All posts by Tabatha Abu El-Haj

Texas AG working from Alabama’s Playbook circa 1955 in targeting civil rights groups

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This is “old” (last Friday), but important news. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is pulling tricks straight out of Alabama’s playbook in in the mid-1950. He is targeting the associations supporting Latino voter registration efforts, following LULAC’s endorsement of Harris. This was LULAC’s first endorsement in nearly a century.

“A nonprofit focused on increasing Latinos’ civic participation sued Attorney General Ken Paxton in federal court Friday so it could continue its voter registration efforts after the Republican official targeted them in an investigation last month.

The organization Jolt said in its request for a temporary restraining order that Paxton’s investigation would irreparably harm the organization and its associates by disclosing personal information and potentially placing its workers, volunteers and associates in harm’s way.”

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A message to the “third-party curious”

third parties,

Micah Sifry offers a thoughtful reflection on how to engage with those who feel alienated with our two-party system. Sifry notes, “All seven key battleground states will have at least one spoiler candidate on the ballot,” and only a few months ago, “one-quarter of Americans [said] they didn’t feel represented by either party.”  Unlike those pushing to keep these parties off the ballot, Sifry offers a message to the “third-party curious on the left” as well as important resources about effective third-party politics in the U.S.

“In my humble opinion, the message to bring to third-party curious voters on the left is simple: Your idealism is admirable. We need you to keep pushing for real change. But until we change our two-party system, either to a proportional representation system or one that (like New York and Connecticut) allows smaller parties to “fuse” by cross-nominating candidates, voting for third-party candidates in close elections won’t advance your cause. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz aren’t perfect, but if elected you’ll be able to keep pushing them. The opposite will be true under Trump-Vance.

This isn’t a message that will convince everyone, and it’s important to recognize that some third-party voters have never voted for a major party candidate. We see these people in every state in every election. For them, voting is a moral act, not a tactical one. Asking them to give up that belief is like insisting a vegan eat meat.”

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“Direct Democracy Scores a Win in Michigan’s High Court. Can It Survive November?”

direct democracy,

Bolts Magazine: Michigan’s Republican legislature’s seemingly duplicitous strategy to get around progressive ballot measures struck down by the state’s high court.

“Michigan progressives gathered enough signatures in 2018 to put two labor measures on the ballot: one to raise the minimum wage, another to mandate paid sick time for employees. Republican lawmakers, who ran the state at that time, thwarted the proposals with a brazen two-step maneuver. Before the measures were put before voters, they adopted legislation that enacted both into law exactly as organizers had drafted them; this eliminated them from the ballot. But once Election Day passed, lawmakers reconvened and gutted the laws they had just passed, all but erasing organizers’ work.”

Once again, the stakes were policies that are good for workers: a $2 increase in the minimum wage and paid sick leave for all employees. I have blogged about various attempts by Republican legislatures to undermine direct democracy, but this is a new one. The article is worth a read, pointing out that Utah’s Supreme Court has also taken a stand in favor of direct democracy.

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Ground Game: LULAC Endorses Harris

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CBS News: The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the nation’s oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization with a membership-base of over 130,000 breaks with a 90-year tradition and endorses Harris.

“LULAC has a formidable grassroots operation in key battleground states — not just the ones in the Southwest, a senior source in the organization tells CBS News.”

The N.Y. TImes adds that the endorsement which is from the group’s political action committee followed a unanimous vote. And more from CBS News:

  • “More than 36.2 million Latinos will be eligible to cast ballots for president this year, the highest in electoral history, according to Pew.”
  • Latino voting strength is growing in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
  • “Nearly one in four voters in Arizona is Latino.”
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Shawn McCutcheon is Back

campaign finance,

Shawn McCutcheon: People running in races with ranked choice voting states should be allowed to accept several times the legal limit.

On August 7, the Commission made public an advisory opinion request from Shaun McCutcheon. The requestor asks whether for purposes of the Federal Election Campaign Act’s contribution limits, the first round of Maine’s 2024 election for U.S. Senate, which involves ranked-choice voting, constitutes a general election, and each subsequent round, if any, is a distinct runoff election and entitled to its own contribution limit. The Commission will accept written comments on the request during the 10-day period following publication of the request (no later than August 19) and must issue a response no later than 60 days after the receipt of the complete request, that is, by September 21, 2024.

Thank you to Bret Kappel for bringing this to our attention.

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“Republicans Ask US Supreme Court To Reinstate Arizona Voter Suppression Laws”

NVRA (motor voter), Uncategorized, voter id

The Democracy Docket: The Republican National Committee and Arizona Republicans applied to the Supreme Court for emergency relief to reinstate Arizona’s strict proof of citizenship law.

“Republicans ask the Supreme Court to reject state voter registration forms if the voter did not provide documentary proof of citizenship with their application and block voters who have not provided documentary proof of citizenship from voting by mail or casting votes for president.”

Currently, because the law which governs state forms is blocked, “Arizona voters who register using a state voter registration form and have documentary proof of citizenship on file at the DMV will be fully registered,” even if they did not provide provide citizenship proof with their application to register. Meanwhile, the lower court has ensured that Arizona voters, who register using the state form, will not be barred from voting in federal elections even if they are have not provided documentary proof of citizenship because such proof is not required by federal law.

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Race and Representation in the Battleground Counties

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Voter turnout nationally during the 2020 Presidential Election was 66%—the highest since 1900. But a recent analysis from The Union of Concerned Scientists of voter turnout by precinct in 11 battleground counties found clear racial disparities, driven in part by differences in election resources & voter communication in individual precincts & counties. The findings are presented through an interactive map and also available in more fun forms on twitter and Instagram. The full report, Race and Representation in Battleground Counties: Racial Disparities in Voter Turnout and Ballot Rejections in the 2020 Election, is worth the read.

As summarized by the authors:

“The results show that 2020 turnout was highest in majority-White precincts and lowest in majority-Black and majority-Hispanic precincts.”

[At the same time,] “Many majority-Black precincts turned out at rates higher than the average majority-White precinct in 2020. Similarly, turnout rates in some majority-Hispanic precincts were close to the average turnout in majority-White precincts. ”

Poverty explains much of the difference, but the authors conclude that:

“While inequalities in voter turnout are more persistent and rooted in deeper social inequities, democratic capacity can be cultivated even in hostile conditions. Local civic organizations can also benefit from greater data transparency and data sharing in partnership with local election administrators.”

With a focus on large and diverse communities within electorally pivotal states, the report looks at:

  • Maricopa County, AZ 
  • Fulton County, GA 
  • Wayne County, MI 
  • Columbus, Durham, and Mecklenburg Counties, NC 
  • Cuyahoga and Lorain Counties, OH 
  • Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties, PA 
  • Milwaukee County, WI 
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Special Prosecutor Jack Smith seeks delay to assess implications of SCOTUS ruling on Trump Jan. 6 case

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Axios‘ article offers a summary of the implications of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request for a two-week continuance to further analyze the Supreme Court’s immunity cases. Meanwhile, Politico provides a helpful analysis of the nuances of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and the difficulty of applying them.

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“Case that could keep RFK Jr. off New York’s presidential ballot ends”

ballot access, third parties

Michael Hill (AP) reports that the bench trial “in Albany over whether Kennedy’s New York nominating petitions should be invalidated ended Thursday without Justice Christina Ryba issuing an immediate decision. Any ruling by the trial judge is expected to be appealed.”

Just hard to understand why a candidate would obfuscate about his residency. That said, New York’s ballot access laws for third-parties were made more cumbersome after Governor Andrew Cuomo changed the rules during COVID. Maintaining a ballot line now requires getting 2% of the vote every two years in whichever race is at the top of the ticket. That math has worked out to roughly three times the number of votes as before. Cuomo also increased how many signatures a party candidate needed from 15,000 to 45,000.

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Walz–Money in Politics (Just enough less)

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A new profile of Tim Walz’ financial disclosures in the Washington Post reveals the Governor of Minnesota is a college-educated, white-collar professional, but also just upper-middle class. Of all the books and articles I have read over the years about the influence of money in politics, none has stuck with me as much as Nick Carnes‘ on white-collar government. His point is simple and intuitive: We are unlikely to get policies that address the needs of every day Americans if only millionaires and people who have never worked a blue collar job are in Congress. Walz risks being under-appreciated as a small step in the right direction.

For the curious and by way of comparison, here is information on the national median income and and median income in Minnesota–strikingly similar. And in case you are wondering how many millionaires there are in Congress: Well it would be a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.

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“Trump’s focus on Georgia election board raises fears for November vote”

election administration,

Washington Post: Critics, including members of the state’s GOP establishment, worry about the administrative changes to Georgia’s election rules–on the election and on voters’ confidence in the count.

“Since May, an unambiguously pro-Trump majority has controlled the state election board. And it got to work this week approving a raft of new rules that critics say could void valid votes, place onerous burdens on overtaxed election workers and potentially delay the certification of results.

With just three months until the fall election — and less time until the start of early voting — they say it is also far too late to impose new standards, with the likely result being confusion and even chaos for election officials and voters alike.”

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Are Joy and Optimism Essential to the Future of American Democracy?

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With very little actual election-law news in this 24-hour news cycle, I am thinking about the downside of emphasizing our democratic dismay. We should not ignore the many risks to our electoral system. But should we also be worried that in we choosing to focus on risk, we are driving voters away from politics and democracy? An AP-NORC poll finds that “[r]oughly 3 in 4 American adults believe the upcoming presidential election is vital to the future of U.S. democracy.” Two sub-find findings were particularly intriguing to me:

“About 2 in 10 Americans say democracy in the U.S. is strong enough to withstand the outcome of the election no matter who wins, while another 2 in 10 believe democracy is already so seriously broken that the outcome doesn’t matter.”

So many questions, are these the 20% who vote fairly regularly but despise people like us (i.e., people who read and write for this blog)? In other words, are these the view of people who are just plain tired of talking about politics all the time. Whoever they are, I am pretty sure these are the folks the Harris-Walz campaign has decided are their swing voters.

About half of adults 45 and older say the outcome of the election is extremely important for the future of democracy, compared to about 4 in 10 adults under 45.

Some readers will likely take from this that young voters are naive. But maybe what those 6/10 need is to have their optimism reinforced by stories of democratic successes–stories that are also plentiful, even if not always appropriate for an Election Law Blog.

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State of the Parties: Georgia

political parties

The Atlanta Journal Constitution provides a window into the Georgia Republican Party. In a period, when Democratic Party leaders have been doing precisely what they are supposed to do (broker internal conflicts and usher the party toward electoral success), Trump has once again been sowing division. His renewed attacks on Governor Brian Kemp are worrying to Georgia’s GOP and are cited as one of the reasons that several forecasters have placed Georgia back in the toss-up category. Trump’s recent focus on the Georgia Elections Board, with his three Republican allies, should probably be viewed as part of this story. In addition to expanding local official’s discretion to delay certification of election result (extremely concerning for the Harris campaign, I would think!), the Board has re-opened an investigation of Fulton County’s 2020 count.

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Distinguished Scholarship Award–APPLY SOON!

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The AALS Section on Election Law is soliciting submissions for its annual Distinguished Scholarship Award. This year, the Section will grant two awards, one for 2023 and one for 2024. Each award will be given to a single work that exemplifies excellence in the field. Any single work pertaining to election law, broadly defined, is eligible. If you have a submission, please e-mail a copy to me, [email protected], by Friday, September 6, with the subject line “Annual Scholarship Award Submission,” and a note about whether the work was published in 2023, or has been (or will be) published in 2024. Multiple submissions from a single author are permitted. Submissions will be passed along to a selection committee for review.

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