Detroit News: In an about face on mail-in voting in Michigan, President Donald Trump took to Twitter Monday to encourage voters to request absentee ballots and vote early. Trump’s latest messaging on mail-in voting marks a mercurial swing from May, when the president threatened … Continue reading
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Equally American blogs. … Continue reading
Order. (The order makes other changes as well.) Update: The opinion is here. … Continue reading
Opinion here. … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy writes. … Continue reading
Elie Mystal for The Nation. … Continue reading
Paul Blumenthal for HuffPost. … Continue reading
Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker. … Continue reading
NYT visits with Robert Putnam (author of the famous “Bowling Alone” book) to talk about voting during a panedmic. … Continue reading
Andrew Appel blogs. Probable election meltdown statesWhat would be really dysfunctional would be to encourage vote-by-mail, but then to wait until November 3 (or November 2) to start processing those envelopes. That’s a recipe for election meltdown. The states that … Continue reading
Very worrying story: More than a dozen counties in Pennsylvania have seen election directors or deputy directors leave in the last year since a new law was passed to accommodate no-excuse mail-in voting across the state, three county officials familiar … Continue reading
This from Politifact is very important and well done. … Continue reading
Politico: Politico Magazine asked more than a dozen legal thinkers — law professors, litigators and constitutional scholars — to tell us how RBG’s life and work reshaped America. Many pointed to her work as a champion of women and voting … Continue reading
NPR: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural, and feminist icon has died. The Supreme Court announced her death, saying the cause was complications from cancer.Architect of the legal fight for women’s … Continue reading
WaPo: Early voting for the November election kicked off Friday in four states as voters showed up in person to cast their ballots, driven by a sense of urgency about the divisive presidential election, growing unease over the timely delivery … Continue reading
Yahoo: Just 22 percent of Americans believe this year’s presidential election will be “free and fair,” according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll — a disturbing loss of confidence in the democratic process that could foreshadow a catastrophic post-election period with millions … Continue reading
Opinion. … Continue reading
TAP: Several more-established conservative legal groups mask themselves with the branding of well-known pro–voting rights organizations. There’s the American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU; formerly the American Civil Rights Union), which could easily be confused with the American Civil Liberties Union … Continue reading
That’s a quote from Dr. Annabelle de St. Maurice, MPH, an assistant professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases who leads the Pediatric Infection Control and is the co-chief infection prevention officer for UCLA Health. That’s from this … Continue reading
The Atlantic reports. … Continue reading
Very helpful from Poynter. … Continue reading
Politico with a very good set of responses from Republican Senators: Senate Republicans on Thursday forcefully rejected President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the 2020 election results might not be accurately determined, but largely declined to address previous bipartisan conclusions that … Continue reading
Religion News Service reports. … Continue reading
Joe Pompeo for Vanity Fair. … Continue reading
Edward Luce is one of the best analysts of Western democracy, as reflected in his 2017 book, The Retreat of Western Liberalism. In his piece in the Financial Times, on the nature of this fall’s election, he ends on this … Continue reading
CNN: According to Wray, Russia is using social media, proxies, state media and online journals to sow “divisiveness and discord” and “primarily to denigrate Vice President Biden and what the Russians see as kind of an anti-Russian establishment.”Intelligence officials have … Continue reading
I want to highlight one intriguing aspect of this decision. The state adopted no-excuse absentee voting in a law passed in 2019, before the pandemic. That meant that the surrounding laws were not written for the volume of absentees likely … Continue reading
Jonathan Lai for the Philly Inquirer: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended the state’s mail ballot deadlines on Thursday, a move that could allow tens of thousands of additional votes to be counted — and will likely draw criticism from Republicans … Continue reading
You can find the majority opinion here. (I do not yet have the concurring/dissenting opinion). Update: Concurring-and-Dissenting-Opinion1Download … Continue reading
CNN: After months of warnings about the risks posed by in-person voting in a push to expand access to mail-in ballots, Democrats across the country are increasingly focused on communicating to voters that it is safe to cast their ballots in … Continue reading
Release: With mail-in voting underway and early in-person voting coming up in many states, Common Cause today released its 2020 Democracy Scorecard to help voters evaluate the records of their members of Congress.The 2020 Democracy Scorecard provides data on every current member of the … Continue reading
AP: South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law Wednesday changes in South Carolina voting rules allowing anyone to cast an absentee ballot without a reason in November’s general election to help fight the spread of COVID-19.But the changes passed … Continue reading
Details. … Continue reading
News from Michigan: Local election clerks in Michigan downloading absentee ballots for residents overseas were given ballots that listed Trump’s Republican running mate as Jeremy Cohen, who is the Libertarian Party candidate for vice president. https://t.co/8PfJnTJVt2— WOOD TV8 (@WOODTV) September … Continue reading
New book from James L. Leloudis and Robert R. Korstad: America is at war with itself over the right to vote, or, more precisely, over the question of who gets to exercise that right and under what circumstances. Conservatives speak … Continue reading
Whoa: Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor of the Supreme Court of Ohio issued the following statement today: I condemn in the strongest possible terms both the statement released by the Ohio Republican Party on September 15, 2020, and its unsigned authors. … Continue reading
BPC event: September 18, 2020 from 2-3p.m. ET There are a number of serious threats facing the elections in November. From … Continue reading
Andrew Appel blogs. … Continue reading
You can find the opinion in Thompson v. DeWine here. This is in line with earlier panel decisions, which I criticized in this University of Chicago Law Review Online piece. … Continue reading
Things have gotten even uglier in the drop box case. Read the motion. … Continue reading
This well-researched Thomas Edsall NYT essay is my must-read piece of the day. It’s subtitled: “Apocalyptic terms” have taken over the 2020 election, with potentially dangerous implications. I’m not going to try to post an excerpt, because it would be … Continue reading
Pennsylvania, under divided government, nonetheless recently created a new “Election Advisory Board.” I’m flagging this because many of us have advocated for various forms of independent or bipartisan boards or commissions to oversee the election process. This new Board has … Continue reading
Great lineup of contributors in this new book edited by Eugene Mazo and Michael Dimino’s, The Best Candidate: Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times. (20 percent discount from publisher with code: TBC2020) Here is the Table of Contents: Introduction, by Eugene D. Mazo … Continue reading
I wrote yesterday that it was quite odd that SOS LaRose was not going to comply with a declaratory judgment that he has no right to block the use of drop boxes for the return of Ohio ballots. “As a … Continue reading
Ilya Somin: It’s no secret that, if the presidential election turns out to be close, there might be serious disputes over who actually win. President Trump has repeatedly suggested he might not accept an election result that goes against him, claiming that … Continue reading
You can listen here: https://twitter.com/TMI_LDF/status/1306249150879727616?s=20 … Continue reading
Very much looking forward in participating in this event, one of many marking Georgetown Law’s 150th anniversary (registration required): Wednesday, October 7: Georgetown Law at 150: Alumni and Faculty in ConversationVoting Rights Panel featuring:Sylvia Albert (L’06), Director of Voting and Elections at … Continue reading
From the Guardian: Election experts are deeply worried about the chaos from a scenario in which Trump leads in-person voting on election night, claims victory, only to see his lead evaporate as more mail-in votes are counted. Election law experts … Continue reading
Order here. … Continue reading