Daily Beast reports on a financial arrangement that may violate federal campaign finance laws. From my perspective, with all the serious threats facing American democracy, this particular story is not a high priority. (Maybe the media could devote some more attention to how the structures of electoral competition need to be changed, so that extremist candidates are not able to convert partisan primary victories into general election victories when general election voters would prefer a more moderate candidate from the same party.)

Tune in here at ELB.

A more optimistic note on Ohio’s handling of the Biden ballot mess (h/t Derek Muller):

‘DeWine told 10TV that he doesn’t think anyone should worry.

“We’ve got some technicalities that are going on, but it’s going to get worked out so no one should really have any concern,” DeWine said. “They’re going to have a choice this November. They’re going to be able to pick one of these two to be our president.”’

Tom Edsall in the N.Y. Times reviewing the social science on why it’s so hard to undo the emotional feelings associated with “affective” polarization. His column leads with Rachel Kleinfeld’s important work on this topic. I wish, however, Edsall had discussed the kind of institutional reforms to counteract polarization that Rick Pildes, among others, has been pursuing. Rick’s Dunwody lecture last week highlighted five institutional reforms that would mitigate the effect of affective polarization on the capacity of the country’s democratic system to engage in effective governance. As Rick said in his lecture (and I’m paraphrasing here from memory, as I was fortunate to be in the audience), if he could achieve just one reform in the effort to combat affective polarization, it would be to replace partisan primaries with the kind of nonpartisan primaries employed in Alaska as part of its “top 4” system with Ranked Choice Voting. This is why efforts, like the one currently underway in Arizona to adopt this kind of nonpartisan primary, are so important. Edsall ends his column on a negative note: “as long as Trump is the Republican nominee for president, and as long as the prospect of a majority-minority country continues to propel right-wing populism, the odds for reducing the bitter animosity that now characterizes American politics remain slim.” It would have been better, in my view, if he at least mentioned the most promising antidote for the problems of governance that affective polarization causes.

The Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School is hiring a Clinical Instructor: an attorney with at least three years of experience who is ready to train a new generation of election lawyers. The job posting is on the ELC Careers page, and the official HLS description is here. Please consider applying!

AL.com reports. “It could get final passage as early as next week.” It “bipartisan support and no opposition.” Maybe now Ohio can be embarrassed enough to do the same. For Ohio’s mess, see Can Ohio overcome dysfunction to fix Biden ballot conflict? It’s unclear.

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