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      How the Louisiana Democrats Lost the House Legislature

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      Even before the Nov. 18 election, some liberals are pushing the state party to confront its internal divisions and paltry fund-raising.Before a single ballot was cast, Louisiana Democrats knew they couldn’t win control of the State Legislature this year. It was mathematically impossible, because a lack of candidates meant they were not even contesting the majority of districts.Their best hope for political success rested with Shawn Wilson, a former state transportation secretary, and the expectation he would force a runoff against Jeff Landry, the state’s hard-line Republican attorney general, in an open primary for governor.At least, Democrats reasoned, Mr. Wilson would make it a little harder for the overwhelmingly favored Republican to flip control of the governor’s mansion in a region increasingly dominated by conservatives.But when Mr. Landry won a majority of the primary vote in October, eliminating the need for a runoff, the results instead laid bare the bleak conditions of a state Democratic Party decimated by internal divisions, paltry fund-raising totals and a disenchanted voter base.“If my defeat brings about change and organization, so be it because it’s worthy of that — it deserves that kind of change,” Mr. Wilson said in an interview. “Our citizens deserve better than what we’re getting.”Now just a handful of political offices and legislative seats are undecided as early voting for runoff elections begins Friday. Republicans are barreling toward uniting a conservative government for the first time in eight years, led by Mr. Landry, who has defended the state’s strict abortion ban, questioned the results of the 2020 election and battled environmental regulation.Shawn Wilson, the Democratic candidate for governor, was critical of the support he received from the state party. “Our citizens deserve better than what we’re getting,” he said.Emily Kask for The New York TimesIt is not the first time in recent years that Democrats have confronted the party’s dwindling influence in the South: Senator Mary L. Landrieu’s defeat in 2014 marked the end of a 138-year streak of at least one Democrat representing the state in the U.S. Senate. But even before the Nov. 18 election, some liberals are pushing the state party to consider deeper systemic changes ahead of high-stakes presidential and congressional elections.Just over 36 percent of the electorate voted, and one analysis estimated that 17 percent of Black voters chose a Republican candidate in the governor primary, underscoring the extent of apathy and discontent among the voters who had rallied twice behind Gov. John Bel Edwards, a conservative Democrat limited to two terms.John Couvillon, a longtime Republican pollster who analyzed precincts with at least 70 percent of registered Black voters, said the combination of some Black voters turning away from the Democratic candidate, the low turnout and a decline in registered Democrats made for “a whole new ballgame.”Many Democrats acknowledged they had faced long odds in the governor’s race, given that Louisiana has become increasingly conservative and is historically prone to flip-flopping control of its highest post between parties. A combination of gerrymandering and increased polarization has also led to several centrists to either lose their political posts or leave the Democratic Party altogether.Mr. Wilson, who scrambled to introduce himself to voters, also faced different challenges than Mr. Edwards: He would have been the first Black candidate elected statewide in 150 years, in a state that nearly elected a former Ku Klux Klan leader as governor in the 1990s.Mr. Edwards, who opposes allowing access to abortion, also ran long before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and abortion rights became an issue that galvanized the Democratic base.But some also wondered if the air of inevitability surrounding Mr. Landry’s campaign led some Democratic allies to preemptively move to make inroads with the next governor. Others questioned why top Democrats had not done more to shore up support for obvious successors to Mr. Edwards, knowing that he was unable to seek a third term.“Democrats just really aren’t competing,” said Trey Mustian, who works with the Jefferson Parish Democratic Executive Committee. “The state party has a great responsibility going out and recruiting candidates, and they just don’t do a good job of that.”He added, “We’ve just got to really rehabilitate and rebuild.”Several Democrats have focused much of their ire on the state party chair, Katie Bernhardt, calling on her to resign.As attorney general, Mr. Landry defended the state’s harsh abortion ban, questioned the results of the 2020 election and battled environmental regulation.Emily Kask for The New York TimesMs. Bernhardt inherited an already downtrodden party, taking over after Governor Edwards initially endorsed another candidate and replacing a previous chair who pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud after siphoning funds away from the party.But anger began to fester after she released an ad that appeared to tease a run for governor, a move that some Democrats felt stymied Mr. Wilson’s introduction to the race and prioritized her personal political brand over that of the party.“It’s pretty daunting for us, and it’s already hard enough,” said Dustin Granger, a candidate for state treasurer who had the best Democratic performance by garnering just a third of the vote. He called on Ms. Bernhardt to resign in a statement, saying the party could not “let self interests at the top continue to drag us down.”The internal drama, some said, further spooked donors from committing to the party.Mr. Wilson described his interactions with the state party as “We need you to raise money, Shawn.” His campaign raised “right at $300,000,” he said.“And,” he added, “to this day, I’m still waiting on a mailer — a ballot from the state Democratic Party — in spite of the fact that we played by the rules, we followed the law, we made investments.”Mr. Wilson’s defeat has led several Democrats to call for the state party chair, Katie Bernhardt, to resign or for an overhaul of the party infrastructure and approach.Emily Kask for The New York TimesAnother division emerged when Mr. Edwards and other top Democrats backed a challenger to Mandie Landry, a liberal state representative who had tussled with party leaders, in a safe New Orleans seat. (Ms. Landry has taken great pains to emphasize that she and the governor-elect are not related.)“There’s a big battle still — do they go more moderate to get more rural white moderates back, or do they go full city progressive to energize people?” said Ms. Landry, who won her race. “And it seems like what they’ve been doing for a while is trying to get the white moderates or white conservatives back, and I think that’s stupid.”Ms. Bernhardt and her allies have largely avoided directly responding to the calls for her resignation, choosing to focus on the remaining races. Those include Mr. Granger’s bid for treasurer and two Democratic women running for attorney general and secretary of state.“Division leads to defeat,” Ms. Bernhardt, who did not respond to requests for an interview, wrote in an opinion piece published after the primaries. “Unfortunately, some are looking to stoke divisions to advance their political agenda. This divisive rhetoric is untimely and counterproductive.”But without Mr. Edwards in place to wield his veto pen, there appears little Democrats can do to advance their own agenda in the Legislature or push back against Republican policies.“When resources are not garnered, are not gathered and invested, you cannot be surprised if you don’t have that sort of backbone to be able to lean on,” said Stephen Handwerk, a former executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party.And in recent days, as most Americans learned about Representative Mike Johnson, the hard-line Louisiana Republican newly elected as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, several local Democrats grimly noted one biographical detail: Mr. Johnson ran unopposed in 2022. More

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      Election Day Guide: Governor Races, Abortion Access and More

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      Two governorships are at stake in the South, while Ohio voters will decide whether to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution.Election Day is nearly here, and while off-year political races receive a fraction of the attention compared with presidential elections, some of Tuesday’s contests will be intensely watched.At stake are two southern governorships, control of the Virginia General Assembly and abortion access in Ohio. National Democrats and Republicans, seeking to build momentum moving toward next November, will be eyeing those results for signals about 2024.Here are the major contests voters will decide on Tuesday and a key ballot question:Governor of KentuckyGov. Andy Beshear, left, a Democrat, is facing Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s Republican attorney general, in his campaign for re-election as governor.Pool photo by Kentucky Educational TelevisionGov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, is seeking to again defy convention in deep-red Kentucky, a state carried handily by Donald J. Trump in 2020.He is facing Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s attorney general, who was propelled to victory by an early endorsement from Mr. Trump in a competitive Republican primary in May.In 2019, Mr. Cameron became the first Black person to be elected as Kentucky’s attorney general, an office previously held by Mr. Beshear. He drew attention in 2020 when he announced that a grand jury did not indict two Louisville officers who shot Breonna Taylor.In the 2019 governor’s race, Mr. Beshear ousted Matt Bevin, a Trump-backed Republican, by fewer than 6,000 votes. This year, he enters the race with a strong job approval rating. He is seeking to replicate a political feat of his father, Steve Beshear, who was also Kentucky governor and was elected to two terms.Governor of Mississippi Brandon Presley, a public service commissioner who is related to Elvis Presley, wants to be the state’s first Democratic governor in two decades.Emily Kask for The New York TimesGov. Tate Reeves, a Republican in his first term, has some of the lowest job approval numbers of the nation’s governors.Rogelio V. Solis/Associated PressIt has been two decades since Mississippi had a Democrat as governor. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican in his first term, is seeking to avoid becoming the one who ends that streak.But his job approval numbers are among the lowest of the nation’s governors, which has emboldened his Democratic challenger, Brandon Presley, a public service commissioner with a famous last name: His second cousin, once removed, was Elvis Presley.Mr. Presley has attacked Mr. Reeves over a welfare scandal exposed last year by Mississippi Today, which found that millions in federal funds were misspent. Mr. Reeves, who was the lieutenant governor during the years the scandal unfolded, has denied any wrongdoing, but the issue has been a focal point of the contest.Abortion access in OhioAs states continue to reckon with the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court last year, Ohio has become the latest front in the fight over access to abortion.Reproductive rights advocates succeeded in placing a proposed amendment on the November ballot that would enshrine the right to abortion access into the state constitution. Its supporters have sought to fill the void that was created by the Roe decision.Anti-abortion groups have mounted a sweeping campaign to stop the measure. One effort, a proposal to raise the threshold required for passing a constitutional amendment, was rejected by voters this summer.Virginia legislatureIn just two states won by President Biden in 2020, Republicans have a power monopoly — and in Virginia, they are aiming to secure a third. The others are Georgia and New Hampshire.Democrats narrowly control the Virginia Senate, where all 40 seats are up for grabs in the election. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House of Delegates, which is also being contested.The outcome of the election is being viewed as a potential reflection of the clout of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican with national ambitions.Philadelphia mayorAn open-seat race for mayor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s foremost Democratic bastion, is down to two former City Council members: Cherelle Parker, a Democrat, and David Oh, a Republican.The advantage for Ms. Parker appears to be an overwhelming one in the city, which has not elected a Republican as mayor since 1947.It has also been two decades since Philadelphia, the nation’s sixth most populous city, had a somewhat competitive mayoral race. More

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      Supreme Court Delays Efforts to Redraw Louisiana Voting Map

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      The Louisiana dispute is one of several voting rights cases churning through the courts that challenge a state’s congressional map.The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower-court ruling that delays an effort to redraw Louisiana’s congressional map, prolonging a bitter clash over the representation of Black voters in the state.The order temporarily leaves in place a Republican-drawn map that a federal judge had said diluted the power of Black voters while an appeal moves through the lower courts.Civil rights groups had sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court abruptly canceled a scheduled hearing aimed at drafting a new map for Louisiana. That map was to include two districts in which Black voters represent a large enough share of the population to have the opportunity to select a candidate. The appeals court said that the state legislature should have more time to redraw its own map before a lower court stepped in.The Supreme Court’s order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications, and there were no public dissents.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a brief concurring opinion, emphasized that Louisiana should resolve the dispute in time for the 2024 election.In asking the Supreme Court to intervene, the plaintiffs had argued that delays in the case could complicate efforts to instate a new map by the next election, leaving the state with a version that lumps Black voters from different parts of the state into one voting district, diluting their power.By the time the Supreme Court issued its order on Thursday, a hearing date had passed. Another has been set for February.The consolidated cases, Galmon v. Ardoin and Robinson v. Ardoin, are part of a larger fight over redistricting. State lawmakers in the South have contested orders to refashion congressional maps and establish additional districts to bolster Black representation. The outcomes could help tilt control of the House, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority.Weeks earlier, the court refused a similar request by Alabama, which had asked the justices to reinstate a map with only one majority-Black district. A lower court had found that Republican lawmakers blatantly disregarded its order to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”At issue in Louisiana is a voting map passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature in the winter of 2022. The map carved the state into six districts, with only one majority-Black district, which joined Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the state’s two largest cities. About a third of the population in the state is Black.The case has reached the Supreme Court before.A coalition that included the N.A.A.C.P. Louisiana State Conference, the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice and Louisiana voters sued state officials and said the map unfairly weakened the power of Black voters.A district court, siding with the plaintiffs, temporarily blocked Louisiana from using its map in any upcoming elections. A new map, it said, should include an additional district where Black voters could choose a representative. The court gave the Legislature until June 20, 2022, to sign off on a redrawn map.Louisiana immediately appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, and a three-judge panel unanimously denied the request. The state then asked the Supreme Court to intervene.The Supreme Court paused the case until it ruled in the Alabama case, Allen v. Milligan, which concerned similar questions. That essentially allowed the Republican-drawn map in Louisiana to go into effect during the 2022 election.The court lifted the pause in June after a majority of the justices, in a surprise decision, found Alabama’s map had unfairly undercut the power of Black voters. The justices said the appeals court should review the case before the 2024 elections. More

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      The Real Danger in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Independent Run

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      Most of the concern over the independent presidential campaigns of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and the No Labels party has focused on the risk that they could draw votes away from President Biden and throw the 2024 election to Donald Trump. That’s understandable, given what happened in 2000 and 2016.But there is another reason to fear these candidacies, and it’s right there in the Constitution: a contingent election decided by the House of Representatives, arguably the worst part of the Electoral College system.Ask people who don’t like the Electoral College — that’s roughly two-thirds of Americans — and they will point to its occasional habit of awarding the presidency to the candidate who comes in second in the popular vote. This fundamental violation of majority rule has happened five times — in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. It nearly happened in 2020 and threatens to do so again in 2024.Don’t get me wrong: The wrong-winner scenario is unequivocally bad. Mr. Trump once called it “a disaster for a democracy,” before it delivered him to the White House. Yet it is not the most democratically offensive feature of the Electoral College. Few Americans are aware that under the Constitution, a candidate could lose the popular vote and the Electoral College and still become president. In fact, it’s already happened.How? By taking the election completely away from the people and giving it to the House of Representatives. This may sound far-fetched, but it is alarmingly plausible at a moment when the major-party candidates are relatively unpopular. No Labels (which is also the No Candidate party at the moment) seems to think that a contingent election is an entirely viable path to the White House — which is true, since it is virtually impossible to imagine any third-party candidate winning the old-fashioned way. But the group seems willfully oblivious to the chaos and destabilization that contingent elections provoked in the past and undoubtedly would again, especially in such a tense and polarized political climate. It is, as the best-selling author James Michener put it in a 1969 book on the topic, “a time bomb lodged near the heart of the nation.”The bomb goes off if an independent candidate like Mr. Kennedy manages to pick up a few electoral votes and prevents either of the two main candidates from winning an outright majority of electors (at least 270 out of 538). In that case, the American people no longer have a say in the biggest election in the land. Instead, under the 12th Amendment, the top three electoral vote getters advance to a second round, in which the House of Representatives “shall choose immediately, by ballot, the president. But” — and rarely in the history of democracy has a “but” been asked to do so much — “in choosing the president, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.”Those votes in the past were decided by what a majority of a state’s delegation wanted, although the House can set different rules if it chooses. If the delegation is evenly divided, the state gets no vote. The point is, it doesn’t matter which party has more members in the House as a whole; all that matters is the happenstance of which party controls more state delegations. And right now Republicans control 26 state delegations and Democrats 22.One vote per state, with the presidency in the balance. Stop for a moment and consider the absurdity of this. North Dakota, whose single representative in Congress represents about 779,000 people, would have as much say in choosing the nation’s leader as California’s 52 House members, who together represent almost 40 million people. The two Dakotas combined (fewer than 1.7 million people, about the population of Phoenix) would wield twice as much power as Texas, with 30 million people. This is about as far from the principle of majority rule as you can get.The irony is that many founders expected this to be the standard way America would choose its presidents. As the plan took shape during the constitutional convention in 1787, Virginia’s George Mason predicted that the House would end up deciding 19 out of 20 elections. This wasn’t a bug in the system but a natural consequence of the lack of knowledge held by 18th-century Americans of politicians outside their home state. As a result, the thinking went, votes would be spread among a wide range of candidates, leaving most with some electors but none with a majority.This sounded reasonable at the time, but as soon as it happened, in the wild tie election of 1800, it nearly collapsed the young nation, and the founders quickly realized what a bad idea it was. Congress rapidly passed the 12th Amendment to avoid a repeat. Thomas Jefferson, who prevailed that year, later wrote to a friend that the House-election provision was “the most dangerous blot in our Constitution, and one which some unlucky chance will some day hit.” He was proved right in 1824, when a four-way race for the White House prevented any of the candidates from winning an outright majority. Andrew Jackson led in electoral votes and popular votes, but the House picked the second-highest vote getter, John Quincy Adams. Jackson’s supporters were furious. They called it a corrupt bargain, and for good reason: Henry Clay, the speaker of the House and one of the other candidates in the race, hated Jackson and strong-armed lawmakers to vote for Adams, who later chose Clay for secretary of state.The House has not decided a presidential election in the 200 years since, although it came close in 1968, during a tumultuous three-way race among Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who ran on the ultraright American Independent Party ticket. Nixon won but not before Wallace, an archsegregationist, captured 46 electoral votes in five Southern states.Now imagine that in 2024, a No Labels candidate or even Mr. Kennedy or Mr. West is able to peel off a few electors in, say, Maine or Alaska, states that pride themselves on their independent streaks. (Maine awards its electors by congressional district, making it even easier to pick one off.) It’s not a simple task, given the varied and sometimes strict ballot-access rules in many states. Many fans of Mr. Kennedy and Mr. West may never get a chance to vote for them. Still, No Labels has managed to secure a spot on the ballot in 11 states, including key battlegrounds like Arizona and North Carolina.Bottom line: It’s easy to assemble an electoral map in which no candidate reaches 270 electoral votes, sending the election to the House. That vote would not take place until early January 2025, after the newly elected Congress is seated, but even if Democrats regain a numerical majority in the House, Republicans are likely to hold and possibly expand their advantage in state delegations. In other words, assuming Mr. Trump is still a free man, he could be picked by the House to be the 47th president, even if Mr. Biden wins millions more popular votes and the most electoral votes.It is reckless fantasy for a group like No Labels to inject more choices into a system that is not designed to handle them. That may sound like democracy in theory, but in practice it produces the opposite: a greater chance of a candidate winning with the support of only a minority. That’s all the more likely when the two major parties are as closely divided as they are today.This isn’t an argument against more political parties. To the contrary, multiparty democracies can give voters a wider and healthier range of choices, better reflecting the diversity of the electorate.A huge, diverse country like the United States should welcome reforms like a proportional election system — and, while we’re on the subject, the elimination of the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote. Until then, the quixotic campaigns by today’s professed independents aren’t just futile; they’re dangerous.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      What if the Framers Got Something Critical Wrong?

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      Here are three instances in American history, out of many, when the rules of our system preserved a failed or suboptimal status quo against the views — and the votes — of a majority of Americans and their representatives.In 2021, 232 members of the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in summoning and provoking the mob that attacked and ransacked the United States Capitol building on Jan. 6. Not long after, 57 members of the Senate voted to convict Trump. But because the Constitution demands a two-thirds supermajority for conviction in an impeachment trial, the considered decision of a substantial majority of Congress — backed by a substantial majority of the public — was thwarted by the veto of a self-interested, partisan minority.A couple of generations earlier, between 1971 and 1972, the vast majority of lawmakers in Congress — 354 members of the House and 84 members of the Senate — voted to pass the Equal Rights Amendment and send it to the states. Most Americans, according to surveys at the time, wanted to make the E.R.A. the 27th amendment to the Constitution. And within five years of passage in Washington, legislatures in 35 states — which constituted a majority of the nation’s legislators — had voted for ratification. But 35 states was three short of the three-fourths needed for the amendment to succeed. By the time the deadline for ratifying the E.R.A. came in 1982, the amendment was essentially dead in the water.Decades before that, in 1922, the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill passed the House, 230 to 119. It was supported by President Warren G. Harding, a Republican, as well as the large Republican majority in the Senate. But that majority was not large enough to overcome a Democratic filibuster — spearheaded by Jim Crow lawmakers from the South — and the bill died before it could come to a vote. It would take a full century after the death of the Dyer bill for Congress to pass, and the president to sign, an anti-lynching bill into law.The American political system — with its federalism, bicameralism and separation of powers — consists of overlapping majoritarian and counter-majoritarian institutions designed to promote stability and continuity at the expense of popular government. Not content to build structural impediments to change, the framers of the Constitution also insisted on supermajority thresholds for a number of key actions: executive and judicial impeachment, ratification of foreign treaties and the passage and ratification of constitutional amendments. The Constitution also allows for the legislature to make its own rules regarding its conduct and both chambers of Congress have, at different points in their histories, adopted de facto supermajority rules for passing legislation.Americans are so accustomed and acculturated to these supermajority rules that they often treat their value as self-evident — a natural and necessary part of American constitutionalism. No, we don’t want to subject our every political decision to simple majority rule. Yes, we want to raise the highest possible barrier to removing a president or changing the rules of the game.Defenses of supermajority rules tend to rest on claims related to what appears to be common sense. The argument goes like this: Supermajority rules stabilize our political institutions, encourage deliberation, secure consensus for change and protect minorities from the tyranny of overbearing majorities. But as the political theorist Melissa Schwartzberg argues in her 2014 book, “Counting the Many: The Origins and Limits of Supermajority Rule,” the story isn’t so simple, and the actual value of supermajority rules isn’t clear at all.It is certainly true that supermajority rules promote stability of institutions and the norms that are supposed to govern them. There is a reason, after all, that the United States Constitution has only been amended 27 times in 235 years. But, Schwartzberg asks, “How can we determine which norms are worth stabilizing” since “for any given political community, different institutional arrangements could ensure security of expectations and make ordinary political life possible — even the set of rights and their scope could vary.”Do we defer to the wisdom of the framers? What if, in our estimation, they got something critical wrong? And even if they didn’t, should the dead hand of the past so strongly outweigh the considerations of the present? Do we defer to wisdom and tradition under the assumption that stability is de facto evidence of consent?But here’s where we come to the Catch-22, because the stability of our system rests on supermajority rules so strong that they stymie all but the broadest attempts to change that system. And who is to say that stability is such a paramount goal? In a dynamic society, which is to say in a human society, promoting stability with little institutional recourse for reform might ultimately be more disruptive because it creates friction, and thus energy, that will be released one way or another.What of the claim that supermajority rules — like the filibuster or the ones that structure the constitutional amendment process — promote consensus? Here again, Schwartzberg says, we have to think carefully about what we mean. If by consensus we mean the aggregate opinions of the community, then there might be a basis for supporting supermajority rules, although that raises another question: What is the threshold for success? The two-thirds demand for impeachment in the Senate, for example, is essentially arbitrary. So is the three-fourths of states threshold for ratifying a constitutional amendment. There is no rational standard to use here, only a feeling that “most” people want something.In which case, if what you want is some general sense that a specific outcome is what the community or legislative body generally wants, then it’s not clear that supermajority rules are the optimal solution. Consider what Schwartzberg calls an “acclamatory” conception of consensus. In this version, what the community believes is true or prudent is what it is “willing to let a belief stand as the group’s view,” even if there is a significant minority that disagrees.Not every American may believe, to use Schwartzberg’s example, that “freedom of the press ought to be unlimited,” but they are “willing to accept that the view of the United States is that Congress should not restrict the ability of newspapers to publish as they see fit.” As citizens, Schwartzberg writes, “they recognize they are implicated in this view, even if as private individuals they may disagree with it.”If what we want out of a decision to remove a president or pass an amendment is an acclamatory consensus of this sort, then rather than set a supermajority rule — which would permit a minority to preserve a status quo that no longer commands the acclamatory support of the group — what we might use instead, Schwartzberg suggests, is a system that privileges serious and long-term deliberation, so that the minority on a particular question feels satisfied enough to consent to the view of a simple majority, even if it still disagrees.As for the question of minority protection from majority tyranny, one of the quirks of nearly all supermajority rules is that they make no distinction between different kinds of minorities. This means that they are as likely to protect and strengthen privileged and powerful minorities as they are to empower and defend weak ones. Looking at the American experience, we see much more of the former than we do of the latter, from the arc of the “slave power” in antebellum America to the specific case of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill to recent efforts to protect the civil rights of more vulnerable Americans.This gets to the most powerful point Schwartzberg makes about the impact of supermajority rules on democratic life. Democracy, she writes, “entails a commitment to the presumption of epistemic equality among its citizens.” Put another way, democracy assumes an equal capacity to judge one’s interests — or at least what an individual believes is her interest. This epistemic equality is “manifested institutionally in formally equal voting power.” In a democracy, our political institutions should affirm the fact that we are equal.In the United States, ours do not. The rules of the game here tend to elevate the views and judgments of some citizens over others, to the point where under certain circumstances small, factional minorities can rule with no regard for the views of the majority in their communities. Whether it is the supermajority rules of the Senate or the counter-majoritarianism of the Electoral College and the Supreme Court, our system makes it clear that some voices are more equal than others.One might say, even so, that the wisdom of the framers and of past generations holds true. But as Americans struggle against their own counter-majoritarian institutions and supermajoritarian rules to stop the ascendance of a wannabe authoritarian, I am not so sure that wisdom holds true.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Supreme Court Declines to Revisit Alabama Voting Map Dispute

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      For the second time in recent months, the Supreme Court ruled against Alabama lawmakers and their proposed congressional district map.The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused Alabama’s request to reinstate a congressional map drawn by Republican lawmakers that had only one majority-Black district, paving the way for a new map to be put in place before the 2024 election.Alabama’s request to keep its map was the second time in under a year that it had asked the Supreme Court to affirm a limited role of race in establishing voting districts for federal elections in what amounted to a defiant repudiation of lower-court rulings. In the latest twist in the case, the lower court had found that the state had brazenly flouted its directive to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”The court’s order gave no reasons, which is often the case when the justices decide on emergency applications. The ruling clears the way for a special master and court-appointed cartographer to create a new map.The outcome of the dispute could ultimately tip the balance of the House, where Republicans hold a thin majority. The trajectory of the case is also being closely watched by lawmakers in Washington and other states where similar battles are playing out.In a surprise decision in June, the Supreme Court found that Alabama had hurt Black voters in drawing its voting map, reaffirming part of a landmark civil rights law.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who has long been skeptical of race-conscious decision making, wrote the majority opinion. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined him, along with the courts three liberal justices — Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.At issue was Alabama’s congressional map. Its Republican-controlled legislature sliced up the state into seven districts, continuing to maintain only one majority Black district, although about a quarter of state’s population is Black.After the Supreme Court’s decision, state lawmakers scrambled to draw a new map. Over the objections of Democrats, the legislature pushed through a version that changed district boundaries but that did not include an additional majority-Black district. Instead, it increased the percentage of Black voters in one district to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent.The federal three-judge panel overseeing the case found lawmakers had, yet again, likely violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.“The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” the panel wrote. The judges added that the Legislature’s proposal “plainly fails to do so.”In asking the Supreme Court to intervene, Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, acknowledged that the Legislature had not added a second majority-Black district to its map as dictated by the federal court, but said its new map still complied with the law.Unless the court acted, he wrote, “the state will have no meaningful opportunity to appeal before the 2023 plan is replaced by a court-drawn map that no state could constitutionally enact.”In their brief, the plaintiffs, including a group of Black voters and advocacy organizations, urged the justices to reject Alabama’s request for relief and said the state had “unabashedly” sought to defy the courts using “recycled arguments.”After the Supreme Court’s decision in June, the plaintiffs wrote, Alabama’s Legislature had drawn its plan in secret, with no opportunity for public comment, and had enacted it “over alternative plans that were supported by Black Alabamians.”“Disagreement with this court’s ruling is not a valid reason to defy it — and certainly not a basis for a grant of an emergency stay application,” they wrote. More

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      Why Democrats Keep Winning Elections Despite Biden’s Negative Polling

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      Despite a flood of negative polls for Democrats, the party has delivered a string of strong results in special elections, which can be a useful gauge of the national political environment.For nearly two years, poll after poll has found Americans in a sour mood about President Biden, uneasy about the economy and eager for younger leaders of the country.And yet when voters have actually cast ballots, Democrats have delivered strong results in special elections — the sort of contests that attract little attention but can serve as a useful gauge for voter enthusiasm.In special elections this year for state legislative offices, Democrats have exceeded Mr. Biden’s performance in the 2020 presidential election in 21 of 27 races, topping his showing by an average of seven percentage points, according to a study conducted by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the party’s campaign arm for state legislative races.Those results, combined with an 11-point triumph for a liberal State Supreme Court candidate in Wisconsin this spring and a 14-point defeat of an Ohio ballot referendum this summer in a contest widely viewed as a proxy battle over abortion rights, run counter to months of public opinion polling that has found Mr. Biden to be deeply unpopular heading into his re-election bid next year.Taken together, these results suggest that the favorable political environment for Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade has endured through much of 2023. Democratic officials have said since the summer of 2022, when the ruling came down, that abortion is both a powerful motivator for the party’s voters and the topic most likely to persuade moderate Republicans to vote for Democratic candidates.“Dobbs absolutely changed the way that people thought about and processed things that they had perceived as a given,” said Heather Williams, the interim president of the D.L.C.C. “We continue to see voters recognizing what’s at stake in these elections.”Democrats are now using abortion rights to power races far down the ballot — an extension of how candidates in special elections at the congressional level have long used prominent national issues to fuel their campaigns.In January 2010, Scott Brown won a shocking upset in a Senate special election in deep-blue Massachusetts by running against President Barack Obama’s health care push. In March 2018, Conor Lamb won a special election to fill a House seat in a deep-red Pennsylvania district by campaigning as a centrist voice against Mr. Trump.Both the Brown and Lamb special elections served as indicators of the wave elections their parties won in subsequent midterm elections.Some of the special elections won by Democrats this year have involved relatively few voters: Under 2,800 ballots were cast in a New Hampshire State House contest last week.“The best evidence that a special election produces is whose side is more engaged on a grass-roots turnout level,” Mr. Lamb said in an interview on Monday. “That gives you some signal about who is bringing their turnout back next year.”Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings have illustrated a wide gap between how Democratic leaders view him and what voters think. But past presidents — including Barack Obama — have recovered from similarly sour numbers to win re-election, a point Mr. Biden’s aides repeat to seemingly anyone who will listen.Political operatives remain vexed about how much stock to put into the results of special elections. Such races tend to draw a fraction of the turnout in regular contests, and the voters skew older and more educated — a demographic that in the Trump era is more likely to favor Democrats.The party that wins special elections tends to trumpet their importance and predictive power, while the losing side writes them off as insignificant measures of voters’ mood.Last week, after Democrats won special elections to maintain control of the Pennsylvania House and flip a Republican-held seat in the New Hampshire House, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, emailed donors to say the results showed Mr. Biden’s political strength.“These aren’t just one-off election wins,” she wrote. “They prove that our message is resonating with voters — and that we can’t write off any corner of the country.”Officials with the Republican state legislative campaign arm did not respond to messages on Monday.The next chance for Democrats to prove their strength in down-ballot elections will come in Virginia. A slate of Democratic state legislative candidates are warning on the campaign trail that a Republican-controlled legislature and Gov. Glenn Youngkin would roll back abortion rights. Republicans are pitching the same menu of tax cuts and parental influence over schools that swept Mr. Youngkin into office two years ago.The elections are likely to serve as a solid arbiter of the parties’ strength heading into 2024. Under the state’s new legislative district lines, Mr. Biden would have won a majority of House of Delegates seats in 2020. But Mr. Youngkin carried a majority of the districts when he was elected in 2021.“These are competitive maps,” Ms. Williams said. “When we get to the other side of this November election and you look at all of these things combined, you’re going to see a very strong story for Democrats.” More

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      Election in Pittsburgh Area Will Determine Balance in Pennsylvania House

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      The NewsA special election on Tuesday to fill an open legislative seat in the Pittsburgh area will also determine which party takes power in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives.The state’s lower chamber has been split 101-101 between Democrats and Republicans since July, when former Representative Sara Innamorato, a Democrat, stepped down from her seat to run for Allegheny County executive.Voters in Ms. Innamorato’s former district, which includes part of Pittsburgh and its northern suburbs, will choose her successor. The candidates for the state’s 21st House District are Lindsay Powell, a Democrat who has strong ties to party leaders in Washington, including Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader; and Erin Connolly Autenreith, a Republican who is the chairwoman of a local party committee.Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives has been split between Democrats and Republicans since July, with each party holding 101 seats.Matt Rourke/Associated PressWhy It Matters: The vote will determine a swing state’s power balance.Pennsylvania is a crucial swing state, playing an important role in presidential elections, as well as determining which party holds power in the United States Congress. Whichever party gains an upper hand in the state can make a major difference in Washington, in addition to making law in Pennsylvania.It’s also one of just two states, along with Virginia, where the legislative chambers are split by party.In Harrisburg, Democrats have controlled the governor’s office since 2015, and Gov. Josh Shapiro won his first term convincingly in November 2022. Republicans, on the other hand, have held a strong grip on the Senate for decades.Democrats won a majority in the House in 2022 for the first time in 12 years and by the slimmest of margins — it took only Ms. Innamorato’s resignation to make it an even split.Background: The state has seen several special elections this year.In May, Heather Boyd, a Democrat, won a closely watched special election in southeast Delaware County, part of the Philadelphia suburbs. Top Democrats, including President Biden and Governor Shapiro, had framed the contest as crucial to protecting reproductive rights in Pennsylvania.But on the same day, in a separate special election, Republicans retained a state House seat in north-central Pennsylvania with the triumph of Michael Stender, a school board member and firefighter.Heading into the third special election of the year on Tuesday, the Democratic candidate, Ms. Powell, 32, who works in work force development, was viewed as a solid favorite, with a sizable fund-raising advantage.She would become the first African American woman to represent the district, which Ms. Innamorato captured in 2022 with 63 percent of the vote.Republican officials acknowledged that the heavily Democratic district would be difficult for them to win. Still, Ms. Autenreith, 65, has been active on the campaign trail.What Happens Next: The state House could soon be in play yet again.No matter who prevails on Tuesday, voters in Pennsylvania may soon face yet another special election with huge stakes.If State Representative John Galloway, a Democrat who represents a district northeast of Philadelphia, prevails in a race for a district judgeship in November, as is expected, the chamber would be split again until another contest could be held to fill his seat. More