Trump isn’t the only thing that could rock American democracy

and the evolving way in which it is executed – is facing a series of fundamental questions beyond election denialism.

The former president’s call to end the Constitution for a 2020 election redo has rightly been met with ridicule and eyerolls (although less condemnation from GOP leaders). But even with Trump still a top contender for a major party’s presidential nomination, there are plenty of other forces circulating with the potential to destabilize American democracy.

The so-called “independent state legislature” theory, for example, got its day before the nation’s highest court Wednesday and, if conservative legislators get their way, could erase a check on state legislatures setting their own rules for federal elections.

The former president’s call to end the Constitution for a 2020 election redo has rightly been met with ridicule and eyerolls (although less condemnation from GOP leaders). But even with Trump still a top contender for a major party’s presidential nomination, there are plenty of other forces circulating with the potential to destabilize American democracy.

The so-called “independent state legislature” theory, for example, got its day before the nation’s highest court Wednesday and, if conservative legislators get their way, could erase a check on state legislatures setting their own rules for federal elections.

But the looming changes are primed to create another nuts-and-bolts dispute between the parties and raise questions for everyone else about why the parties should control the system in the first place.

The most core question raised this week is being put to Supreme Court justices. With allusions to politics of the late 1700s and earlier, they dug into three hours of arguments to consider whether everyone has been reading the Constitution wrong for the last two hundred-plus years.

The theory was popularized by a minority opinion from then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist when the Supreme Court decided the 2000 presidential election for George W. Bush – and it has percolated ever since.

The main idea is that the Elections Clause in the Constitution, which refers to state “legislatures” deciding the “time, place and manner” of elections unless superseded by Congress, should not allow for state courts to step in and provide the check and balance they normally do.

The case, Moore v. Harper, was brought by the leader of the Republican-controlled legislature in North Carolina against the state’s elected Supreme Court, which threw out a heavily gerrymandered congressional district map the legislature drew to benefit Republicans.