On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state legislatures are not the only state government entities that can write or revise election laws that affect congressional elections. The decision is by Justice Ginsburg and is 5-4. The case is Arizona State Legislature v Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, 13-1314.
The decision preserves the ability of ballot access activists to qualify initiatives for the ballot that improve ballot access laws. States with the initiative process for state laws and/or state constitutional changes are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Illinois has a procedure that, in practice, is unworkable.
If the decision had gone the other way, the current initiative in Maine to use instant runoff voting for congressional elections would have been threatened, and prior initiatives easing ballot access laws, which have passed in Florida and Massachusetts, might have been at risk. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
Theres no way this can help us in Georgia?
Georgia doesn’t have the initiative, nor does Alabama nor North Carolina.
Tough loss. It is a pretty narrow decision in the grand scheme. States still cannot use executive agencies to do it. To the extent minor parties run into abuse executives, like Nader did in Oregon back in 2004 and Gary Johnson did in Michigan in 2012, they can still argue that the executive cannot regulate federal elections.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. in ALL regimes before it is too late.
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The P.R. regimes may have to liberate the non-initiative gerrymander regimes the very hard way —
since SCOTUS is brain dead about minority rule gerrymander math —
1/2 or less votes x 1/2 pack/crack gerrymander districts = 1/4 or less indirectly CONTROL each State.
The Independent Redistricting Commission in Arizona is not part of the legislature nor the judiciary.
In Texas, if the legislature fails to perform legislative redistricting, redistricting is performed by the Legislative Redistricting Board, comprised of 5 members: The Lieutenant Governor; Speaker of House; Attorney General; Comptroller; and Land Commissioner. Even if we count the Lieutenant Governor as part of the legislative branch, the executive branch comprises a majority of the board.
Based on the Arizona decision, ‘Brunner’ was too broadly written. The issue should have been whether the Ohio Constitution or legislature had authorized the Secretary of State to promulgate regulations prescribing the manner of federal elections in certain cases, not that it could not have done so. A federal court was incompetent to answer that question.
I have to say, it’s hilarious to see John Roberts complain that they reinterpreted “the legislature” to mean “the people”, considering his very own major reinterpretation just a few days earlier.