Our friend Gerry Hebert, with a long and distinguished career in voting rights at the Department of Justice and at the Campaign Legal Center (not to mention his role as “Bailout King“), is ill with brain cancer. Jerry is a very fine lawyer and teacher, and an even finer human being. I wish him a full and speedy recovery so that he can get back to mentoring the next generation of voting rights lawyers.

I learned of Gerry’s illness when I spoke to him yesterday, and he told me how much he appreciates all of the words of encouragement that have been sent his way during his treatment. You can learn more about Gerry’s progress and condition by reading his latest Caring Bridge entry.

We wish you all the best Gerry!

LAT:

Michael Berman, who shaped California politics for generations as the mastermind of Los Angeles’ vaunted “Berman-Waxman Political Machine,” died Friday. He was 75.

Berman burst onto the political scene before he was old enough to vote, running Henry Waxman’s first campaign for the state Legislature in 1968 and helping to unseat Democrat Lester A. McMillan, who had represented the Westside for 26 years. But it wasn’t his age or the long-shot win that earned Berman notice, it was his new approach: devising a plan with UCLA sociologist Howard Elinson to harness demographic data to target where campaign mailers should be sent for maximum impact.

Those micro-targeted mailers forever changed how races are won in California and remain standard political operating procedure. Berman used the same approach to carry his brother, Howard Berman, to the Legislature in 1972 over another longtime incumbent. While Michael Berman remained behind the scenes, his methods propelled Howard Berman and Waxman to the top of the political firmament — and kept them there for decades.

The Waxman-Berman Machine, as the trio would begrudgingly be known, became a powerful force that helped elect a network of allies who wielded enormous influence in Sacramento and Washington….

In the 1970s and 1980s, Michael Berman was the go-to expert in redistricting, the once-a-decade process of creating new political maps after each census. He was instrumental in mapping congressional districts that helped Democrats expand their majority. Those methods were not without controversy: Critics said Berman’s strategies manipulated political levers to create safe congressional districts for allies at the cost of fair representation for constituents.

Friends said Berman was a brilliant and blunt Democratic consultant who helped make generations of political careers in the state.

Condolences to his family and friends.

Oregon Public Broadcasting has a deeper dive.

who is (among many other professional accomplishments) a former election law professor, and now the most recent Ninth Circuit judge.

WaPo:

Roy G. Saltman, who as the federal government’s top expert on voting technology wrote a prescient butlittle-read report warning about hanging chads on punch-card ballots more than a decade before the issue paralyzed the nation during the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida, died April 21 at a nursing home in Rockville, Md. He was 90.

The cause was complications from several recent strokes, said his grandson Max Saltman.

Like legions of Washington bureaucrats who are vital figures in their narrow fields but largely unknown to the wider public, Mr. Saltman toiled in obscurity for decades at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where he wrote several reports examining the history of voting devices and the problems with them.

In a 132-page report published in 1988, Mr. Saltman detailed how hanging chads — the tiny pieces of cardboard that sometimes aren’t totally punched out on ballots — had plagued several recent elections, including a 1984 race for property appraiser in Palm Beach County, Fla.

“It is recommended,” Mr. Saltman wrote, “that the use of pre-scored punch card ballots be ended.”

As with many recommendations issued from the bowels of thefederal bureaucracy, Mr. Saltman’s report was paid little to no attention.

Twelve years later, chaos erupted in Florida.

The presidential race between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush ended in a lengthy recount during which election officials spent weeks examining hanging chads. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ended the process, handing the presidency to Bush.

By then, Mr. Saltman’s earlier report was being discussed at congressional hearings and on think tank panels examining what went wrong in Florida.

“It has always puzzled me why my report never got a wider acceptance,” he told USA Today in 2001. “It takes a crisis to move people, and it shouldn’t have.”

Condolences to his family and friends.

Punchbowl:

The Democratic National Committee is parting ways with Democratic super lawyer Marc Elias, multiple sources told us Tuesday.

The DNC and Elias had a number of strategic disagreements, according to sources familiar with the internal deliberations.

Elias has represented the DNC since 2009. His firm, the Elias Law Group, represents all of the major Democratic entities in Washington. Elias will continue to work for the DCCC, DSCC, DAGA and DLCC. And Elias counts a slew of senators and members as clients.

Most notably, Elias, a former partner at Perkins Coie, has been behind what he calls the “Democracy Docket” — an array of voting rights challenges nationwide. On Tuesday, Elias said this covered 45 cases in 18 states. And Elias has a knack for winning these cases, raising the ire of Republicans.

Elias’ firm has pulled in roughly $100,000 this year already from the DNC, according to FEC filings. In the 2022 cycle, the DNC paid Elias’ firm just shy of $2 million, according to campaign reports.

And really, congrats to the USC Gould Law community.  Franita’s the latest thoughtful scholar of democracy (and the third ELB contributor (!), joining Heather and Dan) to step further into law school leadership, and you love to see it.