This is the Kader Daily Podcast for Monday, July 17th, 2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

The U.S. Supreme Court in saying that North Carolina's top court did not overstep its bounds and striking

down a congressional districting plan drawn up by state lawmakers, they rejected a supercharged

version of the independent state legislature theory.

Cato's Walter Olson explains the theory and the impact of the court's decision.

In the context of elections, when do we first hear of this independent state legislature theory?

Most people who heard of it, heard of it first around the 2020 election

when the question arose of whether state legislatures in states that had voted for Biden

could change the result, get together and declare either that the vote count was inaccurate or for some other reason

throw out Biden's victory or perhaps also declare Trump to be the winner in their state.

Okay, so in that context then, what did North Carolina try to use that theory in order to do?

Let me step back because what happened in the 2020 attempt to change state outcomes was the application of a very

extreme version of a theory that comes at about six different flavors.

And so I'd like to step back and talk about how people got to the theory, why not all

of the versions were necessarily crazy, even though the most extreme one in my view was crazy.

Okay, well let me stop you there.

What's the best version of that theory?

The most plausible version of the independent state legislature theory

starts with the wording of the elections clause, which deals with federal elections which of course are

mostly administered by states but with Congress being able to set rules for them and in

its relevant wording here says that the state legislature shall have the power to set the rules for the state's elections for federal office like Congress.

The argument is that by using the wording state legislatures rather than states and the

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