All posts by Rick Hasen

Campaign Finance Expert Robert E. Mutch (“Bob”), 1940-2022

election law biz

I recently learned that Bob Mutch, who has written the most comprehensive and important histories of campaign finance regulation in the United States, died in August 2022.

Bob was a political scientist by training, but he wrote excellent histories of campaign finance law and politics in the United States, including two books that I constantly rely upon in my own research, Campaigns, Congress, and Courts: The Making of Federal Campaign Finance Law (Praeger 1988) and Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform (Oxford University Press 2014). The work is extremely careful, lively, and helpful, including some details that have not appeared in any other work on this history.

Here is the blurb I wrote for the Oxford book:

The book is no doubt the leading historical account of the debate over campaign finance regulation from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Mutch has mined a wealth of primary sources to paint the most detailed picture possible (consistent with the paucity of the early historical record) of the financing of U.S. federal campaigns and the national debate over that financing. Mutch usefully ties current judicial debate to the earlier historical record, providing valuable context and serving as a corrective to much of what passes for historical analysis in the U.S. Supreme Court’s campaign finance opinions.

Here is Michael Malbin’s review of that book, the Schaffner & LaRaja book, and my own Plutocrats United.

Bob was always generous with his time and his comments on other work. He gave great comments on my scholarship and we had a great, but intermittent correspondence; the last email I received from him came a few months before he passed, when he congratulated me on my move to UCLA.

Researcher Sam Garrett, writing in his personal capacity, passes along these thoughts: “Robert Mutch’s meticulous research was and is indispensable to how I learned about campaign finance in the United States.  His writing was thorough, clear, and enthusiastic.  Bob reminded us that campaign finance policy might be rooted in law, but also that debate–and good stories–about money and politics date to the founding of the republic and continue today.  He also didn’t stop at campaign finance.  Several years ago, when Bob spoke to my American University students, he gave us more than an hour—without notes—on his latest project, about George Washington’s family.  It was a privilege to know Bob and to continue learning from him.”

Bob apparently died without any immediate family, and I have been unable to find any obituary for him. So I thought it appropriate to say here at ELB how much he meant to many of us in the election law community. We will miss him, his spirit of inquiry, and his enthusiasm for studying our democracy to make it better.

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Quote of the Day (Sam Issacharoff on SCOTUS Removing Election Guardrails)

Uncategorized

“The majority of today should always fear that it may find itself in the minority tomorrow and that its rules can be used against it. . . . What happens when this breaks down? What happens if the majority of today sees this as the last chance to take it all?”

–Sam Issacharoff, quoted in Adam Liptak’s must-read piece, “In Election Cases, Supreme Court Keeps Removing Guardrails.”

I address this Supreme Court history, and why I told Adam I think we may be heading back to the early 1960s in terms of judicial protection of voting and elections, in Richard L. Hasen, The Stagnation, Retrogression, and Potential Pro-Voter Transformation of U.S. Election Law, 134 Yale Law Journal 1673 (2025).

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“Inside Democrats’ risky gambit to ‘fight fire with fire’ over election maps”

redistricting

WaPo deep dive:

Their exodus, coordinated with top Democrats outside Texas, is the latest flash point in a rapidly spreading fight over election maps — embodying Democrats’ newly combative posture on redistricting. After Texas Republicans initiated an unusual mid-decade effort to redraw their maps at President Donald Trump’s urging, state Democrats have staged a high-profile protest; liberal governors have moved to retaliate with new maps of their own; and many onetime gerrymandering critics have joined the cause. “Fight fire with fire,” as many Democrats have recently put it.

But the party is facing an uphill climb and risks of a letdown. Texas Democrats are likely to stall but not ultimately prevent Republicans from enacting a new map that would add five new U.S. House seats that voted for Trump by double-digit percentages. In several blue states, Democrats must clear legal hurdles that their red-state counterparts don’t face as both parties try to overhaul election maps beyond Texas.

“Fundamentally, this has the potential to be the gerrymandering apocalypse that may have been inevitable given that for both parties, the ends have increasingly justified the means,” said David Wasserman, senior elections analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Republicans are more likely to get their way, Wasserman said, even if Democrats are able to offset GOP gains in Texas.

The outcome could have major implications for 2026 and the final two years of Trump’s term. Republicans are defending a 219-212 House majority, with four vacancies, and even marginal shifts could be pivotal….

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“It’s been 60 years since the Voting Rights Act was signed. Will it make it to 61?”

Supreme Court, Voting Rights Act

Zach Montellaro for Politico:

The Voting Rights Act was signed into law 60 years ago this week. What the law will look like when it reaches its 61st anniversary next year is a big question.

The landmark piece of legislation — which helped usher in an era of increased minority representation across American politics — has slowly been chipped away by the Roberts Supreme Court over the last 12 years. And a pair of court battles over the next year could leave the future of the law even more uncertain.

These new cases came “within the Overton window because of what the justices themselves have done to encourage people to think more aggressively as it relates to the Voting Rights Act,” said Wendy Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the liberal advocacy organization the Brennan Center for Justice. “These are radical changes that would do significant damage to voting rights.”…

The North Dakota case does not present as direct an attack on Section 2 as the one from Louisiana. But a ruling that kills the right for private parties to sue would render the VRA effectively moot, Hasen said. “While a ruling that private parties couldn’t sue wouldn’t look like a death knell, when you’ve got most cases — the lion’s share — being brought by private parties, and you have a Trump Department of Justice that has not and does not appear to be interested in bringing any additional Section 2 lawsuits,” he said, “it would essentially be rendering Section 2 a dead letter.”…

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The Media’s Unfortunate Greater Interest in the Texas Redistricting Car Wreck than the Supreme Court’s Slow Poisoning of the Voting Rights Act

redistricting, Supreme Court, Voting Rights Act

I’ve written about two big election stories this week, the newly ignited redistricting wars starting in Texas and the Supreme Court’s strong signal that it could kill off the Voting Rights Act Section 2 by next June. Judged by my conversations with those in the media, Texas redistricting is the bigger story, but I think the VRA is—especially coming on the 60th anniversary of the passage of the Act.

It’s not surprising that the media is more attracted to the Texas story. It happens right now with great visuals of fleeing legislators and threats to bring in the FBI, and Democratic governors vowing to engage in tit-for-tat warfare. The harms to democracy are easy for everyone to see.

But when the Supreme Court acts, it’s very hard to make exciting for the public. A cryptic briefing order issued at the start of a summer weekend does not make good visuals. You don’t get sound bites from Justices Alito and Sotomayor. The action will take place in dense, technical briefs, over months.

So when the Supreme Court kills another aspect of democracy and does it with slow poison, it is much harder to get the public to pay attention. But the lasting cost to our democracy is likely to be far greater than the redistricting skirmishes happening in prime time.

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Free Access to New Cambridge U Press Book: “The Future of Press Freedom: Democracy, Law, and the News in Changing Times”

cheap speech, First Amendment theory

This is a great collection edited by RonNell Andersen Jones and Sonja West, and even better that it is open access. (Full book pdf.) I’m honored to have the final version of my chapter here, “From Bloggers in Pajamas to the Gateway Pundit: How Government Entities Should and Do Identify Professional Journalists for Access and Protection.”

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My New One at MSNBC Opinion: “Trump started a redistricting war. Only Congress can stop it.”

redistricting, Supreme Court, Voting Rights Act

I have written this piece for MSNBC Opinion. It begins:

A sudden war over redistricting has broken out in Texas and looks to spread across the country, with California, New York and elsewhere considering tit-for-tat Democratic partisan gerrymanders to negate the Republican hardball in Texas. Congress, rather than the courts, is in the best position to stop the upcoming race to the bottom. But even though it’s in everyone’s interest that Congress act, don’t hold your breath….

It is possible the courts will block some of these gerrymanders if it can be shown, for example, that they violate the Voting Rights Act. But the Supreme Court just signaled that it may further weaken or kill Voting Rights Act claims in redistricting cases. With that red flag, and with the court’s decision to allow unlimited partisan gerrymandering, the courts are not likely to get the country out of this vicious cycle.

Congress can stop the madness at any point. The Constitution gives Congress the power in Article I to “make” or “alter” state rules for running congressional elections, including redistricting. Congress could outlaw mid-decade redistricting, require the use of commissions, or set a standard barring the most egregious partisan gerrymanders.

In the current polarized atmosphere in Congress, and with Trump (who would have to sign such legislation) looking to impose “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time” to preserve Republican power, a bipartisan deal to avoid a redistricting war seems most unlikely. But as the Cold War taught us, détente is better than mutually assured destruction for all the parties. Those who suffer the most are the voters, who should not be packed in or cracked out of districts simply because their party is in the minority.

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