Cynthia Lawton-Singer: Checks and balances at stake in SCOTUS case

Published: 01-23-2023 5:22 PM

The Moore v. Harper case before the Supreme Court could protect or destroy checks and balances. I want my daughter and her generation to come into their adulthood in a country where their votes cannot be extinguished by extremist state legislatures with unchecked power over our elections.

On Dec. 7, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Moore v. Harper case. This case considers the merit, or lack of merit, to the “independent state legislature theory” (ISLT). All reputable constitutional scholars view ISLT as unlawful and dangerous. In this theory, state legislatures have constitutional authority to pass resolutions pertaining to the conduct of federal elections without oversight from their state courts or the executive branch officers of the state. This would allow highly gerrymandered states, with state legislatures already not representative of many of their people, to make decisions about the rules and outcomes of elections unchecked by their state judicial and executive branches.

If the current extremist SCOTUS majority decides to legitimize ISLT, the foundational concept of “checks and balances” in the Constitution will be completely undermined. These checks provide each branch at every level of government with the means to limit the reach and power of government. With ISLT as the law of the land, state legislatures will have no checks by the other branches when it comes to federal elections. Partisanship, not democracy will rule. Currently, checks and balances, including court review for constitutionality, do apply to the congressional power to write election regulation. If SCOTUS rules that checks and balances do not apply to state legislatures it would be a distortion of the framers’ intent. Governors and secretaries of state also currently have a role setting the elections up to run smoothly and in certification of election results. When state legislatures take this power unto themselves, unchecked, democracy dies in the United States of America.

Cynthia Lawton-Singer

Conway

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