At The Conversation, Derek offered his perspective on current election law issues. A few excerpts: One group has said that “Americans’ access to the vote is in unprecedented peril.” What do you think?I would not say that. These election… Continue reading

From Politico: The top political adviser to one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors privately urged fellow Democrats last week to abandon the push around federal voting rights legislation in favor of legislative items with better chances of passage.Dmitri Mehlhorn,… Continue reading

From Georgetown law professor David Super, in the Washington Post: This perspective is remarkably shortsighted. Although the filibuster has blocked central parts of the Democratic program in recent years, it has done the same for key features of the… Continue reading

I’m pleased to announce that Franita Tolson, Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at USC Gould School of Law, will be joining The Law of Democracy casebook for our next edition. Hard to believe the… Continue reading

From John Curiel, at Real Clear Politics: What can be done about redistricting? Unfortunately, with moderate Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema protecting the Senate filibuster, not much at the national level. Likewise, Republicans have no reason to give… Continue reading

Surprisingly harsh critique from liberal election-law expert Ned Foley in his latest Washington Post piece: H.R. 1 passed the House with zero Republican votes, and the companion S.B. 1 has zero GOP support in the Senate. That’s because… Continue reading

From the Chicago Tribune: Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who as a candidate vowed to veto any partisan redistricting plan for the legislature, signed into law Friday new partisan-drawn districts for the General Assembly and state Supreme Court designed to… Continue reading

From Politico: Candidates competing in the June 22 primary are banking on support in New York’s traditional battleground areas. But the advent of a ballot system allowing voters to rank up to five people in an eight-way field —… Continue reading

From The Dispatch: My conservative attachment to those institutions—most obviously the Bill of Rights—doesn’t make me anti-democratic. It makes me committed to the things that work to ensure the survival of both democracy and individual liberty over time.Think about… Continue reading

I have been reading Erik J. Engstrom’s book, Partisan Gerrymandering and the Construction of American Democracy, which is a tour de force on the history of partisan gerrymandering. I decided to put this post together to convey a sense of… Continue reading

From the Chicago Tribune (note that the one-person, one-vote doctrine does not apply to election districts for elected state supreme courts): In addition to the legislature, Democrats doubled-down on their cartography skills, passing the first redrawing of Illinois Supreme Court… Continue reading

A disturbing story about the just-completed race for Mayor in Anchorage: For Anchorage election workers, this month’s mayoral runoff was like no other. Citizen observers crowded outside the Election Center, photographing workers and writing down their license plate numbers. Inside,… Continue reading

From David Frum (@davidfrum), at The Atlantic (sub-titled: An overambitious faction of the activist left is standing in the way of voting-rights reform): Here are two leading examples. Republican gerrymandering works by stuffing as many as possible of a state’s… Continue reading