New analysis from the National Task Force on Election Crises. … Continue reading
Category Archives: electoral college
The National Task Force on Election Crises has issued this analysis. … Continue reading
Cass Sunstein has posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: With respect to the election of the U.S. President, the U.S. Constitution is vague and full of silences and gaps. When the vote is close, and when people … Continue reading
The Atlantic: Many Americans know that counting all of the votes in this November’s presidential election is going to take extra time. Few people realize there’s a specific deadline by which states must finish.The 1887 Electoral Count Act seems like an … Continue reading
John Koza Hill oped: The National Popular Vote compact has already been enacted into law by 15 states and the District of Columbia (together possessing 196 electoral votes) and will take effect when enacted by states with 74 more electoral … Continue reading
Jesse Wegman NYT column. … Continue reading
No surprise. … Continue reading
Atlantic ideas piece: In that event, who ought to be obeyed as commander in chief starting at noon on January 20: a reelected President Trump, or an Acting President Pelosi?The best time to act to avert this disaster scenario is … Continue reading
You can find the complaint at this link. As Ben Jacobs noted the other day, this may be the first time a candidate for President has been sued by one of the candidate’s purported presidential electors. … Continue reading
Alex Keyssar NYT oped: As our revived national conversation on race has made clear, the legacies of slavery and white supremacy run wide and deep in American society and political life. One such legacy — which is particularly noteworthy in … Continue reading
Kevin Johnson at The Fulcrum. … Continue reading
Jesse Wegman NYT column. … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy blogs. … Continue reading
Nina Totenberg for NPR: Even Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who represented the rogue electors before the Supreme Court, appeared only mildly disappointed at the loss. “We took this case initially because we just thought this needed to be … Continue reading
The Court’s decision in Chiafalo (the Washington election case) is at this link. The per curiam opinion in Baca (the Colorado case), with Justice Sotomayor recused, is at this link. The decision is a great relief because a contrary decision, … Continue reading
The other day Tim Wirth and Tom Rogers wrote: How Trump Could Lose the Election and Still Remain President. Ned Foley responds in a thread starting here: 1/5 I very much support idea of congressional hearing on 12th Amendment & … Continue reading
Roll Call: The nation’s 133-year-old law for picking a president has a provision that has never been needed to settle a disputed election, since it deals with a situation that would only happen after a cascade of seemingly improbable events.Then … Continue reading
With Kate Shaw, Jamelle Bouie, Brad Smith and Tara Ross. … Continue reading
Lou Jacobson for the Cook Political Report: Every four years, political obsessives like to scare themselves like kids around a campfire, sharing stories about weird presidential election outcomes — such as a divergence between the popular and the electoral vote … Continue reading
Jerry Goldfeder column. … Continue reading
Listen. … Continue reading
Josh Blackman and Seth Barrett Tillman blog. … Continue reading
Tonight at 6:00pm ET, Intelligence Squared U.S. holds its first two-on-two virtual debate, arguing over the motion “The Electoral College Has Outlived Its Usefulness“.New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and Cardozo law professor Kate Shaw argue in favor of the motion.Former FEC Chairman Bradley A. … Continue reading
Lyle Denniston: No matter how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the current constitutional controversy over voting by electors in the Electoral College, members of that body will meet in their own states next December to cast crucial votes for … Continue reading
Adam Liptak for the NYT: The Supreme Court seemed ready on Wednesday to allow states to require members of the Electoral College to cast their votes for the presidential candidates they had pledged to support.In two arguments concerning “faithless electors” … Continue reading
You can watch here. … Continue reading
Justices from the left and right are worried about what it would mean to hold states can’t police electors who want to violate the requirement that they vote in line with the popular vote for president in the state. Justice … Continue reading
Steve Mazie for The Economist. … Continue reading
Linda Greenhouse NYT column. … Continue reading
Larry at Medium: It is so rare to be able to write such a headline. But when it is true, given the rightful importance that the Dean of Election Law’s opinion has to so many, it is an important headline … Continue reading
[Bumping to the top] This is a very important conversation Monday: REGISTER NOW Pull up a (virtual) seat as a panel of nationally recognized legal scholars, political scientists, and experts in election administration, Electoral College procedures, and presidential succession grapples with the … Continue reading
The latest podcast from Franita and Foley. … Continue reading
You can find it here (Derek Muller and David Post have first two entries.) … Continue reading
Jeffrey Abramson has written this article for the Emory Law Journal Online. … Continue reading
William Josephson has posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The Myth of National Popular Vote Presidential Elections and the Reality of Elector Unit Rule Voting discusses in unprecedented depth if the proposed National Popular Vote Interstate Compact … Continue reading
This should be good: Join us for a lively and timely discussion about the Electoral College –its contentious history, shortcomings, and potential reform –with Ned Foley, Director of Election Law at OSU’s Moritz College of Law, and Jesse Wegman, New York … Continue reading
Order. And it appears that the oral argument will be livestreamed. This means we should have an opinion by the end of June unless the Court extends the term. … Continue reading
Sean’s post is about limits on state legislative power in relation to NPV, but the issue goes well beyond that in this period of crisis. … Continue reading
Tyler Creighton in the Boston University Law Review. … Continue reading
Josh Chafetz reviews Jesse Wegman’s new book, Let the People Pick the President. … Continue reading
WaPo: Justice Sonia Sotomayor will not participate in one of the two cases the Supreme Court will hear in April to decide whether the Constitution forbids states from dictating how members of the electoral college cast their votes for president.The clerk of … Continue reading
Michael Morley has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Harvard Law and Policy Review). Here is the abstract: The National Popular Vote Compact requires member states to appoint presidential electors based on the outcome of the national popular vote in … Continue reading
AP: The winner-take-all system Texas and 47 other states use to assign Electoral College presidential votes is constitutional, a federal appeals court said Wednesday.A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans unanimously upheld a … Continue reading
Vinod Bakthavachalam and Reed Hundt NYT oped: The answer is that in this century the Electoral College system strongly encourages candidates of both parties, and particularly any Republican candidate, to ignore the national popular vote. That’s especially true for President Trump: The … Continue reading
Listen to Texas Public Radio: The Electoral College has the ultimate decision-making power when choosing the next president and members are supposed to — and in some states required to — vote for the winner of their state’s popular vote. … Continue reading
The Court’s order granting and consolidating the two cases is here. From my earlier Slate piece on these cases: As Lessig explained to me, the Supreme Court “should have the opportunity to reflect on the question without it determining an … Continue reading
The latest issue of The Canvass leads off with a primer on some of the policy options for choosing electors (and the pending litigation on whether the choices of “faithless electors” can be punished or superseded). … Continue reading
Ned at CNN: How can it be that our electoral system is so vulnerable to the personal fancies of individual plutocrats? I explore the answer in my new book, but the short of it is that our Electoral College was designed … Continue reading
You can find the brief (Jim Bopp counsel of record) here. … Continue reading