Today is the one year anniversary of the “Election Law Blog.” My first post, on February 18, 2003, read as follows:

McCain-Feingold’s Future Don’t expect a decision from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia today in the BCRA litigation. The building is closed because of snow.

This first year has been a rewarding, but challenging, experience. I have been gratified by those who have written not only with their appreciation for the blog, but also those who have sent along documents, links, and most crucially, their own opinions. I hope that this site has become a place for the intersection of the academy’s views of election law as its own field of study and the real world of election law litigation and politics. I have heard from a number of litigants, elected officials, and staff officials in Congress, state legislatures and elsewhere that the exchanges have been valuable.
Much of my attention in the last year was devoted to the McCain-Feingold (BCRA) litigation and the California recall litigation. Because I ended up getting involved in both cases by filing pro bono amicus briefs, making sure I did an adequate job of disclosing my role while blogging presented something of a challenge. Part of my role here is akin to that of a journalist; part of it, as an academic commentator on election law issues. Even that line creates a blurring of the appropriate role not taking into account the litigation question.
In terms of the number of people reached, the Sitemeter site says that as of this instant there have been 114,265 visits to the site, with 170,527 pages viewed. (Howard Bashman tells me that Sitemeter appears to undercount the number of site visits, at least compared to other counters.) These numbers do not include the 300+ people per day on the election law listserv who receive a daily e-mail from me containing most of my blog posts. These numbers are puny compared to some other law-related blogs that cover broader areas of the law. They exceed any expectations I had when I began this blog a year ago.
It is, as one can imagine, exhausting to keep up the blog. It takes between 30 minutes and 2 hours on a “slow day,” and tends to consume my whole day when there is a major development in election law. I am not sure how long I will continue to blog (sometimes blogging is great fun, and other times it feels like an unwanted burden), though I have no plans right now to stop doing so. If you have any suggestions for improvements, please send me an e-mail.