All posts by Richard Pildes

Analysis of the Supreme Court’s North Carolina Racial Redistricting Case

May 22, 2017, 10:17 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

[This post will soon also appear at the SCOTUS blog] The main take-away from today’s decision is that the Supreme Court is continuing the project of winding down unnecessary racial redistricting. The decision reflects the Court’s effort to modernize the… Continue reading

What To Look for When the Supreme Court Decides the North Carolina Redistricting Case

May 5, 2017, 11:57 amredistricting, Supreme Court, Voting Rights ActRichard Pildes

The Court has already decided one major racial redistricting case this Term, Bethune-Hill, from Virginia. The other major racial redistricting case, Cooper v. Harris, from North Carolina, is now one of three cases outstanding the longest since argument. Cooper involves… Continue reading

Russian Efforts Regarding Claims of Voter Fraud

April 20, 2017, 6:38 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

Reuters has broken this story, said to be based on confidential documents prepared by a Putin-controlled Russian think tank, on various strategies for interfering in our 2016 elections. Among all the other revelations, this particular tidbit stood out as one… Continue reading

The House Freedom Caucus is Effective Precisely Because it is Not Politically Fragmented

April 5, 2017, 12:35 pmUncategorizedRichard Pildes

Two recent essays at the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, here and here, describe the various means through which the Freedom Caucus has turned itself into an effective, unified bloc within the Republican Party. Until I read these pieces, I… Continue reading

The WI Gerrymandering Case and the Costs of Mandatory Jurisdiction

April 4, 2017, 8:59 ampolitical parties, redistrictingRichard Pildes

The 2-1 federal court decision striking down Wisconsin’s redistricting plans for the state legislature as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, Whitford v. Gil, is without doubt the most significant lower federal court decision on partisan gerrymandering the lower courts have ever… Continue reading

The Voters Trump Persuaded

March 28, 2017, 1:05 pmUncategorizedRichard Pildes

From Nate Cohn’s Upshot column, which now has the most detailed data analysis on the voting patterns in the 2016 election: Instead, it’s clear that large numbers of white, working-class voters shifted from the Democrats to Mr. Trump. Over… Continue reading

Political Fragmentation and the Demise of the Health Care Act

March 26, 2017, 11:38 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

Over at the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, I have a piece today that puts into a larger context the remarkable inability of the Republican Party to get the AHCA through the House. Here is the opening: The failure of… Continue reading

NC Court Relies on “Unitary Executive Branch” Principle to Block Changes to State Board of Elections

March 18, 2017, 6:41 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

In holding that the NC legislature’s post-election changes to the design of the State Board of Elections violates the NC Constitution, see here, the state courts held that the Governor must be able to have effective control over this… Continue reading

Today’s Important Decision in Bethune-Hill

March 1, 2017, 11:21 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

As someone who litigates these cases and has written extensively about racial redistricting, I consider today’s decision a major new precedent with broad implications, not just for racial gerrymandering issues, but for partisan gerrymandering ones potentially as well. Because I… Continue reading

When Politics Becomes Existential

February 26, 2017, 11:29 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

Judge Laurence H. Silberman has been a respected conservative judge for more than 30 years on the D.C. Circuit and has extensive executive branch experience as well. Alarmed by the erosion of long-standing institutional practices and norms concerning the appropriate… Continue reading

“Meet the Math Professor Who’s Fighting Gerrymandering With Geometry”

February 22, 2017, 12:10 pmUncategorizedRichard Pildes

From Chronicle of Higher Education: “Changes to voting rules that used to be considered by courts before they could be implemented,” Ms. Duchin says, “are now implemented first and the courts consider them after the fact.” Because of the increase… Continue reading

Gerrymandering Has “Little to No Effect” on the Partisan Composition of Congress

February 13, 2017, 12:52 pmUncategorizedRichard Pildes

That is the finding of an important new paper co-authored by one of the leading social science experts on districting, Professor Jowei Chen. In recent years, a debate has been taking place over whether it is particularly aggressive Republican gerrymandering… Continue reading

Remedies in the WI Partisan Gerrymandering Case

January 6, 2017, 9:20 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

The League of Women Voters has offered some interesting suggestions for the remedial approach the federal court should take in this case. The brief suggests the legislature should be given the first shot, but with the use of institutional structures… Continue reading

NC Litigation Over Legislative Changes to Board of Elections

January 5, 2017, 8:55 amchicanery, election administration, election law and constitutional lawRichard Pildes

Yesterday, as this blog noted, Governor Cooper filed his brief in his effort to block the last-minute changes the North Carolina legislature made to abolish the existing state board of elections and replace it with a newly configured one.… Continue reading