Category Archives: political polarization

“Marjorie Taylor Greene is resigning. Here’s what to know about her five years in Congress”

political polarization, primaries

AP News reports Marjorie Taylor Greene is resigning her office to spare her district an ugly primary fight after her fall from Trump’s grace. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution quotes the resignation speech at greater length:

“She said both parties had failed the American people, and she was no longer interested in playing the game as a member of the U.S. House unable to ‘stop Washington’s machine from gradually destroying our country.’ Instead, Greene said, common Americans possess the real power, and once they realize it, ‘I’ll be here by their side to rebuild it.’”

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“Republicans’ Redistricting Push Is at Risk of Backfiring”

political polarization, redistricting

Nate Cohn for the Tilt at the N.Y. Times focuses on the “series of setbacks for the G.O.P. [that] leave[] an unlikely opening for Democrats to narrowly win this year’s redistricting wars.

” . . . .[I]t’s worth being cautious about predicting what will come next. But looking ahead, only two additional states seem likely to redraw their maps: Virginia, controlled by Democrats, and Florida, controlled by Republicans. These two efforts should more or less cancel each other out. But here again Republicans probably face a greater risk of disappointment.”

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“Voting rights groups ask federal judges to block new gerrymandered NC congressional districts”

political polarization, redistricting, ,

NC Newsline’s the Pulse reports on oral arguments yesterday before a federal three-judge panel in Winston-Salem, NC, with respect to the NAACP and Common Cause’s challenge to the newly drawn congressional districts for eastern and northeastern North Carolina–the ones Republicans adopted in October.

The plaintiffs are relying in part on a novel argument that that the mid-decade, voluntary redistricting retaliated against voters, “argu[ing] that the redistricting deliberately targeted the people in that district for how they voted in 2024.”

“Sen. Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell), who was in charge of drawing the districts, was the hearing’s only witness. No racial data was used to create the plan, he said.

‘We undertook the process to improve the partisan advantage for Republicans,’ Hise said. 

Klein argued that if allowed, Republicans would be able to redistrict after every election if they don’t like the results.”

One of the three judges expressed skepticism that plaintiffs could win a preliminary injunction based on a novel argument:

“Judge Thomas Schroeder suggested that the novelty of the retaliation argument would work against opponents’ efforts to have the map blocked until the case can be tried. They have to show a likelihood of success on the merits to win a preliminary injunction.”

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Governor Abbott Relents on Special Election

political polarization

Roll Call reports that Greg Abbott has set a special election runoff for Texas’s 18th District for Jan. 31, 2026. Abbott has delayed setting the date for 9 months, and the election will occur nearly 11 months after the death of Democratic former Rep. Sylvester Turner.

“Republican-led redistricting in Texas added another wrinkle to the contest. Whoever wins the runoff could find themselves facing Democratic Rep. Al Green in the March primary for a full term.”

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Joey Fishkin: “California’s Prop 50 passed. Now, here’s how to end partisan redistricting once and for all “

political parties, political polarization, redistricting

Joey Fishkin with an important piece in the SF Chronicle:

The nationalization of politics also provides an opening to solve this problem. Congress has the power to do what it did in 1842: Enact a statute to bring both parties back from the brink. Congress’ authority to set the “Times, Places, and Manner” of choosing representatives is undisputed. Prop 50 itself, perhaps as a sweetener to help the partisan medicine go down, included an anti-gerrymandering cri de coeur: It “establishes state policy supporting use of fair, independent, and nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide.” 

We need a new federal statute of mutual disarmament — ideally before we reach the point where there are zero California Republicans and zero Texas Democrats. Prop 50’s call for nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide is a good start. So is the bill by Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin (Placer County), who may lose his seat because of Prop 50, which would ban mid-decade redistricting nationwide. 

However, there are major problems to overcome. First, it will be difficult to prevent states from stacking nonpartisan commissions with partisans. Second, the two parties are unfortunately not similarly situated: Both parties benefit from gerrymandering, but Republicans have more opportunities and benefit more. That is part of why Democrats were able to unite their caucus in 2021 behind their democratic reform package, HR1, which included a requirement that every state use a nonpartisan redistricting commission, whereas Republicans do not seem interested in even Kiley’s modest bill. 

Thus, unfortunately, the most plausible route to solving the gerrymandering problem is to elect a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, and a Democrat in the White House, and then make sure they — at their moment of maximum opportunity to lock in partisan advantage through partisan hardball — instead engage in anti-hardball, building fairer rules for everyone. ….

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Fusion and the Freedom to Associate to a Better Politics–New Jersey’s Highest Court Has A One-Time Opportunity

ballot access, political polarization, third parties, , , ,

A bipartisan ABA Task Force on American Democracy recently endorsed the relegalization of fusion voting as a political reform with significant potential “to combat hyper-partisan polarization and the gridlock in governance that such polarization produces.” State courts have a one-time opportunity to make this happen with legal challenges to existing fusion bans pending in New Jersey, Kansas, and Wisconsin. And New Jersey’s highest court has the opportunity to lead the way. But these courts will have to be persuaded that intervention would be a genuine vindication of individual rights, not an instance of judicial activism in favor of a different set of, admittedly, better election rules.

In Fusion and the Freedom to Associate to a Better Politics, recently presented at a symposium of the Kansas Law Review, and now posted on SSRN, Michael L. Thomas, Jr. and I explain how courts should understand the constitutional burdens of anti-fusion laws and why the analysis in Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party (1997) is thin and unpersuasive.

The associational lens, we argue, provides the sharpest take on the constitutional harm. In this post, I offer a preview of the argument at its most basic level in the hopes that this will be intriguing enough to encourage people to read the full article.

Anti-fusion laws infringe on a ballot-qualified minor party’s freedom to associate with its top-choice candidate.

Anti-fusion laws block minor parties from nominating (associating) with their preferred candidate when the candidate is also the candidate of a major party. Anti-fusion laws, thus, essentially force ballot-qualified minor parties to run their second-best friend (or no friend at all). This, we argue, is a direct interference with the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association. Just as each of us treasures whom we associate with, so too a party cares, and has a basic right to choose, who it associates with through its ballot line.

The associational infringements deepen when we consider the rationale: Anti-fusion laws deprive minor parties of the right to run their best friend because, apparently, three is a crowd. Surely, however, if all parties agree to work together, three is not a crowd, but a political alliance.

The state’s move is particularly pernicious if we consider that our system was explicitly designed to ensure that a numeric minority would not be able to exercise political power unless it formed political alliances to ensure majority support. Remember our dear framer, James Madison, in Federalist No. 10.

By preventing minor parties from forming such alliances, anti-fusion laws undercut a minor faction’s only path to political responsiveness: by alliance. Indeed, political alliances through fusion have been the primary way that minor parties have historically vindicated their interests: abolition, maximum hour laws, the Australian ballot and other democratic reforms, to name just a few. Indeed, it was through fusion that the Populist movement reshaped American politics throughout the West in the late nineteenth century.

Anti-fusion laws also infringe the associational freedom of individual voters.

Anti-fusion laws arbitrarily prevent voters from associating with a viable candidate without associating with a major party they despise. Where a state bars fusion, voters who align politically with a minor party are forced to choose between:

  • “wasting” their vote on the minor party’s SECOND-BEST CANDIDATE or
  • casting their vote for A COMPETITIVE CANDIDATE on the line of A MAJOR POLITICAL PARTY, they don’t align with.

A rational voter is going to choose the latter. The only other alternative is to opt out entirely.

Anti-fusion laws thus arbitrarily deprive voters of “[t]he right to associate with the political party of [their] choice;” a right, the Court, in Kusper v. Pontikes (1973), recognized as “an integral part of . . . constitutional freedom.”

Today, these associational burdens fall heaviest on independents, the largest self-identified group in national party identification polling. Fusion, by contrast, allows for a genuine freedom of association. It allows individual voters to associate with their true political allies, while still backing viable candidates. Moreover, by empowering voters to both register for and cast their ballots in support of candidates on the minor party line, it promotes clarity about their preferences in ways that enhance democratic responsiveness and accountability.

Anti-fusion laws also place a direct burden on the ability of ballot-qualified minor parties to manifest their true associational strength.

Anti-fusion laws artificially depress the true associational strength of an already ballot-qualified minor party while hindering its capacity to grow. Anti-fusion laws ensure that election results never accurately reflect the minor party’s real level of support, thereby impeding the ability of political parties to gain supporters (candidates, donors, voters) or form coalitions.

To be clear, the problem is not that fusion gives minor parties a lift up; it is rather that anti-fusion laws artificially depress minor party association.

These are severe burdens on the freedom of association, rendering anti-fusion laws unconstitutional whether a court chooses to apply strict scrutiny or the more forgiving Anderson-Burdick test. The U.S. Supreme Court’s contrary decision in Timmons is based on a misunderstanding of the rights and burdens at stake in these cases.

While the lower courts in the state litigation have followed Timmons’ misguided approach, we hope that state supreme courts will do better. Striking down anti-fusion bans would empower the many in the electorate who feel unrepresented by the two major parties, and offer a realistic opportunity for independent and unaffiliated voters to build political power through non-spoiler minor parties within the confines of the American two-party system. But it would also be legally right: Anti-fusion laws unconstitutionally infringe on fundamental and constitutionally protected rights of political association.

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Very Excited to Announce My New Book Project, “Unbent Arc: The Rise and Decline of American Democracy 1964-2024”

authoritarian threats in US, ballot access, campaign finance, election administration, political equality, political parties, political polarization, Supreme Court, The Voting Wars, Unbent Arc, Voting Rights Act

I’m very excited to be working on this major project, bringing together my many strands of research on democracy and election law. Here’s the Publisher’s Marketplace announcement (the book itself won’t be published until early 2028):

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“Thune Moves to Speed Trump Nominees Past Democratic Blockade”

legislation and legislatures, political polarization

NYT:

Republicans took the first step on Monday toward changing the Senate’s rules to speed the confirmations of Trump administration nominees being slowed by Democratic opposition, touching off the latest in a yearslong tit for tat between the two parties that has weakened the filibuster.

The move is a response to Democrats’ refusal to allow President Trump’s nominees to be considered, which has slowed their confirmations and frustrated the president. But its consequences will reach beyond Mr. Trump’s tenure, effectively whittling down the ability of the minority to register any opposition to executive branch nominees below the cabinet level.

Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, made the first move on Monday by introducing a resolution that would group 48 of Mr. Trump’s nominees together to allow them to be considered and voted on as a group. That will queue up a complex series of floor votes this week and next that, if successful, would create new Senate precedents meant to help Republicans clear a growing backlog of nominees.

Republicans, who hold 53 seats, will try to muscle through the rules change using a simple majority, a tactic known as “going nuclear,” in part because of the charged partisan cloud it can leave over an institution that once prided itself on operating according to consensus.

t is the latest change to chip away at longstanding Senate precedent in the face of an increasingly polarized political environment.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Mr. Thune framed the rules change as a necessary response to what he framed as an unprecedented Democratic blockade against fast confirmation of any of Mr. Trump’s nominees, including lower-level picks that have traditionally been confirmed by voice votes or by unanimous consent.

Democrats, staunchly opposed to Mr. Trump’s efforts to reshape the executive branch and insisting more attention be paid to nominees they say are unqualified, have insisted on formal votes for each person, delaying approval of the president’s picks for dozens of jobs….

Changes to the Senate’s precedents, which govern how the chamber works, are supposed to require the approval of 67 senators, a barrier meant to make them more difficult to adopt. In using what is known as the nuclear option, members of the majority party instead attempt to take an action that has never been allowed before and then hold a number of procedural votes to overrule any objection by the minority and proceed, thus setting a new precedent that replaces what has been done in the past.

Democrats used the tactic in 2013 to lower the vote threshold on most nominees to a simple majority rather than 60 votes, a response to Senate Republicans systematically blocking a series of Obama administration judicial appointees.

Republicans then retaliated in 2017 to lower the threshold for Supreme Court nominees, allowing Mr. Trump to install three justices during his first term….

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“California voters will decide redistricting in November, escalating battle with Trump and Texas”

direct democracy, political polarization, redistricting

L.A. Times:

Ratcheting up the pressure in the escalating national fight over control of Congress, the California Legislature on Thursday approved a November special election to ask voters to redraw the state’s electoral lines to favor Democrats and thwart President Trump’s far-right policy agenda.

The ballot measure, pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state and national Democratic leaders, is the latest volley in a national political brawl over electoral maps that could alter the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections and the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives.

If voters approve the redrawn lines on Nov. 4, Democrats in the Golden State would see the odds tilted further in their favor, while the number of California Republicans in the House could be halved.

Newsom initially said that new electoral districts in California would only take effect if another state redrew its lines before 2031. But after Texas moved toward approving its own maps this week that could give the GOP five more House seats, Democrats stripped the so-called “trigger” language from the amendment — meaning that if voters approve the measure, the new lines would take effect no matter what.

The ballot measure language, which asks California voters to override the power of the independent redistricting commission, was approved by most Democrats in the Assembly and the Senate, where they hold supermajorities.

California lawmakers have the power to place constitutional amendments on the statewide ballot without the approval of the governor. Newsom, however, is expected later Thursday to sign two separate bills that fund the special election and spell out the lines for the new congressional districts.,,,

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“How a U.S. Senate Race Is Shaping the Fight Over Redistricting in Texas”

political parties, political polarization, redistricting

NYT:

The standoff in Texas over redrawing the state’s U.S. House districts to a sharply tilted Republican advantage has played out before the backdrop of a contentious U.S. Senate race that may well be making the redistricting fight more contentious.

On the Republican side, the incumbent senator, John Cornyn, has set aside his often conciliatory demeanor, as he vies with his Senate primary opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, to see who can look tougher with runaway Democratic lawmakers.

On the Democratic side, State Representative James Talarico and former Representatives Beto O’Rourke and Colin Allred have used the standoff to gain publicity and rally the Democratic base around the notion that democracy itself is at stake. All three are potential rivals in the Senate race.

As the candidates position themselves, they’ve woven threats of prosecution and lawsuits with taunts and dares at the other party — and, in the case of Mr. Cornyn and Mr. Paxton, at each other — with few incentives for compromise….

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The Floridization of Politics

Bush v. Gore reflections, political polarization

The U.S. Capitol may be in Washington and the President in Scotland at the moment, but Florida is at the center of American politics, Kimberly Leonard suggests in Political Playbook.

Not only has President Trump spent much of his time governing from Mar-a-Lago and surrounded himself with Floridians like Susie Wiles and Marco Rubio, but many “Florida-tested” policies have found there way to Washington. That includes bans on transgender athletes, immigration crackdowns, attacks on higher education, and anti-woke laws.

As Leonard describes it:

When your author was reporting in Washington over Trump’s inauguration, Florida Republicans and lobbyists were beside themselves with glee about what it would mean to be a major power player in the new administration. Despite being a huge state, Florida had historically been viewed as the loud, embarrassing uncle of American politics. Trump changed that. . . .

“Florida has adopted and replicated President Trump’s America First agenda and has created many emerging leaders to carry on the MAGA torch,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers tells Playbook. “President Trump appreciates Gov. DeSantis’ work and they will continue to advance the same goal — Making America Great Again.”

Some of us are old enough to remember that, a quarter century ago, a disputed presidential election in Florida led to significant changes in how elections are administered and more partisan battles over how we vote. Florida is now changing democratic politics in very different ways.

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Kang, “Party Campaign Finance from FECA to Modern Hyperpartisanship”

campaign finance, political parties, political polarization

Michael Kang’s latest, forthcoming in Fifty Years of Buckley v. Valeo (Lee Bollinger & Geoffrey Stone eds., 2025). The abstract:

Political parties grew from seeming irrelevance in campaign finance at the time of the Federal Election Campaign Act amendments in 1974 to newfound importance in national politics by the soft money era of the 1990s.  When Congress finally restricted party soft money in 2002, soft money shifted to nominally independent groups and then, in time, to Super PACs and other outside groups empowered by the Roberts Court’s de-regulation of campaign finance.  As I explain here, these changes in modern campaign finance are at least partially responsible for today’s hyperpartisan and polarized politics.  Some critics of modern hyperpartisanship and polarization, for this reason, now propose a surprising but simple new reform approach: de-regulation of party campaign finance to strengthen the major parties as counter-weights to the polarizing influence of wealthy donors through their Super PACs and outside groups.  However, I argue that de-regulation of party fundraising likely would deepen the major parties’ dependence on their most wealthy, and ideologically extreme, donors for financial support.  As a consequence, de-regulation of party fundraising would accelerate the lurch toward the polarized ideological preferences of their committed donors rather than counteract it.

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Douglas: “A Month After the Minnesota Shootings, We’re Normalizing Political Violence”

election administration, political polarization

Josh Douglas has this commentary in Washington Monthly. A snippet:

Way too many Americans think that political violence is a necessity. A 2023 survey reported that almost a quarter of respondents agreed that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” That number was up from 15% in 2021. In 2024, the U.S. Capitol police reported more threats against members of Congress and their families and staff than ever before. Judges are now the frequent targets of threats, including the murder of a federal judge’s son in 2020.

Unfortunately, the attacks are also part of the election infrastructure. Poll workers reported an increase in threats against them in 2024. Election officials now plan for potential violence on Election Day and its aftermath. The January 6 insurrectionists used violence to try to overturn the 2020 election.

To end the attacks, we must stop normalizing and then forgetting them.

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