Tag: federal elections
A Radical Idea for Fixing Congress: Proportional Representation
For most Americans, voting for a member of Congress is one of their simplest civic duties. Every two years, they pick the candidate they like best—usually the same one they chose last time—and whoever gets the most votes will represent them and a few hundred thousand of their neighbors in the House of Representatives. In nearly every case, the winner is a Republican or Democrat, and whichever party captures the most seats secures a governing majority.
That basic
The Court Is Likely to Reject the Independent State Legislature Theory
It is often difficult, if not impossible, to tell what the Supreme Court is thinking about a case from the questions the justices ask counsel. But the argument in Moore v. Harper, heard by the Court in early December, was different. By the end, it was clear the Supreme Court has no appetite for the independent state legislature theory—and that offers hope for the future of America’s democracy.
The theory—that state legislatures have the unreviewable power to set
Moore v. Harper Could Derail America’s Democracy
In just a few days, on December 7, the Supreme Court will consider a case that could have dire implications for American democracy, Moore v. Harper.
Moore concerns the “independent state legislature” theory: the idea that the Constitution grants state legislatures some level of special authority in administering federal elections that may not be constrained by state courts or perhaps even state constitutions. The idea is, to put it mildly, contested. The conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig, who recently
How Hitler’s Enablers Undid Democracy in Germany
The short-lived Weimar Republic—which spanned the years after Germany’s defeat in World War I until 1933, when Hitler came to power—has become a paradigmatic example of democratic collapse. That has brought it renewed attention at this moment in America, when democracy is under threat from illiberal, would-be-authoritarian forces. We should rightly be suspicious of facile comparisons, especially the casual use of fascism as an imprecise epithet, yet Weimar’s fate provides us with some instructive parallels and important warning signals.
There Is Not an ‘Independent State Legislature’
The Supreme Court will decide before next summer the most important case for American democracy in the almost two and a half centuries since America’s founding.
In Moore v. Harper, the Court will finally resolve whether there is a doctrine of constitutional interpretation known as the “independent state legislature.” If the Court concludes that there is such a doctrine, it would confer on state legislatures plenary, exclusive, and judicially unreviewable power both to redraw congressional districts for federal elections
What the Supreme Court’s Vaccine-Mandate Case Is Really About
Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a pair of cases challenging President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates in two contexts: private workplaces with more than 100 employees and health-care facilities that participate in Medicare and Medicaid.
Ostensibly, these cases are before the Court to resolve whether a president can even temporarily require vaccine and testing protocols during a pandemic to protect public health. But the questions the Court may examine are much more sweeping, with enormous implications for
How Democrats Are Fighting to Save Voting Rights
There is a gnawing anxiety among voting-rights advocates that even if Democrats find a way to roll back the Senate filibuster and pass new federal legislation safeguarding access to the ballot, the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court might still strike it down.
Last week’s Supreme Court ruling, in which the six Republican-appointed justices outvoted the three appointed by Democrats to uphold two Arizona laws that critics called racially discriminatory, has elevated that concern to a new height. It is