Michael Ramsey, one of the leading scholars/defenders of originalism, has a post on Rucho at The Originalism Blog that offers a distinct assessment of the decision. Critics of Rucho will like the first half of his analysis, but not the … Continue reading
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(Bumped to the top with correction) Holding election integrity hostage to a political change. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said the governor has signed the bill. This appears to be incorrect, or at least premature. I regret the … Continue reading
Will Baude has an intriguing post suggesting that, even after Rucho, federal partisan gerrymandering claims can still be brought in state court. The rationale is that federal jurisdictional doctrines like standing, mootness, and justiciability don’t apply in state court. So a state court … Continue reading
In its decision last year in Whitford, the Court provided all kinds of clues about what a successful partisan gerrymandering claim would look like. It would be district-specific, not plan-wide. That way it would be congruent with the standing inquiry … Continue reading
Michael Wines for the NYT. … Continue reading
NYT: Thursday’s 5-4 ruling means that North Carolina’s current Republican-drawn map delineating its 13 Congressional districts — a map that critics have said is among the country’s most egregious examples of hyper-partisanship — will stand. The decision could also embolden … Continue reading
I’ll have more to say about the Court’s appalling opinion in Rucho in Rick’s symposium next week. But I want to flag one point now: the Court’s erasure of racial vote dilution doctrine. This is the doctrine that allows groups … Continue reading
Yesterday at the Balkinization blog, I put up this perspective on the Court’s Census decision. Here is a bit of that analysis: Today’s decision in the Census case is a powerful example of what I call an “institutionally realist” approach … Continue reading
WRAL editorial. … Continue reading
Peter is retiring as the Money and Politics reporter at NPR after a great run. I’ve always benefitted from Peter’s tenacity and his excellent reporting skills. Happy Retirement and we will miss you on the beat! … Continue reading
This should be good. … Continue reading
NYT: The House on Thursday approved expansive election security legislation that would mandate the use of backup paper ballots and postelection vote audits to guard against potential foreign meddling, seeking to pressure Senator Mitch McConnell to lift his blockade of … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
LAT reports. … Continue reading
TPM: If the Trump administration does not want another round of discovery into whether its census citizenship question was discriminatory, it has until Monday to tell the judge who is currently considering the claim that it is backing down from … Continue reading
“We are in Mad Max territory now, there are no rules.” –Justin Levitt to NPR, “Supreme Court Rules Partisan Gerrymandering Is Beyond The Reach Of Federal Courts.” … Continue reading
Arizona’s Law reports. … Continue reading
From this Washington Post piece by Amber Phillips: That’s what redistricting advocates in North Carolina plan to do next. “North Carolina can’t force redistricting reform on its legislature, but it can take it to the state courts, and we will … Continue reading
I have posted this piece at Slate. It begins: Despite a favorable ruling for opponents of the census citizenship question on Thursday, the Supreme Court did not definitively decide to exclude citizenship question from the 2020 census. Indeed, I expect that … Continue reading
After today’s disastrous decision, here are some things that line-drawers could do in the future: Instruct a computer algorithm to generate huge numbers of maps that comply with all nonpartisan criteria and produce as large and durable an advantage as … Continue reading
That’s the title on Larry Bartel’s op-ed in today’s NYT about reforming the presidential primary process. It’s noteworthy that there’s been an outpouring of commentary and academic work in the past few years urging re-consideration of the nominations process we … Continue reading
The latest missive. … Continue reading
WaPo: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top-polling candidate in the first Democratic presidential debate tonight, also has the most ambitious plan for how to protect U.S. elections from foreign hackers.But that aim-for-the-fences approach, which Warren introduced in an eight-page blog post Tuesday, … Continue reading
Important Greg Sargent interview with Sen. Wyden. … Continue reading
Watch: You can find my full written testimony here. … Continue reading
LAT: With potentially hundreds of thousands of California voters under the mistaken belief that they are registered as independent from partisan affiliation, newly drafted state legislation could end the confusion by forcing one minor political party to change its name.The … Continue reading
CNN: The US’s largest election equipment manufacturer has begun quietly lobbying Congress to force all voting equipment to create a paper trail, a sharp departure after years of selling paperless digital machines that can’t be fully audited. The change of … Continue reading
NYT’s The UpShot reports. … Continue reading
Wapo reports. … Continue reading
Watch: pic.twitter.com/JDS4zUXXJG— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2019 … Continue reading
Release via email: Free Speech For People has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the National Election Defense Coalition (NEDC) to uncover communications about election security to and from the National Association of Secretaries of State. The lawsuit under the … Continue reading
Civics Center report. … Continue reading
The Tampa Bay Times reports. … Continue reading
In his dissent in today’s decision in Gundy v. United States, Justice Gorsuch repeatedly claims that excessive congressional delegation to agencies threatens to undermine congressional accountability. “[B]y directing that legislating be done only by elected representatives in a public process, … Continue reading
Michael Tomz and Jessica Weeks for The Monkey Cage: In March and April 2018, we surveyed 2,948 U.S. adults, who resembled the general U.S. population with respect to gender, age, geographic location and race. The online survey asked all participants … Continue reading
NYT: A Ukrainian-Russian developer who wanted access to President Trump’s inauguration filed a lawsuit on Tuesday saying he was bilked out of the $200,000 he paid for what he thought would be V.I.P. tickets to the event.The developer, Pavel Fuks, who … Continue reading
Here: Top Downloads For: LSN: Election Law & Voting Rights (Topic) Recent Top Papers (60 days) As of: 19 Apr 2019 – 18 Jun 2019 RankPaperDownloads1.Ballot-Marking Devices (BMDs) Cannot Assure the Will of the Voters Andrew Appel, Richard DeMillo and Philip StarkPrinceton University, Georgia … Continue reading
538 reports. … Continue reading
Justice Alito has always had a particularly keen interest in redistricting, which I assume traces to his father’s involvement with the redistricting process during his work with the New Jersey legislature. Thus, I am not surprised he wrote the dissent … Continue reading
You can find the opinion here. … Continue reading
The SF Chronicle reports. … Continue reading
Listen here. … Continue reading
NYT: President Trump on Wednesday invoked executive privilege to block Congress from obtaining documents about how a citizenship question was added to the 2020 census, ahead of a House committee vote to recommend that two cabinet secretaries be held in … Continue reading
Colin Feasby analysis. … Continue reading
The KC Star reports. … Continue reading
It’s Buckley v Valeo that matters Cameron. Not Citizens United. Nothing changes, guns don’t disappear, the USA doesn’t become a true Democracy until Buckley/Valeo is overturned. Worst Supreme Court decision in history. And that’s saying something. @cameron_kasky https://t.co/HwzAe8s8CK— Stevie Van … Continue reading
This is a long, extensively detailed story from the Guardian Australia about the rapid spread on social media, in the closing days of the Australian election, of a completely false claim that the Labor Party had a secret plan to … Continue reading
Rob Richie and David Daley: If May’s biggest political surprise was the new ruler of Westeros on “Game of Thrones,” the result in Australia’s national election were a close runner-up.For weeks, opinion polls had predicted that the Labor Party would … Continue reading
Miles Parks reports for NPR. … Continue reading
Stanford University has released one of the most detailed reports thus far, involving work by numerous experts in cybersecurity and digital communications, about what the U.S. needs to do to ensure the security of American elections. Some of the major … Continue reading