I’m delighted to announce that Rebecca Green of William & Mary Law will be joining ELB as a contributor. She will post on issues and interests from time to time, and she will also take a turn each year as a primary ELB blogger.
I’ve long admired Rebecca’s work, especially on election administration and the potential costs and benefits of transparency in administration.
Please join me in welcoming Rebecca!
A fitting event today for the great Jim Gardner, whose scholarship is exceeded only by his decency and generosity as a colleague. I’m sorry to miss this:
Jim Gardner is a distinguished scholar of constitutional law, election law, and comparative law whose work has shaped the field for more than three decades. The author of six books and more than 60 articles, he is among the most prolific and influential voices in public law. A gifted political theorist, an inspiring teacher, and a dedicated academic administrator, Jim has exemplified the life of an engaged scholar.
As he enters emeritus status after an extraordinary career, GardnerFest celebrates his contributions to election law. We have gathered a distinguished group of academics to honor his work, reflect on his influence, and meditate on the insights that have defined his scholarship.
Roundtable One: Illiberalism, Populism, Ethnonationalism, and Authoritarianism: Assessing the State of American Democracy
Roundtable Two: What Campaigns Are For in 21st-century American Democracy?
Roundtable Three: Federalism, Parties, and Judicial Review: The Limits of Structural Restraints?
Concluding Roundtable: Digital Communication and Democratic Backsliding: The Rise of Deilocracy
Adam Liptak profile for the NYT:
The Ford Foundation, the nearly 90-year-old international philanthropy, is now in the cross hairs of the Trump administration, which has called for scrutiny of the organization as part of a broad crackdown on the left.
In her first interview in her new role, the incoming Ford Foundation president, Heather K. Gerken, said Friday that the foundation, which has a long history of supporting social justice and civil rights initiatives, was undeterred.
Her central priority, she said, was “defending the rule of law and protecting our election system.”…
Vice President JD Vance, himself a Yale Law alumnus, has long been a harsh critic of philanthropies that he said support liberal causes, and of the Ford Foundation in particular.
“Why don’t we seize the assets of the Ford Foundation, tax their assets and give it to the people who’ve had their lives destroyed by their radical open-borders agenda?” he mused in 2021 as a Senate candidate.
He has not let up. In September, Mr. Vance denounced the foundation by name in the aftermath of the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, suggesting the administration could go after its nonprofit tax status.
Asked about Mr. Vance’s comments, Ms. Gerken responded with a history lesson.
“When the Ford Foundation funded the civil rights movement, it was a source of controversy,” she said. “It was incredibly important that we were protected in doing that work. When the Ford Foundation stood up to protect free speech and dissent during the McCarthy era, it was incredibly important that we had the right to do that.”…
Ms. Gerken, for her part, insisted that protecting democracy is a nonpartisan goal.
“No one believes that an election system should not be free and fair,” she said. “No one believes that people should not have the right to speak. These are the bedrock commitments of any democracy, and it’s really important to hold fast to them.”
Asked for practical examples of what the foundation’s emphasis on protecting democracy would entail, Ms. Gerken pointed to securing the infrastructure of elections.
“We’re going to do everything we can,” she said, “to protect the ability of election administrators to carry out a free and fair elections, to make sure that every citizen has an opportunity to vote without fear or intimidation and that those votes are properly counted.”…
Ms. Gerken’s fellow election-law specialists said she faces a daunting task.
“The institutions of American democracy are being torched right now,” Professor Persily said. “The question for all of us working in the democracy space is to consider new institutions that might be built from the ashes.”
Pamela Karlan, another voting rights specialist at Stanford, said Ms. Gerken might set an example.
“The Ford Foundation could be a real leader in getting other parts of civil society to start speaking up and pushing back,” she said. “That’s already starting, but there isn’t a clear focal point and she might provide that.”
Ms. Gerken said she also took a long view.
“There isn’t just the work of now, of this moment, which is incredibly important,” she said. “We are also going to need to dream a new democracy into existence.”….
I’m so glad to see Heather in this role, and Ford’s commitment to helping safeguard American democracy. We in this struggle need all the help we can get.
I just learned the very sad news that Joshua Spivak, the country’s leading expert on recall elections, died suddenly this summer of a heart attack. He was generous with sharing his immense knowledge on recall elections, and a go-to source on every facet of them.
I learned of his death when I, as I have scores of times, referred a reporter asking a recall-related question to him. There’s no one else quite like him.
Condolences to his family and friends.
You can read a tribute to him here at the California Constitution Center and this deep remembrance from one of his bosses, Allan Ripp.
This weekend, FSU will host the 2025 Election Law Conference. Jacob Eisler is the organizer, and I am serving as an informal advisor. This conference is a sequel to last year’s Election Law Conference at Washington University in St. Louis, which primarily featured the work of junior scholars. My hope is that our field will have an annual conference going forward and that it will continue to grow over time.
You can find the fantastic line-up of speakers here and below:
12:30 p.m. – Lunch and Welcome Remarks (Erin O’Hara O’Connor) – D’Alemberte Rotunda
2:15 p.m. – Theorizing Representation (Jacob Eisler, moderator) – MCB 208
3:30 p.m. – Break (Coffee) – D’Alemberte Rotunda
4:00 p.m. – Electoral Process under Strain (Alex Tsesis, moderator) – MCB208
5:30 p.m. – Break (Snacks/Beverages) – D’Alemberte Rotunda
6:00 p.m. – Keynote Speaker Stephanopoulos, Redistricting Without Tradeoffs, (Jacob Eisler intro) – D’Alemberte Rotunda
8:30 a.m. – Breakfast – D’Alemberte Rotunda
9:15 a.m. – Democratic Process in the Shadow of Economic Power (Amanda Driscoll, moderator) – MCB 208
10:30 a.m. – Break (Coffee) – D’Alemberte Rotunda
11:00 a.m. – Districting and Democracy (Travis Crum, moderator) – MCB 208
12:15 p.m. – Final Remarks & Lunch – D’Alemberte Rotunda
Gabriel Sterling, a leading defender of Georgia’s voting system who famously called for President Donald Trump to condemn election threats in 2020, entered the Republican race for secretary of state on Thursday.
Sterling, 54, immediately becomes the most well-known candidate in the race to succeed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his former boss….
Sterling garnered the national spotlight in December 2020, when he stood at the steps of the Georgia Capitol and told Trump to speak against threats to election workers.
“Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get killed. Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language,” Sterling said Dec. 1, 2020. “This has to stop. We need you to step up.”
Five weeks later, on Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol turned deadly.
Sterling, who was chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office until he resigned this summer, is a lifelong Republican but became the target of conservatives who distrust Georgia’s election equipment….
Ed was a great lawyer and a kind and gentle man. From the LDF announcement:
The Legal Defense Fund (LDF) mourns the loss of Edward Still, an attorney whose legal advocacy in voting rights and redistricting transformed democracy in Alabama and across the nation. Over the course of his illustrious five-decade career, Mr. Still led powerful voting rights litigation and advocacy, representing Black voters and other voters of color in more than 200 cases under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mr. Still passed away at 79 years old on September 1, 2025.
“We are profoundly saddened by the loss of attorney Edward Still, a legendary voting rights advocate and close legal partner of LDF,” said Todd A. Cox, LDF Associate Director-Counsel. “Mr. Still’s tireless commitment to protecting the rights of Black communities in Alabama helped build political power and strengthen our nation’s democracy. With a sharp legal mind and an extraordinary spirit, Mr. Still advanced the fulfillment of America’s most foundational values of equality and justice for all. We extend our deepest condolences to Mr. Still’s family and loved ones. His legacy will endure through the continued fight for a fair and inclusive democracy.”
Mr. Still began his legal career in Tuscaloosa in 1971, later practicing in Birmingham for more than two decades before serving as Director of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C., from 1997 to 2001. He subsequently worked as Special Counsel at Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky LLP before returning to Birmingham, where he continued his work on behalf of communities across Alabama and beyond.
For more than fifty years, Mr. Still led groundbreaking litigation to solidify the promise of full democratic participation for Alabama communities. Mr. Still was part of the legal team in City of Mobile v. Bolden, the Supreme Court case that led to Congress amending the Voting Rights Act to strengthen its protections against racial discrimination in voting in 1982. He then helped litigate Dillard v. Crenshaw, the landmark case that transformed local elections throughout Alabama to allow Black representation in local government. Mr. Still maintained a close relationship with LDF for many years through voting rights and redistricting litigation, including serving as co-counsel on a number of cases including Dillard v. Crenshaw, Mobile v. Bolden, Escambia County v. McMillan, Shelby v. Holder, Pensacola v. Jenkins, Hayden v. Pataki, Bozeman v. Lambert, Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board, and Cromartie v. Hunt.
Mr. Still also advised Alabama cities on redistricting, served as general counsel to the Alabama Democratic Party, and played a key role in major election contests, including representing former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley. His expertise and dedication made him one of the nation’s leading voices in redistricting and voting rights law.
You can download it here.
Dave Levinthal profiles Craig Holman for the Washingtonian”
When Craig Holman first came to, he found himself in George Washington University Hospital hooked up to machines.
His ribs, hip, and knee were shattered. His ankle, too. He had suffered a brain bleed.
The victim of an early-March car crash—another driver struck Holman’s 2002 stick-shift Saturn after running a red light on Pennsylvania Avenue—Holman would spend a week in intensive care and three more in various hospital wards. Surgeries would follow surgeries. Much of the time, he couldn’t leave his bed without assistance.
And still he couldn’t stop thinking about Donald Trump.
For hours and hours, Holman would fixate on the newscasts emanating from the TV above his bed. Body broken, his mind seethed at what he saw as gross abuses of power by the President: firing thousands of federal workers, issuing massive tariffs, targeting law firms perceived to have worked against his political or personal interests, letting his Department of Government Efficiency run amok. Holman wasn’t happy with Congress, either, which he viewed as feckless, a legislature surrendering its constitutional clout to an overstepping executive.
“You’re sitting there, watching Trump on the news doing some obvious violation of the law, and you’re thinking, ‘I’d be filing a complaint right now if I were home!’ ” Holman says.
Of that, there’s little doubt. The 69-year-old Holman is a leading member of a peculiar Washington tribe: advocates for good government. Also known as “goo-goos,” they fight to regulate lobbying, limit the influence of money in politics, keep elected officials honest, and otherwise “drain the swamp” in the pre-Trumpian sense of the phrase.
For 23 years, Holman has been on the frontlines working as the government-affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, the progressive nonprofit founded a half century ago by consumer advocate Ralph Nader. In the best of times, the job can feel thankless, even Sisyphean. Outnumbered and outspent, goo-goos perpetually push the rock of reform up Capitol Hill, only to be pulled back down by the stubborn gravity of wealth and self-interest.
And these are not the best of times. Between an ongoing explosion of political spending and Trump’s return to the White House, goo-goos are on their back foot, confronting a new crisis almost daily. To wit: As emergency workers rescued Holman by cutting through both his car and his beloved leather jacket, the President signed an executive order establishing a government Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, never mind that Trump is heavily invested in the World Liberty Financial crypto-trading platform and launched an eponymous cryptocurrency—$TRUMP coin—days before his inauguration.
I recently learned that Bob Mutch, who has written the most comprehensive and important histories of campaign finance regulation in the United States, died in August 2022.
Bob was a political scientist by training, but he wrote excellent histories of campaign finance law and politics in the United States, including two books that I constantly rely upon in my own research, Campaigns, Congress, and Courts: The Making of Federal Campaign Finance Law (Praeger 1988) and Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform (Oxford University Press 2014). The work is extremely careful, lively, and helpful, including some details that have not appeared in any other work on this history.
Here is the blurb I wrote for the Oxford book:
The book is no doubt the leading historical account of the debate over campaign finance regulation from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Mutch has mined a wealth of primary sources to paint the most detailed picture possible (consistent with the paucity of the early historical record) of the financing of U.S. federal campaigns and the national debate over that financing. Mutch usefully ties current judicial debate to the earlier historical record, providing valuable context and serving as a corrective to much of what passes for historical analysis in the U.S. Supreme Court’s campaign finance opinions.
Here is Michael Malbin’s review of that book, the Schaffner & LaRaja book, and my own Plutocrats United.
Bob was always generous with his time and his comments on other work. He gave great comments on my scholarship and we had a great, but intermittent correspondence; the last email I received from him came a few months before he passed, when he congratulated me on my move to UCLA.
Researcher Sam Garrett, writing in his personal capacity, passes along these thoughts: “Robert Mutch’s meticulous research was and is indispensable to how I learned about campaign finance in the United States. His writing was thorough, clear, and enthusiastic. Bob reminded us that campaign finance policy might be rooted in law, but also that debate–and good stories–about money and politics date to the founding of the republic and continue today. He also didn’t stop at campaign finance. Several years ago, when Bob spoke to my American University students, he gave us more than an hour—without notes—on his latest project, about George Washington’s family. It was a privilege to know Bob and to continue learning from him.”
Bob apparently died without any immediate family, and I have been unable to find any obituary for him. So I thought it appropriate to say here at ELB how much he meant to many of us in the election law community. We will miss him, his spirit of inquiry, and his enthusiasm for studying our democracy to make it better.
A true legend pens his last regular column. Fortunately, Dan plans to write more, just on a less set schedule. Wishing him all the best in (semi-)retirement.
Sung Hui Kim has posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This Article examines the role of attorney Kenneth Chesebro in orchestrating the “fake electors plot” following the 2020 U.S. presidential election. It traces Chesebro’s transformation from a Harvard-educated lawyer with Democratic ties to a key architect of Donald Trump’s post-election strategy to derail the transfer of power to Joseph Biden. Part I provides a detailed chronology of Chesebro’s activities between November 2020 and January 2021, revealing how his legal advice evolved from preserving legal rights in Wisconsin to a coordinated plan to impanel alternate electors across multiple battleground states as a pretext for the Vice President to intervene unilaterally in the Congressional certification of the national election on January 6. Part II analyzes the professional discipline case against Chesebro under Model Rule 8.4(c). It examines the principal elements of Chesebro’s strategy and argues that his conduct appears to have involved dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation, warranting professional discipline. Part III interrogates Chesebro’s moral culpability, contending that his actions represent not merely a violation of professional conduct rules but a profound betrayal of public trust and democratic principles. This Article concludes that Chesebro’s moral culpability transcends his violations of the professional conduct rules. By pursuing increasingly aggressive strategies to overturn Biden’s legitimate victory without evidence of outcome-changing fraud, by offering a would-be autocrat with a blueprint for how to subvert the collective will of the voters in contravention of the U.S. Constitution, federal and state laws, and by using his legal expertise to peddle implausible theories designed to exploit procedural leverage to advance a naked power grab, he demonstrated a mind-blowing willingness to undermine democracy itself. Chesebro betrayed the public trust in ways that existing professional conduct rules, which lack explicit duties to preserve democracy, cannot adequately capture or address.
You can download the free Supplement here, current through the Supreme Court’s 2024-25 term. New to this Supplement is an overview of 2024 election litigation, including the lawsuits over the North Carolina Supreme Court election. The Supplement also includes the latest on the Purcell doctrine, edited versions of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Moore v. Harper (independent state legislature theory) and Trump v. Anderson (disqualification for engaging in insurrection), analysis of the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Allen v. Milligan and Alexander redistricting cases, and excerpts from the Supreme Court’s Trump v. United States opinion on presidential immunity.
This is a supplement to Lowenstein, Hasen, Tokaji, & Stephanopoulos, Election Law–Cases and Materials (7th edition, Carolina Academic Press, 2022).
Dan Tokaji here. Thanks to Guy Charles for doing such a great job guest-blogging over the past week. I’m starting my annual two-week stint at the helm, so please feel free to send your suggestions my way (preferably with a link) through July 27.