“Why Alaska needs ranked-choice voting “
Op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News from Jacob Begich, after his father, Sen. Mark Begich, wrote a WSJ op-ed opposing RCV.
All posts by Richard Pildes
“Despite virus threat, Black voters wary of voting by mail”
From AP News, in the Bellefontaine Examiner:
Fears that the coronavirus pandemic will worsen, Victor Gibson said he’s not planning to take advantage of Michigan’s expanded vote-by-mail system when he casts his ballot in November.
The retired teacher from… Continue reading
“Supreme Court’s ‘summer break’ has become a series of consequential actions”
From Bob Barnes at the WP:
But the court’s customary summer lull? It never arrived.
Instead, responding to emergency pleas for intervention, the justices allowed federal executions to resume for the first time in 17 years. They threw up … Continue reading
“Trump’s own intelligence officials contradict his repeated claims of mail-in voting fraud”
From CCN:
US intelligence officials on Friday discounted the possibility of foreign countries mass producing fake ballots to interfere in the November elections, contradicting President Donald Trump’s continued insistence that mail-in voting poses a significant threat to election security.… Continue reading
Ned Foley Op-Ed on the Legitimacy of the Fall Election
In the NY Daily News:
The elections will remain scheduled for Nov. 3. The question will be whether procedures to be used will be sufficient to permit every eligible voter wishing to participate to have an adequate opportunity to… Continue reading
Important: Preventable Fall Election Nightmare Looming in Michigan and States with Similar Policies
This story from Yahoo News is titled “GOP intransigence in Michigan could lead to a chaotic presidential election.” The story identifies an issue that I have been hammering away at since way back in March. There are going to be… Continue reading
“The Hidden Mess That Could Cost Democrats Up to Two Points in November”
From David Wasserman at The Cook Political Report:
The real danger is a perfect catastrophe of administrative overload, postal delays and voter error that could lead to millions of absentee ballots not counting. And this year, unlike the past, those… Continue reading
“State shifts position on COVID-19 and absentee voting in arguments before Tennessee Supreme Court”
TN law permits absentee voting only for one of 12 specified reasons. A lower court held, as a matter of state constitutional law, that no-excuse absentee voting was required, given Covid-19. The case was argued yesterday before the TN Supreme… Continue reading
“Dark money and PAC’s coordinated ‘reopen’ push are behind doctors’ viral hydroxychloroquine video”
From NBC news:
A dozen doctors delivered speeches in front of the U.S. Capitol on Monday to a small crowd, claiming without evidence that the coronavirus could be cured and that widely accepted efforts to slow its spread were… Continue reading
“Postal Service backlog sparks worries that ballot delivery could be delayed in November”
The Washington Post’s Michelle Lee and Jacob Bogage write:
The U.S. Postal Service is experiencing days-long backlogs of mail across the country after a top Trump donor running the agency put in place new procedures described as cost-cutting efforts, alarming… Continue reading
“Democratic state party groups in traditional and emerging swing states are seeing a huge cash influx from donors looking to beat Trump”
For those of us who believe strong political parties, at both the national and state level, are important for a strong democratic system of politics and governance, this story from Politico identifies a noteworthy development:
Once ignored, underfunded and often… Continue reading
Trump Continues to Press Distinction Between Absentee Voting (Good) and “Universal Mail-in Voting” (Bad)
From about 1/2 hour ago, the same position I flagged earlier:
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
33m
Glad I was able to get the very dishonest LameStream Media to finally start talking about the RISKS to our Democracy from dangerous Universal… Continue reading
How Greater Transparency Might Have Increased Polarization in Congress
That appears to be the conclusion of this new paper by Ed Stiglitz and Aviv Caspi entitled “Observability and Reasoned Discourse: Evidence from the U.S. Senate”.
Here’s the abstract:
Many private and public institutions depend on reasoned discourse to… Continue reading
Pres. Trump’s Tweets on “Mail-in Voting”
With all the attention focused on his “delay the election” tweet, I want to highlight another aspect of this morning’s tweets about voting.
The President begins by praising absentee voting: “With Universal Mail-in Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good)… Continue reading