I’ve been writing now for several years about the political fragmentation of democratic politics. The most recent French and UK elections drive home this thesis with unmistakable clarity. France, in particular, illustrates the perversity of how political fragmentation works. On… Continue reading

We will now go into a stretch where ELB contributors will mostly be taking the reins as primary ELB bloggers for the summer. First up is Dan Tokaji. I don’t know how he does it while deaning. Direct your… Continue reading

NBC News reports.

Release: The American Bar Association Task Force for American Democracy will hold the fourth in a series of listening tour events Tuesday, July 9, with a program in Madison, Wisconsin, featuring local leaders, legal scholars and defenders of democracy. The… Continue reading

This post is a revised version of a nonpublic email I sent yesterday. Several who received the email responded by saying that Lincoln example discussed in the email is useful. Therefore, I’m sharing it here. Yesterday the Washington Post ran… Continue reading

I wrote the following originally as a nonpublic email but subsequently have been asked to make it publicly available. I do so in the spirit that deliberation among scholars about a new Supreme Court opinion as important as the presidential… Continue reading

New Common Ground Democracy essay on yesterday’s SCOTUS decision, with this subtitle: “The effort to prosecute Trump criminally is a consequence of the Senate’s failure to convict him in the impeachment case, and why did the Senate fail in this?… Continue reading

NYT: The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday about executive immunity makes it all but certain that former President Donald J. Trump will not stand trial on charges of seeking to overturn the last election before voters decide whether to… Continue reading

As expected. Analysis to come.

Here’s the link to the recording of the webinar that Election Law at Ohio State held last week on the topic of structural reform of the electoral process–and specifically the policy tradeoffs involved between Instant Runoff Voting (technically, the “Hare”… Continue reading

AJC: Some of Georgia’s most prominent bipartisan leaders are uniting behind an effort to bolster confidence in the state’s election system after years of damage from false claims and discredited conspiracy theories about widespread voting fraud in 2020. The Democracy… Continue reading

Nate Persily is one of our nation’s leading election law scholars (and a friend), with whom I usually agree on many specific matters in our field, but he is quoted today in the N.Y. Times (in an article today … Continue reading

I won’t repeat all of the previous ELB post announcing this webinar on alternative electoral reforms to improve American democracy, especially in light of increasing partisan polarization. I will simply note that the French legislative elections, the first round of… Continue reading

This Washington Post story is full of examples of how extreme rhetoric turns on the spigot of small donations. This isn’t surprising; as I’ve noted, in the days of direct mail, consultants also understood that extreme rhetoric was a key… Continue reading