How has the ascendance of well-educated, relatively affluent liberals among Democrats, alongside the dominance of non-college voters in the Republican coalition, altered the agendas of the two parties?
Are low-turnout elections and laws designed to suppress voting now beneficial to Democrats and detrimental to Republicans? Would the Democratic Party be better off if limits on campaign contributions were scrapped?
Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard, contends that the answer to these last three questions is changing from no to yes.
In a paper posted last week, “Election Law for the New Electorate,” Stephanopoulos argues that “the parties’ longstanding positions on numerous electoral issues have become obsolete. These stances reflect how voters used to — not how they now — act and thus no longer serve the parties’ interests.”…
The column adds a number of reactions from election law scholars, including me, to Nick’s provocative paper. I’ll have more to say on this broader topic in a big piece posting soon.