There's more than one way for SCOTUS to screw democracy

“Extremist justices are aiming their next dagger at the heart of the entire democratic enterprise,” says law professor Lawrence Tribe. As Eliza Sweren-Becker of the Brennan Center for Justice explains, ISLT is a fringe legal theory that “state legislatures near absolute power over the laws governing elections for federal office — leaving state courts, state constitutions, state governors and other state entities powerless to stop.” Ring a bell? More than gerrymandering The Brennan Center’s Ethan Herenstein and Thomas Wolf summarize what we know for sure: “state constitutional bans on gerrymandering in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and other states could die, as could independent redistricting commissions in Arizona, California, Michigan and other states. Law professors Leah Litman, Kate Shaw and Carolyn Shapiro write that “even if the court embraces the revanchist ISLT, that would not permit state legislatures to throw out votes already cast to appoint presidential electors of their choosing.” As Herenstein put it to me: “ISLT is not a license to coup.” But there’s a related and more subtle threat, almost as destructive. Rick Hasen suggests that GOP-controlled legislatures could try to use any normal election rule issued by an administrator or state court as pretext to argue that the whole presidential election was not conducted in the way that the legislature directed, and therefore, that the legislature would be empowered to step in and pick the slate of presidential Electors.