Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Final Nail in the Coffin from the Supreme Court



The Supreme Court's final opinion* this term concerned Voting Rights and how much the states can or cannot do to screw over Americans right to representation by vote.

In particular, the they did two things.

1) They moved a terrifying case forward. The question is "who is in charge of state's votes?" The answer seems obvious, or at least it always has been to date. The State Supreme Court and the Voting Rights Act. Well, they overturned the Voting Rights Act covering states that had discriminated in the past in 2013.**

Now they are reviewing if State Supreme Courts can intervene at all in the way states run elections. The defendants are proposing that only State Assemblies can make the rules on voting. 

For example, if the states decide to ignore the will of the voters, they can send any delegation they want to the electoral college. This actually almost happened in Arizona in 2020.

2) In a telegraphing move, the Supreme Court overruled a State Supreme Court ruling and put an unfair map BACK into place. Yes, this has never happened before.


This map means that a 50/50 vote would lead to 10 Republicans in the House and 4 Democrats. Instead of a 7 - 7 or 8 - 6 split of members per party.

Notes:

*It was not actually an "opinion". It was the use of the Shadow Docket to overturn a NC State Supreme Court Decision until after next session's start in October. But, by overturning it until the next session, they overruled the state of North Carolina's Supreme Court and required the gerrymandered map to be used. This was the same Shadow Docket type punt that is really a decision that they made in the Texas Abortion Case before they overturned Roe.

** The result was arrived at by saying the VRA law had worked, so it was time to overturn it. The assumption was that states learned to do right. After it was overturned over 100 discriminatory laws were passed in those states. So yeah, that was a fucked decision about to get worse.

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