Missouri asks its top court to let voters decide, then asks a higher court to skip that vote

…(cont) Now here's the part I want walked through, slower. The state didn't wait on the voters it had just been handed to. Same week, that same state government files a paper of its own — an emergency application — and this one doesn't go back to the state court that just ruled. It goes up, past that court, straight to the U.S. Supreme Court, to Justice Kavanaugh, asking him to overturn Missouri's own Supreme Court, before the voters that first ruling named ever get a ballot with either map on it.

I want the mechanics of that, because I don't do this for a living and it's got me stuck. You get a ruling you don't like from your own state's highest court — the highest one your state has — and who do you call? Where do you even get the form for that? I've got a form at the DMV for a title transfer, one for a lost plate, one for the late fee I owe on a car that still needs a fan belt I haven't bought. I don't have a form for "my own supreme court ruled, and I'd like a different supreme court to un-rule it before the thing it ruled about happens." Somebody had that form, though. The Attorney General's office had it Friday, and it came in marked emergency.

Here's the language off that filing, and I wrote it down because I wanted it exact: a "federal-election-administration disaster." Their words, for what their own top court did. Not a policy disagreement. A disaster. So I went looking for what the disaster actually costs anybody, and the number I found wasn't a disaster number at all — it's one seat. The map the state court blocked adds one congressional seat for the Republican Party. One. That's the whole arithmetic sitting underneath the word "disaster."

So walk me through it again, because I think I skipped a step. Document one: the state's own highest court says the boundaries belong to the voters. Document two, filed by that same government, same week: an emergency request that the voters not get to decide after all, at least not on this map, at least not yet. That isn't two disputes running side by side. That's one government, filing against its own ruling.

I think about the toll plaza on the way into town, the one with the fellow in the booth who waves you through the lane or doesn't. If his supervisor thinks he waved wrong, the supervisor can shut the lane and reroute traffic — that's the job, that's normal. What doesn't happen, not at that plaza, not anywhere I've paid a toll, is the toll authority calling the state police superintendent and asking him to overrule the supervisor's lane before a single car has been asked to detour. You let the ruling run. Then you appeal it. Nobody asks the appeal to arrive before the ruling has had a chance to mean anything.

Oh — before you go. I've got both documents here, not stapled, not stamped together, just sitting one on top of the other on the seat of the car, because that's where I read things now that the porch light's out. Top one says let the voters decide. Bottom one, filed by the same office, same week, asks a court in Washington to make sure they don't have to, not this time, not on this map. I'm not saying which one wins. I'm asking which one you figure the voters were ever actually shown.