I'm The Independent State Legislature Theory, And I'm Here To F*ck Up American Democracy In 2024!

The Supreme Court will hear a case about a radical legal theory that could render our democracy deader than John Calhoun.

Hi there, folks! I’m a radical constitutional proposition called the independent state legislature theory, and I am the instrument the conservatives on the Supreme Court just announced they will use to run a train on American democracy!

Man, this is exciting! The Supreme Court hasn’t even toweled off from all the democracy-fucking it did this term, and it’s already announcing all the ways it plans to fuck democracy next term, after it has rested and hydrated and guzzled a metric fuck-ton of those 5-Hour Energy Drinks that are made up mostly of corn syrup and amphetamines.

So how will they do it? What is the instrument by which the half-dozen wingnuts currently turning the Supreme Court building into the Legion of Doom headquarters will hurry along America’s descent into a one-party banana republic? What is the case that Thomas and Alito and the others plan to reach around and tickle with their hefty, uh, intellects?

Allow me to introduce you to  Moore v. Harper , from that zoo full of brainless inbred gerbils known as the state of North Carolina.

 Moore is a case about congressional redistricting. Essentially, the majority-Democrat state Supreme Court in North Carolina told the majority-Republican state Legislature that the heavily gerrymandered map of congressional districts it drew as part of its once-a-decade redistricting violated the state constitution’s guarantee of equal representation. The court then ordered the Legislature to start over, and not to come back until it had drawn some fairer maps that ensured North Carolina will be a two-party state with obnoxious college basketball rivalries instead of a one-party state with obnoxious college basketball rivalries.

Now, this is where I come in. The Republicans claim that this order from the court infringes on the state legislature’s “ sole plenary power ” for drawing congressional districts. Or for doing anything, really. The idea is to render a possibly Democrat-led institution like the North Carolina State Supreme Court as superfluous in election cases as clothing at an orgy. To allow the Republican-led Legislature to say to the court, “ What would you say you do here ?”

That’s a rhetorical question. Under me, the answer is “nothing”! A state court would not have the authority to review electoral laws for such niceties as whether they are "legal." You’ve heard of checks and balances, the concept so fundamental to the three-branch structure of American government that removing it would upend 200-plus years of the nation’s history? Say goodbye to that crap.

You can see the appeal for wingnuts who view democracy as more of a suggestion instead of the binding way we have up until now agreed to order American democracy.

In fact, I’m all the rage among conservative legal “minds” who “think” that any election won by a Democrat was probably tainted by stuffed ballot boxes or communist gremlins using digital blenders to mess with voting machines, or something. And that is where I’ll come in handy in the future. Particularly in presidential elections from now until eternity or an asteroid strike, whatever comes first.

In fact, let's look at how Republicans could use me to fuck up presidential elections six ways from Sunday. Let’s say you live in a state where a majority of voters stupidly vote for Democratic presidential nominee Rick Astley in 2024. (Yeah he’s British, but go with it.) Well, the Republicans who hold a majority in that state’s legislature could claim with zero evidence that the election was rife with fraud. Then they could decide that the only way to remedy this imaginary injustice is to replace the Democrat’s electors with a slate of presidential electors representing Republican nominee Oog the pre-vocal Neanderthal. Oog’s electors get certified and sent to cast their Electoral College votes for Oog instead of Mr. Never Gonna Give You Up, and presto! The crisis of a Democrat winning a presidential election fair and square has been averted!

This is what the donut-brained chaos monkeys in Donald Trump’s orbit were trying to do in the wake of the 2020 election. It didn’t work for a variety of reasons. Now Republicans want SCOTUS to endorse the independent state legislature theory before 2024 to help pull off this scam then, so that in 2025 America can be distracted by the sight of President Oog eviscerating a mastodon carcass on the South Lawn of the White House while a Republican-led Congress sells the population to Starbucks for use as slave labor in the latte mines.

See you next year!

[ Washington Post ]

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