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  • Rick Hasen
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“How Mass Mail-In Voting Changes Everything”

December 26, 2023, 7:50 amUncategorizedvote by mailSpencer Overton
I link to this commentary in The American Conservative not to give unwarranted credibility to it—but to convey the messages currently being communicated by those opposed to making voting accessible to all eligible voters.  In this particular example, there is… Continue reading

“The Best and Worst of 2023”

December 26, 2023, 7:49 amUncategorizedvoting rightsSpencer Overton
From Democracy Docket: The year 2023 was up and down for voting rights and democracy. Voters scored two major wins at the U.S. Supreme Court, but saw Republicans enact restrictive voting policies throughout the country. Dangerous election administration policies… Continue reading

“Tracking Section 3 Trump Disqualification Challenges”

December 25, 2023, 7:52 amUncategorizedSpencer Overton
From Lawfare: This page is intended to track which states have active Section 3 litigation to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot. . . .

“‘It’s complicated’: DC officials mark 50th anniversary of Home Rule Act, continue push for statehood”

December 25, 2023, 7:38 amUncategorizedDC StatehoodSpencer Overton
WTOP: D.C. got a unique Christmas Eve surprise from President Richard Nixon a half century ago — the right to self-governance. It came after decades of failures for the city, between 1948 and 1964, as a handful of bills… Continue reading

“‘You better pray’: Christian nationalist groups are mobilizing before the 2024 elections”

December 25, 2023, 7:37 amUncategorized2024 Election CycleSpencer Overton
The Guardian: On a cold night in November, a man named Jefferson Davis addressed a crowd of conservative activists gathered in an American Legion hall 20 miles north of Milwaukee. In his left hand, Davis brandished an unusual prop.… Continue reading

Recent research posted to SSRN

December 25, 2023, 7:35 amUncategorizeddisqualification, ranked choice votingSpencer Overton
“Section Three’s Chilling Effect on Free Speech” “Ballot Marking Errors in Ranked-Choice Voting”

“Trump Asks Appeals Court to Toss Election Case on Immunity Grounds”

December 24, 2023, 7:56 amUncategorized2020 Election Cycle, Election InterferenceSpencer Overton
Opening brief from WaPo here.  NYT: Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked an appeals court in Washington on Saturday night to toss a federal indictment accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that he… Continue reading

“How Russian and Chinese Interference Could Affect the 2024 Election”

December 24, 2023, 7:54 amUncategorizeddisinformation, foreign interferenceSpencer Overton
More analysis on this story from NYT:  ….As Washington looks ahead to the 2024 vote, U.S. intelligence agencies last week released a report on the 2022 midterm elections — a document that gives us some hints about what might… Continue reading

“Legal challenges to the Voting Rights Act continue into the new year”

December 24, 2023, 7:53 amUncategorizedVoting Rights ActSpencer Overton
Hansi Lo Wang on NPR:  The landmark Voting Rights Act has had a wild year in the courts. In 2024, ongoing legal challenges are threatening to make it harder to protect the voting rights of people of color (4-minute listen).

“Reforms coming to Washington elections after three counties settle with the UCLA’s Voting Rights Project”

December 24, 2023, 7:53 amUncategorizedsignature verificationSpencer Overton
The Chronicle: Washington state’s signature-verification procedures are meant to root out exceedingly rare cases of voter fraud. But what they’ve typically done is get a lot of innocent legal votes tossed out. In 2020 alone, the state rejected more… Continue reading

“Opinion: Light at the end of the tunnel for New York’s redistricting”

December 24, 2023, 7:51 amUncategorizedredistrictingSpencer Overton
Jeffrey Wice writes.

“Arizona creates own deep-fake election hoaxes to prepare for 2024”

December 23, 2023, 7:49 amUncategorizedAISpencer Overton
Politico: Arizona’s top elections official has a novel plan to prevent artificial intelligence from supercharging election hoaxes in 2024: Test the technology on himself first. After his key swing state became a magnet for election fraud conspiracy theories in… Continue reading

Lawyers’ Committee files amicus in Murthy v. Missouri

December 23, 2023, 7:47 amUncategorizedcontent moderation, disinformationSpencer Overton
From the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law: Washington, DC – Today, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed an amicus brief in Murthy v. Missouri in support of social media platforms’ ability to censor harmful… Continue reading

“Elon Musk promised an anti-‘woke’ chatbot. It’s not going as planned.”

December 23, 2023, 7:44 amUncategorizedAISpencer Overton
WaPo: Decrying what he saw as the liberal bias of ChatGPT, Elon Musk earlier this year announced plans to create an artificial intelligence chatbot of his own. In contrast to AI tools built by OpenAI, Microsoft and Google, which… Continue reading

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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
View posts ›

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
View posts ›

Justin Levitt

Professor of Law at LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
View posts ›

Derek T. Muller

Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
View posts ›

Spencer A. Overton

Professor of Law,
The George Washington University Law School
View posts ›

Richard H. Pildes

Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, NYU School of Law
View posts ›

Nicholas Stephanopoulos

Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
View posts ›

Dan Tokaji

Fred W. & Vi Miller Dean and Professor of Law
University of Wisconsin Law School
View posts ›

Franita Tolson

Dean and Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law at USC Gould School of Law
View posts ›

Recent Books by Rick Hasen

A Real Right to Vote

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

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

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 book cover

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

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

Recent ELB Podcast Episodes

The ELB Podcast

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)

More podcast episodes ›

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

 

More op-eds and commentaries by Rick ›

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)

More academic articles by Rick Hasen ›

Recent Books by ELB Contributors

Tokaji & Yablon- Election Law in a Nutshell

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

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

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

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

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