Two men recognized and exploited the anti-democratic loopholes within America’s rickety democracy
-- in order to deliver Republicans victories that they could never win at the ballot box.

Now their willfully minoritarian creations threaten the very essence of a representative democracy:

if Donald #Trump, rightwing courts, #gerrymandered state legislatures and an extreme Republican #caucus in the US House of Representatives create constitutional #chaos over the certification of this presidential election, 👉two men cleared the path.

The single-minded determination of #Leonard #Leo built a conservative supermajority on the US #supreme #court and ♦️stacked lower and state courts with Republican #ideologues that have pushed the nation to the right via the least accountable branch of government.

#Chris #Jankowski masterminded the partisan #gerrymanders that ♦️tilted state legislatures and congressional delegations across the south and the purple midwest toward extreme Republicans,
♦️ended Barack Obama’s second term before it started, and ♦️rendered elections in Wisconsinand North Carolina all but meaningless over the last decade and a half.

Leo and Jankowski understood, separately, that the courts and state legislatures were undervalued and often undefended targets for a deliberate strategy aimed at capturing important levers of power that sometimes float under the radar.

They could be Moneyball-ed, to borrow the term Michael Lewis used in his book about how the Oakland A’s made an end-run around large-market teams by understanding value that their opponents overlooked.

What Leo and Jankowski built separately would soon reinforce the other’s creation (with, of course, crucial assists from chief justice #John #Roberts), tightening the knots around meaningful elections, pushing policy to the extreme right and 💥making it nearly impossible for voters to do anything about it

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Two men have re-engineered the US electoral system in favor of Republicans

If the right strews constitutional chaos over the certification of this presidential election, two people will have cleared the path

^{Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)}