This piece, in American Purpose by Peter Ackerman, Larry Diamond, Cara Brown McCormick, responds to a critique of RCV by former member of Congress Mickey Edwards. Some excerpts: Edwards’ principled view is that a two-round runoff… Continue reading

The title of this Politico story is “Idaho GOP riven by primary civil war.” An excerpt: Idaho’s dominant Republican Party is at war with itself up and down the ballot ahead of its May 17 primaries. It’s not just Gov.… Continue reading

The current structure of our primary elections is a significant factor in driving candidates and incumbents to the extremes. We know this, and I’ve written about some of the evidence for it here, but it’s always useful to hear… Continue reading

Politico’s story on how JD Vance won the Republican primary contains what is a striking new development in campaign finance. Vance’s campaign itself was not raising large amounts of money, but the massive contributions from Peter Thiel and others were… Continue reading

Interesting speculation about that in this Axios story: What they’re saying: J. Michael Luttig, a former U.S. Court of Appeals judge appointed by the late President George H.W. Bush, told Axios: “Ideally, federal judges would make few, if any,… Continue reading

One of the most consequential, yet not fully appreciated, decisions when the Constitution was formed was the choice of a single-headed rather than plural executive branch. This was an issue much discussed at the time. Putting the power in one… Continue reading

We use party primaries, followed by a single-round general election. Matt Yglesias speculates that, in our system, Le Pen would have won the primary among the party on the right, while Mélenchon would have won the primary among the party… Continue reading

With New York’s highest court now striking down the blatant Democratic gerrymander of NY’s congressional districts, I want to address a point that Nick Stephanopolous @ProfNickStephan has made his “hobby horse” — in his words — throughout this litigation. Nick… Continue reading

From an AP Explainer: Paper ballots tucked in paper envelopes. No absentee voting, and no early voting either. French voters in Sunday’s presidential election are using and old-school system that has defied calls for more flexibility or modernization…. HOW DO… Continue reading

Last week, the Tennessee Republican Party successfully removed from the ballot three candidates who wanted to run in the Republican primary for the congressional seat in TN’s newly created 5th district. One of those removed was Morgan Ortagus, who had… Continue reading

This is a new paper in the Am. Political Science Review from Michael Weaver. Here’s the abstract: After the Civil War, congressional Republicans used sweeping powers to expand and enforce civil rights for African Americans. Though the electoral benefits of… Continue reading

With the confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Jackson to begin tomorrow, the confirmation process itself will once again be in the spotlight. In light of that, I want to call attention again to one of the most detailed, practical set… Continue reading

Yale Law School professors Sam Moyn and David Schleicher have a terrific podcast devoted to discussing new work in legal scholarship. I was pleased to be asked to speak, and be questioned about, my current work on what I call… Continue reading

NYT story re-visists NYT v. Sullivan: The lawyers and First Amendment scholars who have made it their life’s work to defend the well-established but newly threatened constitutional protections for journalists don’t usually root for the media to lose in court.… Continue reading