It is going to be something to chortle over when the Democrats and the liberals get around to thinking through the full implications of the refusal of the Supreme Court to grant cert in the bid by the Republicans to block the ballot switch in New Jersey. The refusal to review the decision of New Jersey’s Supreme Court regarding a law passed by the state’s legislature was as proper as it was foreseeable. As the Cato Institute’s constitutional scholar Robert Levy argued on this page yesterday, the issues in New Jersey were distinct from those in the case of Bush v. Gore that grew from the fight in Florida. The issue for the court in that case was the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which would have been violated by the multifarious recount standards being undertaken in the Sunshine State.

While there is the matter of the Constitution’s assigning of the power to make rules governing election of senators to the state legislatures, the document and its framers did not preclude the executive and judicial branches of those states from interpreting the laws their legislators made. And while the federal Congress has the power to override state election laws governing federal offices, the federal judiciary is given no such power.

Nonetheless, it is charming to watch the Democrats celebrate the application of federalism. Usually, federalism is a bulwark of conservative, Constitutional values. For instance, the federalist principle has been enforced to invalidate portions of the federal Brady gun law that commandeered state law enforcement officials to conduct background checks on gun buyers. Also in recent years, the Supreme Court has held on federalism grounds that employees of state governments cannot sue in federal court under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Republicans in New Jersey have understandably been thrown off balance by the usurpation of that state’s Supreme Court. They are riled that the retired senator, Frank Lautenberg, is polling slightly above their candidate, Douglas Forrester, who had been besting Senator Torricelli by 13 points. But the party isn’t served by the legal challenges, haggling over absentee ballots, and whatnot, after the fashion of Mr. Gore. Instead, they can stand on a principled platform of federalism and the strict enforcement of state laws. New Jersey’s Supreme court deserves to be overturned, but only by the state’s legislature, executive, and voters.