WaPo: For six months, the rules for how Americans can vote during the coronavirus pandemic have been locked in court battles while states across the country rushed to embrace mail ballots.Now, with just weeks to go before the Nov. 3 election, voting … Continue reading
Rick Hasen
Star Tribune: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig filed a lawsuit Monday to block the delay of the Second Congressional District election, which state election officials pushed to February after the death of a third-party marijuana legalization candidate.Craig, a Democratic freshman incumbent, … Continue reading
New report from the Election Reformers Network. … Continue reading
AP: A judge refused to block a new Republican-backed Iowa law that makes it harder for county officials to process absentee ballot applications and more likely that incomplete requests won’t be fulfilled. … Continue reading
New in Social Science Quarterly: “We find that a decrease of one mile to the nearest drop box increased the probability of voting by 0.64 percent.” … Continue reading
Details: As our nation mourns the loss of Justice Ginsburg—a stalwart champion for gender equality and voting rights—we continue to mark the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which prohibits the federal government and the states from denying or … Continue reading
OC Registrar and I are on this podcast, interviewed (separately) by UCI Conversations Podcast host, Kevin Bossenmeyer. Listen here. … Continue reading
Daily Beast: Over three million Black voters in key states were identified by President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign as people they had to persuade to stay at home on Election Day to help him reach the White House.The revelation comes from an … Continue reading
Watch webcast What are the most important political threats to voting rights and equal representation in American politics today? Why are we seeing such intense partisan fights over voting rights now? How is the coronavirus exacerbating these institutional battles? How … Continue reading
This is quite a lineup for this symposium. Wow! … Continue reading
Watch here. … Continue reading
AP: A federal judge ruled on Monday that every polling place in Georgia must have at least one updated paper backup list of eligible voters to help keep long lines from forming on Election Day if electronic pollbooks used to … Continue reading
Cleveland.com: A federal judge has ruled Ohio’s system of verifying signatures on absentee ballot applications is not burdensome enough to be struck down as illegal, rejecting arguments made by a coalition of voting-rights groups that sued the state.U.S. District Judge … Continue reading
This is something I did not know, and it increases the chances for uncertainty and problems after the election: A Fox News Poll released the same day showed that 59% of Ohio voters planning to cast their ballot in person favor Trump, … Continue reading
NBC News reports. … Continue reading
Axios reports. … Continue reading
Dan Balz WaPo column: Each week has brought evidence of the damage President Trump has done during his nearly four years in office. According to his own words, he is not finished. This past week brought a renewed warning of … Continue reading
Frank Bruni NYT column: On Wednesday The Atlantic rushed its November cover story onto the web with an explanatory, almost apocalyptic note by its editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, that some journalism is too important to wait. The article is about the … Continue reading
Erwin Chemerinsky NYT oped. … Continue reading
NYT: President Trump sought again on Saturday night to cast doubt on the integrity of the presidential election, telling supporters that the only way Democrats can win in Pennsylvania is to “cheat on the ballots” and raising the prospect that … Continue reading
Love this: … Continue reading
Politico: A year before President Donald Trump alarmed Americans with talk of disputing elections last week, his team started building a massive legal network to do just that.Dozens of lawyers from three major law firms have been hired. Thousands of volunteer … Continue reading
Watch here. … Continue reading
AP reports. EVERY state right now should put in place rules beforehand as to how to judge whether a poorly marked oval is counted, and how. … Continue reading
Watch here. … Continue reading
AJC: Georgia election officials said Saturday they found a programming error on the state’s voting touchscreens that caused a row of candidates in the 21-person U.S. Senate special election to disappear at times when flipping back and forth between screens.The problem will … Continue reading
Start here (via Bill Kristol): 1. I was among those who received an e-mail this morning from the former Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, Charles T. Wells. I asked Justice Wells for permission to quote from his e-mail, … Continue reading
News & Observer: The Republican members of the state elections board who resigned in protest earlier this week gave the public false information, the board’s leader said in an emergency meeting Friday.He and the other Democrats who remain on the … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Madison’s parks have become the latest fronts in Wisconsin’s voting wars.The liberal stronghold is hosting “Democracy in the Park” events on Saturday at more than 200 locations across the city, where poll workers wearing yellow vests will assist … Continue reading
That I’d love to see. … Continue reading
Detroit: Three GOP-led groups are making urgent appeals in state court to gain the legal standing needed to appeal and overturn a recent ruling requiring clerks to count late ballots and making changes to the rules governing ballot collection. The Michigan Supreme … Continue reading
AZ Central: Voters confined to hospitals and nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic should be allowed to cast ballots in the November election via video call, Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes said in a court complaint filed in Arizona Superior Court on Friday. … Continue reading
The State: The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond has, at least temporarily, reinstated a ruling by a South Carolina federal judge that would allow S.C. voters who vote absentee to do it without having a witness signature.The ruling was … Continue reading
I did this New Yorker Q and A with Isaac Chotiner. … Continue reading
Watch here: … Continue reading
I have written this piece for the LA Times. It begins: Let’s admit this now: We are not going to have a perfect election in November. We never have perfect elections.There will be reports of ballots sent to voters that … Continue reading
The court’s opinion is here and no doubt there will be an appeal. There’s a discussion of whether this ruling comes too late under the Purcell Principle near the end of the opinion, but it does not get into the … Continue reading
CNN: Joanne Bland was an 11-year-old schoolgirl in Selma, Alabama, when she marched into history, joining hundreds of activists on the Edmund Pettus Bridge for a demonstration that turned into one of the bloodiest confrontations of the civil rights movement.Baton-wielding state troopers … Continue reading
Cleveland.com: A federal judge sidestepped a ruling Friday on whether to place multiple drop boxes in counties across Ohio, saying that he instead will wait to see how a state appeals court handles the matter.U.S. District Judge Dan Polster issued … Continue reading
Detroit News reports. … Continue reading
ADN: The federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will not hear an Alaska elections lawsuit before the Nov. 3 general election, likely eliminating any chance that a judge will require the state to send absentee ballot request forms to all … Continue reading
Key quotes from the Hill: “The Electoral College votes and those are sent to Congress and they declare a winner and then the president becomes president on Jan. 20,” said Mark Braden, an elections lawyer who spent 10 years as … Continue reading
Not fraud, incompetence. (Keep this handy.) … Continue reading
NYT: Senior Pentagon leaders have a lot to worry about — Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Iran, China, Somalia, the Korean Peninsula. But chief among those concerns is whether their commander in chief might order American troops into any chaos around … Continue reading
ABC News: A Justice Department official told ABC News Friday that Attorney General William Barr personally briefed President Donald Trump about the DOJ’s investigation into a small number of ballots in Pennsylvania that were found to be discarded, prior to the information … Continue reading
Daily Beast: To horrified voters, onlookers, and the Democratic opposition, it was another clear instance of the sitting president openly telegraphing his plans to seize power, something some administration officials fear will soon take form within the federal government and among major party … Continue reading
AP: As the pandemic prompts a surge in voting by mail, voters in a handful of states, including the presidential battlegrounds of North Carolina and Wisconsin, are facing a requirement that already is tripping up thousands — the need to … Continue reading
New Jerry Goldfeder column. … Continue reading
Lisa Marshall Manheim has posted this draft of SSRN (forthcoming, Vanderbilt Law Review). Here is the abstract: In recent decades, Presidents of both political parties have asserted increasingly aggressive forms of influence over the administrative state. During this same period, … Continue reading
Forbes: White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows lambasted FBI Director Chris Wray on Friday for correctly playing down the extent of voting fraud and encouraged him to “get involved” with the Trump administration’s efforts to investigate a handful of … Continue reading