Enough time has passed since the Court asked the parties to file letters on the jurisdictional issues that it seems highly unlikely the Court — if it is going to dismiss the case — will do so with a one-line… Continue reading

It’s understandable that much of the reaction to the Milligan decision on the VRA is to be stunned that the Roberts Court would endorse the VRA claim and require Alabama to create a second ability-to-elect congressional district for black voters… Continue reading

There will be a temptation to see this decision as an affirmation of the status quo. But in a subtle way, I think the decision does more than that. New technology, as in this case, now enables plaintiffs to search… Continue reading

Nick posted about a piece in the Election Law Journal on the topic of potential religious-based gerrymandering claims. I wanted to flag an essay a student of mine wrote on the same subject in the NYU Law Review. That piece… Continue reading

I’ve posted this new essay, forthcoming in the U. Chicago Legal Forum, on SSRN. Here’s the abstract: Democratic systems inevitably seek to reflect and realize a range of values. But democratic and legal theory in recent decades have given… Continue reading

From the Guardian: As North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban is due to come into effect on 1 July, an analysis from the non-profit Center for Political Accountability (CPA) shows several major corporations donated large sums to a Republican political organization… Continue reading

“The data suggest that ideologically-driven donors from outside of the state have increased in relative importance in recent cycles. In 2012, candidates took 7%, on average, of all of their out-of-state money from ideologically-driven donors. That percentage nearly doubled over… Continue reading

Open Secrets has a major new report on the critically important new role that contributions from out of state now play. This is both a reflection of the nationalization of politics, but also a further contributor to that nationalization. Here… Continue reading

From the WP: This historic city has long fueled Democratic victories in Pennsylvania, helping candidates for president, governor and U.S. Senate run up huge margins to offset Republican advantages across most of the state. But more recently, the once… Continue reading

Two stories, one from Germany, the other from Spain, illustrate this dynamic. These stories also exemplify the political fragmentation that now characterizes the PR democracies. On Germany, from Bloomberg, both summaries via John Ellis’ substack: The Alternative for Germany,… Continue reading

From @ShaneGoldmacher at the NYT: The DeSantis campaign said it had around 40,000 donors in May as “we raised over” $8.2 million, according to text messages and emails to supporters asking for more donations. That works out to an average… Continue reading

We're revisiting one of the most important Supreme Court cases you’ve probably never heard of. A case so stressful that it pushed one justice to a nervous breakdown, brought a boiling feud to a head, and changed the course of… Continue reading

This was one of the more fascinating pieces I’ve read on the sources of weakness in modern state parties, how that weakness affects their competitiveness, and the role of non-party, outside donors in that process. We’ve known that the McCain-Feingold… Continue reading

Odd WP headline, since that’s the point of having any rules for inclusion. But here are the details — these are the rules for the first debate only: The Republican National Committee will require presidential candidates to attract 40,000 individual… Continue reading