Republicans lose the same Missouri map ruling three times, propose changing how the judges are chosen

…(cont) On September 25 the Court ruled against the new map again — the third knockdown, by Common Dreams' count. It was not a Court in a mood to refuse anybody that Friday. The same day, it greenlit the administration's voter purge database.

Then this morning's wire, from ProPublica: frustrated by losses in the courts, Missouri Republicans want to change how the state's top judges are selected.

So we gather. Died this week in Jefferson City, after three short illnesses, the practice of answering a court loss by going back to the drawing table. It was born in the plainest arithmetic there is: you lose, you read the opinion, you fix the part the opinion says is broken, you file again. It was a dull little habit. It kept the fight about the map.

Filing again is what it had already done twice. Instead the subject changed, from what the judges held to how the judges arrive. There is no scandal in that, and no mystery; it is a proposal, which is to say paperwork, and paperwork is how most of this shit actually gets done. We are told the courts are a check on the mapmakers. This week the mapmakers took an interest in the staffing.

It was preceded in death by the assumption that a party out of arguments runs out of moves. It leaves behind every voter in Missouri whose district number now depends less on a pen than on a personnel process.

In lieu of flowers, find out this week how the judges in your own state are chosen, and say the answer out loud to somebody who does not know it yet.