The Supreme Court declines to upend American election law
A fringe theory gets a chilly reception from the justices
IN THE RUN-UP to the 2020 presidential election—and in its fraught denouement—supporters of Donald Trump turned to a novel theory to boost their candidate’s chances of staying in the White House. Citing the “independent state legislature” theory, they sought to block state-court rulings in Pennsylvania and elsewhere that made voting easier during the covid-19 pandemic by, for instance, extending deadlines for mail-in ballots. And after election day, legal advisers drew on the notion in cooking up a radical scheme to replace electors in states won by Joe Biden with “alternative” slates for Mr Trump.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “A victory for democracy”
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