AP: When Donald Trump lost the legal shield of the presidency last month, some pundits speculated federal prosecutors might revive an investigation that implicated him in possible campaign finance crimes during his 2016 run for office.But several people involved in … Continue reading
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Open Secrets reports a completely unsurprising piece of news: The House took steps to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of her committee assignments Thursday, punishing the freshman member for trafficking baseless conspiracy theories and promoting violence against Democrats before … Continue reading
Ian Vandewalker at Brennan: In a recent blog post, law professor and election law expert Richard Pildes raised a concern about the For the People Act (H.R. 1/S. 1), the major democracy reform package moving through Congress. He notes that the campaign finance reform … Continue reading
NYT: In the latest volley in the battle over disinformation in the presidential election, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation has been sued by an obscure tech company that has accused his cable networks of defamation and contributing to the fervor that … Continue reading
Jocelyn Benson, Katie Hobbs and Steve Simon CNN oped. … Continue reading
Ned Foley WaPo oped: The country’s electoral and voting system is in dire need of fundamental change — most urgently, to deal with the pernicious practice of partisan gerrymandering. The filibuster might stand in the way of making this critical … Continue reading
Molly Ball for Time: A second odd thing happened amid Trump’s attempts to reverse the result: corporate America turned on him. Hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, called on him … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
Jowei Chen and I just posted this article, forthcoming in the California Law Review, on the consequences of changing the unit of apportionment from persons to adult citizens. The abstract is below: What would happen if states stopped equalizing districts’ … Continue reading
Zoe Tillman for BuzzFeed: Former president Donald Trump formally responded Tuesday to the charges filed by House Democrats in his second impeachment, denying that he incited a mob to violently descend on the Capitol building to stop Congress from certifying … Continue reading
Bob Bauer NYT oped: So less than a month after the events of Jan. 6, the impeachment process might be foundering on the remarkable claim — one that some senators seem to have adopted disingenuously so that they can avoid … Continue reading
From Axios: January was Sen. Josh Hawley’s best fundraising month—by far—since his 2018 election, with a flood of small-dollar donations more than eclipsing the corporate cash he lost after leading an effort to block certification of President Biden’s Electoral College … Continue reading
With the Democrats starting to push onto the agenda the package of political reforms titled the “For the People Act,” more attention is going to start getting focused on the provisions for campaign-finance reform. Those provisions involve a 6:1 small-donor … Continue reading
NYT: The new legal team that former President Donald J. Trump has brought in for his impeachment trial next week is unlikely to focus his defense on his baseless claims of widespread election fraud and instead question whether the trial is even constitutional since … Continue reading
WaPo: House Democrats made their case to convict former president Donald Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in a sweeping impeachment brief filed with the Senate on Tuesday that accused Trump of whipping his supporters … Continue reading
WaPo editorial. … Continue reading
Spotlight PA: Pennsylvania’s top election official is expected to resign her position after her agency’s staff discovered a mistake that will block voters from deciding this spring whether to allow survivors of decades-old sexual abuse to sue the perpetrators, according … Continue reading
ProPublica: In the week leading up to the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., that exploded into an attack on the Capitol, a top Trump campaign fundraiser issued a directive to a woman who had been overseeing planning for the … Continue reading
I wrote this column for Democracy Docket on each congressional chamber’s power to judge the elections of its members. This power lies dormant today. But it has been used in the past to fight voter suppression, racial discrimination, and corruption. … Continue reading
CNN: Former President Donald Trump’s office announced that David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor, Jr. will now head the legal team for his second impeachment trial, a day after CNN first reported that five members of his defense left and his team … Continue reading
Significant NYT retrospective from Jim Rutenberg, Jo Becker, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, Matthew Rosenberg, and Michael S. Schmidt. … Continue reading
This looks to be important: Every Vote Counts: What’s Next After the 2020 Election? Part 4: 2020’s Record Voter Turnout—Is this the new norm? Thursday, February 4 at 12:00pm to 1:00pm Virtual EventThe USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and the Center … Continue reading
The International Journal of Constitutional Law (ICON), perhaps the top peer-reviewed journal on comparative constitutional law, has a lead article in its forthcoming issue by Stephen Gardbaum, entitled Comparative Political Process Theory. Drawing on challenges to democracy in a number … Continue reading
Craig Becker and Amy Dru Stanley NYT oped: The campaign against mail balloting in union elections is Amazon’s latest assault on industrial democracy. And it is one corrosive to political democracy as well.Following the lead of state legislatures and courts during the … Continue reading
Jan Zilinsky, Jonathan Nagler and Joshua Tucker at WaPo’s Monkey Cage. … Continue reading
WaPo: Bracing for the prospect of a likely acquittal, Senate Democrats are eyeing a rapid-fire impeachment trial for former president Donald Trump — as short as one week — while also contemplating alternatives such as censure that could attract more support … Continue reading
Voter ID Laws Are Bad. But Some Are Better Than Others (Wash Monthly) Republicans react to 2020 defeats by trying to make it harder to vote (CNN) … Continue reading
Arizona Republic: After months of sounding the alarm on what she claimed was a stolen presidential election, Kelli Ward is facing questions about her own reelection Saturday as Arizona Republican Party chair.Sergio Arellano, the southern Arizona businessman who narrowly lost to … Continue reading
Four part series at Stanford with dynamite speakers delving into Democrats’ proposed election reform measure, H.R. 1. You need to register to watch. … Continue reading
I just posted this book chapter on redistricting commissions around the world, based on the first ever survey of commission members. It’ll be part of the Comparative Election Law volume that Jim Gardner is editing. The abstract is below: This … Continue reading
DOJ: A Florida man was arrested this morning on charges of conspiring with others in advance of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to use various social media platforms to disseminate misinformation designed to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to … Continue reading
Fear of voting roundup. … Continue reading
Peter Salib & Guha Krishnamurthi have posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, U Chicago L Rev. Online). Here is the abstract: Economists will tell you that your vote does not matter. Or at least it does not matter if what … Continue reading
WaPo: Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit Monday seeking more than $1.3 billion from Rudolph W. Giuliani, the lawyer for former president Donald Trump who played a key role in promoting the falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged.The … Continue reading
#1 on Marshall Cohen of CNN’s list? Subverting the 2020 Election. Number #2: Inciting an insurrection. … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy blogs. … Continue reading
Wisconsin State Journal: In December, with then-President Donald Trump continuing to falsely claim that massive fraud and other voting irregularities had denied him a second term, top Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature said they were reviewing “thousands of complaints” about the Nov. … Continue reading
Miles Parks for NPR. … Continue reading
Today’s Court orders make no mention of those cases, even after they have been relisted, making eventual cert grants less likely (though still possible). More likely is that the Court won’t hear the cases, but one or more Justices will … Continue reading
Back in 2009, when the issue of abolishing the Senate filibuster was also being discussed, I wrote this piece for the Balkinization blog on the history of the filibuster. Now that this issue is being intensely discussed again, I’m re-posting … Continue reading
Watch archived video of my conversation this week with Michelle Deutchman of the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. … Continue reading
Back on November 24, I noted a temporary blog slowdown as I completed work on a book manuscript and contemplated the future of ELB. As regular readers know, that slowdown never happened, because election law remained deeply relevant as President … Continue reading
Maggie Haberman for the NYT: President Donald J. Trump left Washington aboard Air Force One for a final time on Wednesday, the iconic plane creeping along the runway so the liftoff was timed to the closing strains of Frank Sinatra’s … Continue reading
Syracuse.com: State Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte has ordered the Oneida County Board of Elections to go through more than 1,000 ballots in the 22nd Congressional District race, more than 70 days after the election was held.It’s the latest turn … Continue reading
WaPo: Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made his most definitive break yet with President Trump on Tuesday while the leader of the incoming Democratic majority laid out an ambitious agenda for the opening weeks of the Biden administration, signaling a dizzying … Continue reading
Roll Call: Senate Democrats, on the cusp of holding the slimmest possible majority in the chamber, signaled Tuesday a symbolic first order of business: a major overhaul of the nation’s voting, campaign finance and ethics laws.The measure, dubbed HR 1 … Continue reading
NYT: A new Supreme Court case is calling into question the sincerity of corporate America’s reckoning with political giving. Many companies and trade groups say they are re-evaluating political donations after the riot in the Capitol, demanding accountability for lawmakers who challenged … Continue reading
Great conversation yesterday accessible here. … Continue reading
Michigan Public Radio: There will be a new Republican serving on the bipartisan state board that certifies election results – most recently President-elect Joe Biden’s Michigan victory last November. Governor Gretchen Whitmer – a Democrat – selected Tony Daunt from a list … Continue reading
The Michigan Journal of Gender & Law is seeking submissions for its Fall 2021 issue centered on the topic of gender and democratic processes. The Journal welcomes all submissions that deal with, for example, the role of gender in election processes, public discourse or parliament. More details … Continue reading