Africa-Press – Lesotho. January 6, 2021, marked a sea change in American democracy. On that morning, if someone had proclaimed that America’s Democracy, the oldest in the world, was the strongest and unassailable, it would have been difficult to hear a dissent.
By that afternoon, a sitting President, in thinly couched language, tried to incite a mob to pressure Vice President Pence and Republican Senators to disregard the Constitution and reject the lawfully appointed electors in the just completed election of November 2020.
To be sure, since just after the election, there had been a series of challenges to the election results by Trump and his supporters in the courts, and administrative bodies.
More than 60 lawsuits were dismissed and most described as frivolous. Courts sanctioned Trump and the lawyers who took up his cause for filing baseless claims.
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The rumblings from Trump’s discordant and dissonant griping continue. As a result, a sizable cohort of Trump’s supporters continue to question the 2020 results.
What is even more troubling than the mob mentality of Trump’s gullible MAGA (Make America Great Again) crowd, are the susurrations of the Republican legislators, at the state and federal levels who continue to champion the cause of this seditionist former president.
The Elections Clause of the U. S. Constitution states: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.
” Congress has the power to change regulations adopted by a state legislature except as to the place of choosing Senators.
Frustrated by their inability to overturn Joe Biden’s resounding victory in the 2020 election, Republicans around the country latched on to the theory that the Elections Clause gives exclusive authority to state legislatures to set the rules for federal elections.
This assumes that Congress does not change the state rules as the Clause authorizes it to do. With a closely divided Congress, it would be impossible for Democrats to do that.
Republicans saw this as their path to circumventing the popular vote and manipulating the selection of electors as a way of helping Donald Trump or another Republican craft a “victory” in 2024 and elections beyond.
North Carolina’s legislature, acting under authority of the Elections Clause, drew a Congressional map in an obvious exercise of gerrymandering, to favour Republicans.
The North Carolina Supreme Court eventually ruled that the partisan map violated the state Constitution. The U. S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has held that partisan gerrymandering presents a political question that the courts cannot resolve, i.
e. , that such questions are nonjusticiable. Thus, except when prohibited factors such as race, national origin, or creed, are used to deny fair representation by crafting gerrymandered districts, the federal courts will not interfere.
But “simply because the Supreme Court has concluded partisan gerrymandering claims are nonjusticiable in federal courts,” the North Carolina Supreme Court explained, “it does not follow that they are nonjusticiable in North Carolina courts.
” The State Supreme Court also rejected the argument raised by Republicans, that the Elections Clause in the Federal Constitution vests exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to draw congressional maps. This theory, they argued, precludes any oversight or review of the state legislature’s actions, even by the courts of the state.
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