House Elections Committee moves Court to adopt the Joint Committee plans for 2011 elections

Today, the House Elections Committee asked the three-judge panel in NAACP v. Haley Barbour, et al to adopt the Joint Committee plans as interim plans for the 2011 elections. The meat of the order is this:

Given the limited nature of that claim, and the short amount of time that remains, the plan can be used in the 2011 elections, with the Republican Party retaining the right to litigate the validity of the plan and litigate whether any violation that exists in the plan would justify special election relief in 2012 similar to the special election ordered twenty years ago in Watkins v. Mabus, 771 F. Supp. 789 (S.D. Miss. 1991) (three-judge court). In that manner, the Court could defer, for the time being, the complicated question of special election relief and resolve it in the future without the time constraints imposed by the June 1 qualifying deadline and the August 2 primary.

The more I study this issue, the more I believe that this remedy is proper, and that the Court may well do this in an effort to allow the state to have the most control possible over its electoral process. We shall see.

Here's the order: House Elections Committee's Motion to Adopt 2011 Joint Committee Plans as Interim Plan