Thursday, October 03, 2002

CalPundit says:



The Republicans are arguing that the Constitution gives legislatures — not courts — the right to set rules for congressional elections. This may sound similar to part of the Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore, but it's not. There, the court questioned whether the Florida Supreme Court had ruled based on the state constitution rather than state law. The theory behind this was that in presidential elections the constitution specifically empowers state legislatures to set election rules, bypassing state constitutions entirely, so that any court ruling should be based solely on interpretation of state law, not on whether state law conflicts with the state constitution.


However, the Supreme Court specifically did not say that courts can't arbitrate election disputes — and how could they? Who else could arbitrate election disputes, after all?


The New Jersey decision gave no hint of its actual reasoning, but there's no reason to think it was based on any state constitutional grounds. CalPundit's prediction: the Supreme Court, affirming its usual stance of declining to overrule state courts in purely state matters — and with a sigh of relief — won't even hear the case.


Okay. But I *still* don't get how anyone can take this "the constitution specifically empowers state legislatures to set election rules, bypassing state constitutions entirely" stuff seriously. I don't understand how one can divorce the state constitution established legislature from the legislature itself.