Aletho News

How The Courts Could Decide Who Controls Congress

By Attorney Bobbie Anne Cox | Knowledge is power! | February 6, 2024

Most voters don’t pay too much attention to the judicial candidates when they head to the polls to cast their vote. Honestly, I can understand their thought process. There’s nothing sexy about courts, judges, judicial panels, and so on. Most voters probably feel like they will never end up in a court of law. If they keep their nose clean, and live a life of lawfulness and piety, then they probably feel that they won’t ever be at the mercy of a judge, or a panel of judges, to decide their fate.

However, there is a grave danger in this method of thinking. Even if you personally never have the need or the occasion to sue someone, or be sued by someone, judges are rendering decisions in cases that affect your life, whether or not you are a direct party to a lawsuit. A golden example of that notion is my “quarantine camp” lawsuit against Governor Kathy Hochul and her Department of Health. Most New Yorkers are (unfortunately) blissfully unaware of this epic legal battle, and yet, five judges sitting in an appellate court in Rochester, New York may have sealed the fate of 19 million New Yorkers in determining whether or not unelected bureaucrats in the DOH can throw you into a quarantine detention center, with the force of police, for however long they like, without any proof that you are sick. (For more on that, you can read one of my many articles about that lawsuit, or other media content on it, here, or here, or here).

So, judges are every bit as powerful and noteworthy on the ballot as the vote you cast for your governor, or president, or senator, etc… My quarantine lawsuit is just one example. Another example which I’d like to delve into in more detail in this article is how judges may very well end up deciding who controls Congress.

With a very close margin in the House of Representatives, quite literally, every seat counts. (My standard disclaimer applies: I am not Republican. I am a Constitutionalist and believe the power of the people over the power of the political elites must prevail). So let’s set the stage… the Republicans control the House currently by only 4 seats. The Democrats control the US Senate, and the White House. If the Republicans lose control of the House, then Americans will be subjected to a very toxic one-party-rule. Remember my motto on this – I don’t care which party it is, when one party has total control, they go totally out of control! Here’s the article I wrote on that last year.

Most people think of New York as a “deep blue” state that is full of radical left-wing voters. That is terribly wrong. If you look at a map of New York state after the last couple of presidential elections, you’ll see that the vast majority of the state votes “red,” and it’s only a couple of our cities that vote “blue.” New York is the reason the Republicans took control of the House when the 2022 elections yielded a net gain of 5 seats for Republicans. In other words, in 2022, New Yorkers flipped 5 of our Congressional seats from Democrat to Republican, and that gave the Republicans the majority in the House.

So, it’s no surprise that many talking heads say New York is the pathway for the Democrats to regain control of the House next year after the elections this November. And here is where the courts come in. When one political party controls a state legislature, if they are empowered to draw the Congressional districts within their state, then this opens the door to gerrymandering. As a result, the party that is not in control will then usually bring a lawsuit to defend their right to have districts that are not gerrymandered. This happens in lots of states, and it is 100% happening here in New York. I am the spokeswoman for a non-partisan organization called Stop NY Corruption, and as such, I am fully familiar with the redistricting saga that has been taking place here since the 2022 election.

I wrote an article with the history and back story, which you can find here. If you prefer audio/visual, you can check out one of the number of press conferences or interviews I’ve done on this topic, some of which are posted on the Stop NY Corruption website. Most recently, I just spoke at a presser yesterday up in Albany together with former Congressman Lee Zeldin, State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, and Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar. Check out the video of our press conference here or double click on the thumbnail below.

So when these lawsuits over Congressional lines are brought in the courts, no matter which state, it is the decision of the judges that determines whether or not We the People will decide our elected representatives in Congress, or whether the political party bosses will choose what districts we live in, and who our Congressional reps will be. In a recent poll of likely New York voters, 81% of voters believe that gerrymandering is a form of cheating. According to that same poll, 78% of voters believe that gerrymandering leads to more corruption. If you want to see the full poll results, you can find that on the Stop NY Corruption website here.

To add another layer of concern, citizens really need to understand where their judges are coming from. What I mean by that is, in some states (like here in New York), the voters elect our trial court judges, but our appellate court judges and our Court of Appeals judges (New York’s highest court) are all appointed… by our governors. Ugh! So you cannot vote off the bench any “higher court” judges here in New York, and any other state that has this same judicial structure. Remember that the next time you vote in a gubernatorial election. Depending on how your state courts are designed, you may not be voting for just a governor, you could also be voting for the person who appoints your state’s appeals court judges.

Same goes for federal courts… the president appoints all federal judges, no matter what level of court they preside over (trial court, appeals court, United State Supreme Court). So you aren’t just voting for a president this November, you’re voting for the person who will place judges in the federal courts throughout our entire country. Extremely powerful authority.

February 21, 2024 - Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Corruption | United States