In the oral history published Tuesday by GQ Magazine, Spicer recalled of the historic day: “A group of us gathered on the fifth floor of Trump Tower in what could be described as basically an oversized utility room.”…
After the interview was published, four people who worked with Spicer on the campaign and at the RNC reached out to POLITICO to express surprise that he highlighted his presence on the fifth floor — which served as the nerve center of the campaign’s poll-monitoring operation and data war room that day — because party employees were given strict instructions prohibiting them from going there.
Election Law Blogger

Rick Hasen
Gary T. Schwartz Endowed Chair in Law and Professor of Political Science
UCLA School of Law
Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project
Contributors

Tabatha Abu El-Haj
Professor of Law, Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law
@tabathaabuelhaj
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Guy-Uriel E. Charles
Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
View posts ›

Travis Crum
Professor of Law, Washington University School of Law
View posts ›

Edward B. Foley
Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law, The Ohio State University
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Justin Levitt
Professor of Law at LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
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Derek T. Muller
Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
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Spencer A. Overton
Professor of Law,
The George Washington University Law School
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Richard H. Pildes
Sudler Family Professor
of Constitutional Law,
NYU School of Law
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Nicholas Stephanopoulos
Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
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Dan Tokaji
Fred W. & Vi Miller Dean and Professor of Law
University of Wisconsin Law School
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Franita Tolson
Dean and Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law at USC Gould School of Law
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Recent Books by Rick Hasen
A Real Right to Vote

A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy
Now available from Princeton University Press!
Read the Kirkus Review
Book tour information
Watch book discussion on Morning Joe
Order at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop
Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics–and How to Cure It

Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics--and How to Cure It (Yale University Press, 2022)
Cheap Speech book website
Named one of the best books on disinformation by the New York Times
Election Law–Cases and Materials

Election Law–Cases and Materials (7th edition, Carolina Academic Press, 2022) (with Daniel Hays Lowenstein, Daniel P. Tokaji, and Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos)
2025 Casebook Supplement (Free)
Election Meltdown

Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy
(Yale University Press, 2020)
Legislation, Statutory Interpretation, and Election Law: Examples & Explanations

Legislation, Statutory Interpretation, and Election Law: Examples & Explanations (2d ed. Wolters Kluwer, 2020)
Recent ELB Podcast Episodes
The ELB Podcast

Season 6, Episode 8 Danielle Lang: Is Trump’s Executive Order on Voting a Threat to Democracy?
Season 6, Episode 7,
Combatting False Election Information: Lessons from 2024 and a Look to the Future (Marwick, Starbird, Tucker)
Season 6, Episode 6, What Do Documentary Proof of Citizenship Laws Accomplish? (Fontes, Olson, Perales)
Season 6, Episode 5, Fair Elections and Voting Rights: What's Ahead for the Next Four Years? (Gardner, Karlan, Richer)
Season 6, Episode 4, Katie Harbath: The Present and Future of Social Media, Politics, and Elections
Season 6, Episode 3, From Nov. 5 to Jan. 6: Are We Prepared for a Fair and Safe Election? (Ginsberg, Diamond, Kleinfeld, Tolson)
Season 6, Episode 2, The United States Electoral College and Fair Elections (Fishkin, Hollis-Brusky, Muller)
Season 6, Episode 1, Democracy and the Risks to the 2024 Elections (Aden, Fortier, & Roth)
Recent Op-Eds & Commentaries by Rick Hasen
Trump Started a Redistricting War. Only Congress Can Stop It, MSNBC Opinion, August 5, 2025
The Supreme Court Just Signaled Something Deeply Disturbing About the Next Term, Slate, August 4, 2025
Two Supreme Court Justices Invited an Outright Assault on Democracy. Now It’s Here, Slate, May 14, 2025
America Needs More Judges Like Judge Myers, The Atlantic, May 7, 2025
We’re Getting Dangerously Close to a Losing North Carolina Candidate Being Declared the Winner, Slate, Apr. 14, 2025
What Elon Musk Won in Wisconsin, Slate, Apr. 3, 2025
The Ultrarich Have Reshaped Presidential Elections. Here’s Where They’re Looking Next, Slate, Mar. 27, 2025
Trump’s Executive Order on Elections is a Blatant Power Grab, MSNBC Opinion, Mar. 26, 2025
One Possible Explanation for Judge Merchan’s Last-Minute Decision to Sentence Trump, Slate, Jan. 3, 2025 (with Jeremy Stahl)
Voting in the U.S. Shouldn’t Be This Hard, MSNBC Opinion, Nov. 5, 2024
Thousands of Pennsylvania Ballots Will Be Tossed on a Technicality. Thanks SCOTUS, Slate, Nov. 4, 2024
Why the “Blue Shift” Everyone Seems to Have Forgotten About Might Be More Dangerous This Time, Slate, Oct. 24, 2024
Elon Musk Might Have Broken the Law Against Bribing Voters. Whoops!, Slate, Oct. 16, 2024
Two Big Questions Raised by Elon Musk’s Trumpian Transformation of X, MSNBC Opinion, Oct. 14, 2024
Why the Supreme Court May Not Decide the 2024 Election After All, Slate, Oct. 10, 2024
Jack Smith’s Big New Jan. 6 Brief is a Major Indictment of the Supreme Court, Slate, Oct. 2, 2024
A Last-Minute Effort to Mess with the 2024 Vote is Underway. It’s Scarier Than Expected, Slate, Sept. 20, 2024
Why It Will Be Harder for Trump to Challenge This Year’s Election, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 29, 2024
Democrats Sure Aren’t Acting as If Trump Beating Biden is an Existential Threat to Democracy, Slate, July 10, 2024
Kamala Harris Replacing Joe Biden is not Antidemocratic, Slate, July 22, 2024
Trump Immunity Ruling Will Be John Roberts’ Legacy to American Democracy, Slate, July 1, 2024
Trump Immunity Ruling Will Be John Roberts’ Legacy to American Democracy, Slate, July 1, 2024
The First Amendment Just Dodged an Enormous Bullet at the Supreme Court, Slate, July 1, 2024
That Big Jan. 6 Supreme Court Decision is Not the Big Win for Trump People Think It Is, Slate, June 28, 2024
A Democratic Super PAC’s New Trump Ad Might Be Borderline Criminal, Slate, June 26, 2024
Why It’s Hard to Muster Even a ‘Meh’ Over Trump’s New York Criminal Trial, Los Angeles Times, April 14, 2024
2016 Election Fraudster ‘Ricky Vaughn’ Might Finally Be About to Face the Music, Slate, April 1, 2024
The Supreme Court Just Delivered a Rare Self-Own for John Roberts, Slate, March 5, 2024
It’s Past Time to Quit Hoping the Courts are Going to Stop Trump, Slate, March 4, 2024 (with Dahlia Lithwick)
The Biggest Supreme Court Case Nobody Seems to Be Talking About, Slate, February 23, 2024
How to Actually Guarantee the Right to Vote: A Six-Point Checklist, The Atlantic, February 13, 2024
A Grand Bargain is Emerging in the Supreme Court’s Trump Cases, But Chaos May be Ahead, Slate, February 8, 2024
Donald Trump is Asking the Supreme Court for the Bush v. Gore Treatment, Slate, February 7, 2024
Trump’s Lawyers Made Some Very Odd Strategic Choices in the Supreme Court Ballot Case, Slate, January 29, 2024
The 2024 Election Will Be Fair. People Still Won’t Believe It, Politico, January 25, 2024
The U.S. Lacks What Every Democracy Needs, New York Times, January 16, 2024
Recent Academic Articles and Working Papers by Rick Hasen
Faux Campaign Finance Regulation and the Pathway to American Oligarchy (conference paper dated Apr. 24, 2025, draft available, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5229707)
Bush v. Gore‘s Ironic Legacy, 53 Florida State University Law Review (forthcoming 2026), draft available, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5188686
Reckoning with the Undead Irreparable Injury Rule, Review of Litigation (forthcoming 2025), draft available, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4901755
The Stagnation, Retrogression, and Potential Pro-Voter Transformation of U.S. Election Law, 134 Yale Law Journal 1673 (2025)
From Bloggers in Pajamas to The Gateway Pundit: How Government Entities Do and Should Identify Professional Journalists for Access and Protection, reprinted in THE FUTURE OF PRESS FREEDOM: DEMOCRACY, LAW & THE NEWS IN CHANGING TIMES (Cambridge U. Press, RonNell Andersen Jones and Sonja R. West eds., 2025)
States as Bulwarks Against, or Potential Facilitators of, Election Subversion, in Our Nation at Risk: Election Integrity as a National Security Issue (Karen Greenberg and Julian Zelizer, eds. NYU Press, 2024)
Election Reform: Past, Present, and Future in Oxford Handbook of American Election Law (Eugene Mazo, ed., 2024)
Nonprofit Law as a Tool to Kill What Remains of Campaign Finance Law: Reluctant Lessons from Ellen Aprill, 56 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 1233 (2023) (festschrift symposium honoring Ellen Aprill)
Identifying and Minimizing the Risk of Election Subversion and Stolen Elections in the Contemporary United States, 135 Harvard Law Review Forum 265 (2022)
Research Note: Record Election Litigation Rates in the 2020 Election: An Aberration or a Sign of Things to Come?, Election Law Journal, https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/epdf/10.1089/elj.2021.0050 (2022)
Optimism and Despair About a 2020 “Election Meltdown” and Beyond, 100 Boston University Law Review Online 298 (2020) (part of symposium on my book, Election Meltdown)
Three Pathologies of American Voting Rights Illuminated by the COVID-19 Pandemic, and How to Treat and Cure Them, Election Law Journal (2020)
Recent Books by ELB Contributors
Tokaji & Yablon- Election Law in a Nutshell

Election Law in a Nutshell (3d ed., West Academic Publishing, 2024)
by Daniel P. Tokaji & Robert Yablon
Pildes – The Law of Democracy

The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process, 6th ed.
(Foundation Press, 2022)
by Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan, Richard H. Pildes, Nathaniel Persily, and Franita Tolson
Persily – Social Media and Democracy

Social Media and Democracy
(Cambridge Press, 2020)
by Nathaniel Persily and Joshua A. Tucker
Podcasts by ELB Contributors
Tolson – Free and Fair Podcast

Free & Fair with Franita and Foley
Franita Tolson and Edward Foley
Recent Articles by ELB Contributors
Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Networking the Party: First Amendment Rights & the Pursuit of Responsive Party Government, 118 Colum. L. Rev. 1225 (2018).
Bruce E. Cain, Wendy K. Tam Cho, Yan Y. Liu & Emily R. Zhang, A Reasonable Bias Approach to Gerrymandering: Using Automated Plan Generation to Evaluate Redistricting Proposals, 59 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1521 (2018).
Edward B. Foley, Requiring Majority Winners for Congressional Elections: Harnessing Federalism to Combat Extremism (May 10, 2021). Ohio State Legal Studies Research Paper No. 61
Anita S. Krishnakumar, Cracking the Whole Code Rule (February 19, 2020). St. John’s Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20-0002, New York University Law Review, Forthcoming
Justin Levitt, Failed Elections and the Legislative Selection of Electors, 96 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1052 (2021)
Derek T. Muller, Election Subversion and the Writ of Mandamus, William & Mary Law Review (forthcoming)
Spencer Overton, Power to Regulate Social Media Companies to Prevent Voter Suppression. GWU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-23, GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 2020-23, 53 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1793 (2020)
Nicholas Stephanopoulos, The Sweep of the Electoral Power (October 20, 2020). Constitutional Commentary, Forthcoming, Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 21-07