Rick Hasen linked to this story already, but I wanted to add some additional excerpts from political insiders. These excerpts bolster the concerns I’ve expressed for some time now about small-donor money fueling the more extremist forces in politics: “The… Continue reading

It’s well-known that one of the issues to keep in mind about public-financing of elections in the United States — whether traditional forms of public financing or small-donor matching funds approaches to public financing — that there is still likely… Continue reading

Ray La Raja is one of the leading political scientists who writes on campaign finance issues and political polarization. With his co-author, Zach Albert, he has a new working paper that examines small-donor funding patterns for moderate and extreme candidates… Continue reading

Just ran across this story on the 12 most gerrymandered House districts, according to some experts The Fulcrum surveyed in 2019. Here is the comment on this district, OH 9, from Jason Fierman, founder and managing director of The Redistrict … Continue reading

President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court includes several academic figures with ties to the election-law field, including Guy-Uriel Charles, Michael Kang, Heather Gerken, Bertrall Ross, and me, as well as the Commission’s Co-Chair, Bob Bauer. It’s a terrific group… Continue reading

From Politico’s Huddle: Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the controversial MAGA firebrand, raised over $3.2 million in the first three months of this year, according to a source close to her campaign. That eye-popping haul came from over… Continue reading

One of the most heavily contested voting-policy issues in the 2020 election, in both the courts and the political arena, was the deadline for returning absentee ballots. Now that it’s possible to get data on this issue, I put… Continue reading

This Bloomberg piece has a lot of good data on which candidates benefit most and least from small donations. Some excerpts: Democrats in Congress are trying to increase the clout of small donors, yet a provision in their voting-rights legislation… Continue reading

Israel’s election system requires a party to receive at least 3.5% of the vote to obtain any seats in the Knesset. With 91% of the vote in, 13 parties have won seats in the 120-seat parliament. Here is the current … Continue reading

Jessica Huseman is one of the journalists who has covered election administration issues in great depth over recent years. Although she supports much of HR 1 in principle, she has published a blistering critique which argues that the bill would… Continue reading

While election numbers are still coming in, the current analysis is that the pro-Netanyahu bloc of parties would be able to muster at most 59 seats, and the anti-Netanyahu bloc 56 seats. In Israel’s 120-seat Knesset, control of 61 seats… Continue reading

Just ran across this nice graph, from @davidschor, which illustrates that from the 1960s until 2016, the Electoral College was more often biased toward Democrats, and by a larger amount, than toward Republicans. This also shows how dramatic the… Continue reading

From Cal Matters: Voters are first asked whether they would like to give the incumbent the boot. Then, in a second question, they are asked who ought to be the replacement. Under California law, incumbents can’t run to replace… Continue reading

From this NYT story, which was also linked to below: The jockeying comes as the party struggles to chart its path forward after losing the House, the Senate and the White House during Mr. Trump’s tenure, with moderate… Continue reading