Eric McGhee, Chris Warshaw, and I just posted this paper, written for the University of Chicago Legal Forum’s symposium on Borders and Boundaries, addressing the extent of retrogression in states formerly covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights… Continue reading

The following is a guest post by Ruth Greenwood, the director of the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School: The Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School (“ELC”) now offers free access to summary measures of racially polarized… Continue reading

Yesterday a federal district court rejected the remedial map the City of Jacksonville adopted in an effort to cure racial gerrymandering violations in its original city council plan. Instead the court ordered the use of one of the remedial maps… Continue reading

I just posted this book chapter on partisan gerrymandering, which will be part of the Oxford Handbook of American Election Law (coming out next year). Thanks to Gene Mazo for assembling and editing the volume and organizing terrific workshops for… Continue reading

In the Jacksonville racial gerrymandering case that Harvard Law School’s Election Law Clinic is litigating, the Eleventh Circuit just denied the city’s effort to stay the district court’s decision striking down seven city council districts. This means that Jacksonville will… Continue reading

Harvard Law School’s Election Law Clinic (together with Selendy Gay Elsberg PLLC) filed this lawsuit to compel the Census Bureau to disclose important data about the Bureau’s 2020 products. For the first time, the Bureau used a method known as… Continue reading

Carolyn Shapiro, Dan Tokaji, and I are the amici in this brief in Moore v. Harper, represented by Harvard Law School’s Election Law Clinic. Our brief highlights the doctrinal and practical mayhem that would ensue if federal courts were to… Continue reading

In a lengthy opinion today, a federal court granted a preliminary injunction barring Jacksonville from holding any elections under its newly drawn city council districts. Seven of those districts, the court held, are likely unconstitutional racial gerrymanders: four “packed” districts… Continue reading

In a case being litigated by Harvard Law School’s Election Law Clinic, the ACLU, the ACLU of Montana, and the Native American Rights Fund, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed preliminary injunctions against (1) the elimination of election day registration and… Continue reading

Christian Haas, Peter Miller, and Steven Kimbrough have posted this very interesting paper using a redistricting algorithm to estimate the impact on minority representation of changing the apportionment base from total population to CVAP. Their results are consistent with this… Continue reading

I wrote this piece for Democracy Docket on the partisan implications of the independent state legislature doctrine, solely with respect to congressional redistricting (the subject of Moore v. Harper). However, at least in the context presented by Moore — congressional… Continue reading

This interesting new paper by Chris Kenny et al. compares the newly enacted House plans across the country to sets of randomly generated maps. The bottom line is that the House as a whole is just slightly more pro-Republican than… Continue reading

Interesting story about the effort by conservatives to call a constitutional convention. One wonders why conservatives are the ones pushing this idea, given the record of the current Court, and why progressives are so content with the constitutional status quo.… Continue reading

Interesting LAT story on the role of the media in reporting on — and shaping — the debate about American democracy. Top American journalism leaders have publicly argued that the continued existence of democracy in the U.S. is no longer… Continue reading