The Supreme Court helped save the country from Trumpism

The U.S. Constitution and the 2020 Election: The Controversy of Corrupt Elections in the 21st Century and the Implications It Had to Have

“Although the Elections Clause does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law, federal courts must not abandon their duty to exercise judicial review,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion. “This Court has an obligation to ensure that state court interpretations of state law do not evade federal law. States can not sidestep the takings clause if they try to get rid of traditional property interests. State courts may not go against their ordinary bounds of judicial review in cases involving the Elections Clause if they use a test that is not adopted by the Court.

In a practical sense, Tuesday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision will not make a difference in North Carolina, where Republicans retook control of the state Supreme Court after the 2022 election and the new GOP majority has since reversed a prior court’s ruling that redrawn congressional maps violated the state constitution with an extreme partisan gerrymander. That means that the legislature’s map will likely return in some form for the 2024 election with little likelihood of change for the rest of the decade.

At issue in the case was Article 1 of in the U.S. Constitution, which says that the “Times, places and manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”

An array of election law experts, scholars, judges and the Conference of State Chief Justices were against the independent state legislature theory in the Supreme Court.

The disparate elements of the conspiracy theory varied from truly wild claims about voting machines being manipulated and Italian satellites somehow altering the outcome to more respectable arguments that pandemic-induced changes in voting procedures were both unconstitutional and disproportionately benefited Democrats. For example, in one of the most important cases filed during the 2020 election season, the Pennsylvania Republican Party argued that changes in voting procedures mandated by the State Supreme Court violated the Constitution by overriding the will of the Pennsylvania legislature.

First, a bit of background. The attempt to steal the 2020 election depended on two key arguments. The first, the conspiracy theory, was that the election was fundamentally flawed; the second, the coup theory, was that the Constitution provided a remedy that would enable Donald Trump to take office.