Here are some interesting articles, posts, and links that appeared since I took my blogging break.
Voter ID: AP offers Voter ID Law Heads to Court. A snippet: “Even without an ID, indigent people can cast provisional ballots, then show up within 10 days at county offices and sign a form attesting to their vote. But the Marion County Election Board, which includes Indianapolis, said just two of 34 voters who cast provisional ballots because they lacked voter ID showed up at county offices to validate their vote in the 2007 municipal election. Their signatures all matched those on file, but could not be counted because of the photo ID requirement.” Jonathan Bechlte has written Preserving Ballot Integrity, a Washington Times oped. Another pro-id oped, this one by C.B. Upton, is here. Cornell’s Legal Information Institute offers this preview of the Crawford voter id case to be heard next week in the Supreme Court. And Ned Foley has written an excellent preview of Crawford which will appear in the January issue of the Election Law Journal. A copy of the uncorrected page proofs should appear later this week. [Disclosure: I filed this amicus brief supporting petitioners in the Crawford case.].
Campaign Finance The New York Times offers a front-page report, Outside Groups Spend Heavily and Visibly to Sway ’08 Races on how the Supreme Court’s opinion last term in the Wisconsin Right to Life case is opening up the door for more campaign spending this election season. I predicted as much in this forthcoming Minnesota Law Review article. When I presented this paper at APSA, Bruce Cain, commenting, believed that I exaggerated the effect that WRTL is likely to have on campaign spending, particularly corporate campaign spending. As I said at the time, the disagreement is empirical, and as the data come in, we’ll see whether or not spending actually picks up this season thanks to the opening created by the case.
The NY Sun offers a fascinating article, Anti-Poverty Group Refuses to Name Donors, which begins: “An anti-poverty organization that boasted of making the largest independent advertising buy of the political season, the ONE Campaign, has not filed a public list of its donors despite what some campaign finance lawyers say is a legal requirement to do so. ‘This organization is running a serious risk by ignoring the disclosure and reporting laws,’ an advocate for strict enforcement of campaign finance regulations, Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center, said.” You can view the ad in question here.
On the FEC shutdown, see Bob Bauer and Brad Smith. Both have complimentary things to say about the outgoing FEC commissioners, but Brad also adds some more controversial comments about why the reform community opposes the von Spakovsky nomination.
A Third Party Presidential Candidacy? The NY Times offers Bloomberg Moves Closer to Running for President. The Washington Post offers Independent Group Eyes Independent Bid.
GOP Voter Caging in Kansas? See this AP report.
Election Administration and Technology. USA Today offers Legal Voters Thrown off Rolls, which begins: “Five years after passage of a federal law to create electronic registration databases to deter voter fraud, the new technology is posing hurdles that could disenfranchise thousands of legal voters, a USA TODAY examination finds.” AP offers States Raise Doubts About Electroic Voting Machines. AlterNet offers Rep. Rush Holt to Push for Paper Ballots and Vote Count Audits for 2008.
Compulsory Voting A Harvard Law Review Note does a very nice job discussing the issue, something I wrote about back in 1996.