With the coronavirus and candidates both in their 70s, I have been getting many questions about what happens if, unfortunately, a presidential candidate dies or becomes incapacitated at various points between now and Inauguration Day. The Washington Post today has… Continue reading

At the Supreme Court oral argument yesterday in the “faithless electors” cases, Justice Kavanaugh creatively invoked what he called “the avoid-chaos principle of judging,” by which he meant that “if it’s a close call or a tiebreaker” . . . … Continue reading

From today’s Washington Post: South Korea’s April 15 elections resulted in no new coronavirus infections, authorities announced. Following the two-week incubation period, no new cases could be traced to the 29 million people lining up to cast ballots.

For those looking for a break from virus-related election issues, Michael Parsons and I have posted on SSRN this article, titled The Legality of Ranked-Choice Voting. The reason for the question we address is explained in this abstract for… Continue reading

At Verdict, Dean Vik Amar and Professor Jason Mazzone have a piece which focuses not on what the right federal-court remedy in the Wisconsin litigation was, but whether there was any substantive federal constitutional violation in the first place. This… Continue reading

From this story, which begins this way: Cancellation of citizenship oath ceremonies and in-person interviews because of coronavirus means hundreds of thousands of people may not naturalize in time for November’s elections. If ceremonies and interviews remain shut down… Continue reading

By my count, about 107,871 absentee ballots came in after April 7th and on or before April 13th. Put another way, this amounts to 6.96 percent of the total votes cast for the percent of absentee ballots that came in… Continue reading

In advance of the WI primaries, most people expected turnout to be significantly lower than normal. In what is perhaps an example of anchoring bias, many journalists continue to write stories referencing the supposedly “low turnout,” as in a NYT… Continue reading

Here is some brief perspective on turnout in the Wisconsin election — Of the voting-age population, 34% cast a ballot in this year’s primary. This is higher than the 31% average for all presidential primaries in WI from 1984 to… Continue reading

I’m very pleased to recognize here that Nate Persily and Rick Valleley have won Guggenheim Fellowships — Nate for his project called Securing a Democratic Digital Future and Rick for Uncle Sam’s Closet: Lesbian and Gay Enfranchisement and the American… Continue reading

From the NYT live feed this morning: As South Korea pressed ahead with its first election since the coronavirus pandemic began, masked voters showed up on Friday at the country’s 3,500 balloting stations. They were required to stand at three-foot… Continue reading

I have put together some numbers and a framework for starting to assess this question (the numbers are taken from the Wisconsin Election Commission’s website today). As of now, it appears that the State managed to send out 12,216 fewer… Continue reading

Marty Lederman has presented a criticism of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Wisconsin election litigation, but, with admirable humility (he puts “I think” in the title of his post), he concedes that he may be overlooking something in arriving… Continue reading

The virus is prompting questions about what would happen if a presumptive presidential nominee or a nominee becomes incapacitated in a variety of circumstances: before the primaries have ended, after that but before the conventions, or after the conventions. I… Continue reading