Thursday, June 27, 2019

Supremes encourage election rigging

Allowing corporations to engage in elections, and now allowing gerrymandering.
A deeply divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that federal courts may not intervene to block even the most partisan election maps drawn by state lawmakers, a decision that allows such gerrymandering to continue unabated.

The 5-4 opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the court's other conservatives said partisan election maps drawn by North Carolina Republicans and Maryland Democrats are constitutional despite their one-sided nature.

[...]

[C]hief justice [John Roberts] said the challengers from North Carolina and Maryland asked for “an unprecedented expansion of judicial power” that would have broad consequences. “There will be no end to the litigation,” he said.

Associate Justice Elena Kagan decried the ruling on behalf of the court's four liberals. "Of all the times to abandon the court's duty to declare the law, this was not the one," she said. "The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government."

[...]

In relatively "purple" North Carolina, where President Barack Obama won in 2008 but lost in 2012, Republicans drew themselves a 10-3 advantage in Congress. In more liberal Maryland, Democrats gave their party a disproportionate, 7-1 majority.

The court had declined to intervene in similar cases five times before, most recently last year, when the justices refused to decide partisan gerrymandering challenges in Wisconsin and Maryland.

[...]

For the past decade, Democrats have been the bigger losers in gerrymandering fights. Republicans seized power in many states in the 2010 midterm elections, giving them control over the redistricting process. Democrats are at a disadvantage entering the 2020 elections, which will determine who draws the next decade's state and congressional lines in most states.

  USA Today

Because Republicans can't win if they don't cheat.





...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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