The opinion has some really interesting ballot initiative issues, including the timing of election contests, and pre-election v. post-election challenges, with some dissents largely on procedural issues. From Lucas v. Ashcroft (lightly revised):

Twelve departing members of Congress offer their thoughts in a N.Y. Times opinion video. The responses focused on attempting to fix the culture of Congress–how members from opposite parties used to get along but now don’t. To the extent,… Continue reading

Order list.

…for serving as primary ELB blogger these last few weeks. I’ll be blogging this week, then we will start another rotation of folks next week.

During last week’s arguments on this issue, the Special Counsel took the position that there are a significant number of limitations on potential criminal prosecutions of ex-Presidents. These limitations would provide ex-Presidents with functional immunity, when they apply. They are… Continue reading

Very interesting report from Paul Kane of the Washington Post of a day-long meeting of 7 former Republican and six former Democratic members of Congress: “Their ideas ranged from a major rethinking of how the body works to symbolic changes… Continue reading

I very much appreciate Tabatha’s follow-up to my earlier post, and I especially appreciate her discussion of the new article Dismantling the Party System: Party Fluidity and the Mechanisms of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Politics by Rachel A. Shelden and Erik… Continue reading

USA Today reports. The article begins: “The Republican National Committee and its lawyers are going state to state seeking to influence what laws and procedures will govern the November election.” I think it’s only fair to point out, which the… Continue reading

POLITICO: “On Tuesday, the Trump campaign sent a letter to pro-Trump, external organizations asking them to attend an “entirely off-the-record, private,” and “invite-only” meeting with senior campaign officials, according to a copy of the letter obtained by POLITICO. The… Continue reading

A new Common Ground Democracy essay, drawing upon Rick Pildes’s work, to discuss why it’s wrong to rely solely on a hope for increased civic virtue, among either politicians or voters, to protect democracy from authoritarianism. Instead, institutional reforms… Continue reading

Disturbing development as reported by CNN: “Georgia’s Coffee County suffered a cyberattack this month that forced the county to sever its connection to the state’s voter registration system as a precautionary measure, three sources familiar with the matter told… Continue reading

The journal PS: Political Science and Politics has published a special issue on the topic of Democracy Backsliding. Papers include The Resilience of Democracy’s Third Wave by Stephen Levitsky and Lucan Way. Other papers concern how to measure democratic backsliding… Continue reading

That’s the message of the majority leader in Maine’s House of Representatives. For more, Newsweek has a story. So do several Maine media outlets (available on Google News, although at least one is behind a paywall).

N.Y. Times. Adam quotes Pam Karlan, Mellisa Murray, and Michael Dorf, as well as excerpts from the oral argument. For example: ‘In the real world, Professor Karlan said, “it’s really hard to imagine a ‘stable democratic society,’ to use… Continue reading