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Supreme Court Rejects Right-Wing ‘Theory’ That Would Have Upended American Elections
(talkingpointsmemo.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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could someone tl;dr what exactly this was, and what it would do?
I could be wrong, but I don't think the decision would have extended to the actual voting rights. At least directly.
Like they wouldn't be able to make a law saying that black people can't vote; after all, it's only "time, places and manner", which in no way includes who. But they could make it much, much harder for specific groups of people to vote.
The nightmare scenario was that a highly gerrymandered state legislature could simply ignore the voice of its voters and direct its electors in the Electoral College to vote for a Republican regardless. It is a plausible textualist reading of the Constitution, though obviously very counter to actual practice.
SCOTUS just soundly rejected an idea called "independent state legislature theory" in a case called Moore v. Harper. Here's a good summary of the implications if it had been upheld:
"Proponents of the independent state legislature theory reject this traditional reading, insisting that these clauses give state legislatures exclusive and near-absolute power to regulate federal elections. The result? When it comes to federal elections, legislators would be free to violate the state constitution and state courts couldn’t stop them."
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/independent-state-legislature-theory-explained