaders sought to block that new map at the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Elections Clause in the U.S. Constitution leaves little room — or no room at all, in the most expansive version of the “independent state legislature” theory — for state courts to weigh in on laws that govern congressional elections.
The theory was once on the fringes of election law discourse, but it has now gained significant traction among conservative election lawyers. And if it’s endorsed by the nation’s high court, it would mean a dramatic shift of the jurisprudence around election law, rolling back state judicial oversight and giving state legislatures near-unchecked power to set the rules, absent action from the federal government.”