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

That’s a line from this Reuters story, which shows that the cut-off in corporate contributions to candidates who objected to the electoral vote count has been more than offset by the increase in small donations. From 2008-2018, the Democrats… Continue reading

That’s the title the NYT gave my latest piece. I’ll include an excerpt here, though it’s a bit hard to excerpt this one because I raise reform proposals in four different areas: American democracy faces alarming risks from extremist… Continue reading

The Atlantic published this essay of mine on the impeachment trial. Here are some excerpts: A risk exists that the Senate impeachment trial will focus too narrowly on the events of January 6, which culminated in the attack on the… Continue reading

Open Secrets reports a completely unsurprising piece of news: The House took steps to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of her committee assignments Thursday, punishing the freshman member for trafficking baseless conspiracy theories and promoting violence against Democrats before… Continue reading

From Axios: January was Sen. Josh Hawley’s best fundraising month—by far—since his 2018 election, with a flood of small-dollar donations more than eclipsing the corporate cash he lost after leading an effort to block certification of President Biden’s Electoral… Continue reading

With the Democrats starting to push onto the agenda the package of political reforms titled the “For the People Act,” more attention is going to start getting focused on the provisions for campaign-finance reform. Those provisions involve a 6:1 small-donor… Continue reading

The International Journal of Constitutional Law (ICON), perhaps the top peer-reviewed journal on comparative constitutional law, has a lead article in its forthcoming issue by Stephen Gardbaum, entitled Comparative Political Process Theory. Drawing on challenges to democracy in a number… Continue reading

Back in 2009, when the issue of abolishing the Senate filibuster was also being discussed, I wrote this piece for the Balkinization blog on the history of the filibuster. Now that this issue is being intensely discussed again, I’m re-posting… Continue reading

The NYT has broken a story that includes coverage of confidential meetings I’ve been involved in with the country’s business leaders since the election about what role they can play in supporting the stability of American democracy. I think the… Continue reading

This is an illuminating story from the Austin American-Statesman about the spread of misinformation. The context is whether President Trump would lose his pension, travel stipend, and other benefits if convicted in the Senate trial. The false information here is… Continue reading