Can’t wait to dig into this new draft from Josh Douglas:

This Essay provides the first comprehensive analysis of the numerous election law cases that federal appeals courts decided in 2020. The picture is bleak. Instead of protecting the constitutional right to vote, the Supreme Court and lower federal courts unduly deferred to state legislatures in how to run the election, with little concern for the difficulties voters faced during a pandemic. In at least twenty-seven cases the Supreme Court and federal appellate courts espoused this undue deference standard. The courts did not explicitly overrule the familiar Anderson-Burdick test for the right to vote, but it applied it unfaithfully and without any rigor, failing to require states to identify the “precise interests” that their laws promote or why it was “necessary” to burden voters’ rights. This mode of analysis devalues the right to vote, the most fundamental right in our democracy. If the courts do not alter their jurisprudence, then the only solution may be robust federal legislation or a constitutional amendment that enshrines the right to vote in the U.S. Constitution and requires states to justify, with specificity, any infringements on that right.