“Judge limits a small part of a court order blocking Trump’s election overhaul as lawsuits continue”

July 21, 2025, 4:55 amelection administrationDan Tokaji

AP: A federal judge on Friday modified part of a previous ruling that blocked much of President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order seeking to overhaul elections in the U.S. The minor change affects just one aspect of a preliminary… Continue reading

Comparing Musk and Perot

July 21, 2025, 4:26 amthird partiesDan Tokaji

John Ganz in Politico Magazine, concluding: Without the ability to run for president, Musk is arguably emulating the least successful part of Perot’s political career: his attempt to start a third party. The Reform Party collapsed in a decade,… Continue reading

“Trump officials accused of defying 1 in 3 judges who ruled against him”

July 21, 2025, 4:22 amauthoritarian threats in US, Department of JusticeDan Tokaji

Washington Post: President Donald Trump and his appointees have been accused of flouting courts in a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling, a Washington Post analysis… Continue reading

“As Trump pushes Texas takeover in fight for House, Democrats plot their counterpunch”

July 21, 2025, 4:18 amredistrictingDan Tokaji

CNN: “House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his political team have begun privately shaping a legally risky — and likely expensive — strategy to redraw House maps in several Democratic-controlled states, according to Democrats briefed on the effort. They… Continue reading

California mulls redistricting move that might invigorate Moore v. Harper

July 20, 2025, 6:09 pmredistrictingDerek Muller

Nick’s recent partisan fairness post notes that changes to California’s congressional redistricting would require an amendment to the state constitution. That seems right to me. But it’s also not the only mechanism California is considering. On a recent podcast,… Continue reading

“Texas Republicans aim to redraw House districts at Trump’s urging, but there’s a risk”

July 20, 2025, 5:25 amredistrictingDan Tokaji

AP: Texas has 38 seats in the House. Republicans now hold 25 and Democrats 12, with one seat vacant after Democrat Sylvester Turner, a former Houston mayor, died in March…. The fear of accidentally creating unsafe seats is one… Continue reading

Charles, Fuentes-Rohwer & Peale, “Reconstructing (the Law of) Democracy”

July 19, 2025, 3:22 pmelection law and constitutional lawDan Tokaji

Guy Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, and Farris Peale have posted this paper on SSRN. The abstract: American democracy is experiencing a stress test, but the field that ought to be preoccupied with democracy seems to have little to say about it. The… Continue reading

In-person voting rebounded in 2024

July 19, 2025, 3:18 pmabsentee ballotsDan Tokaji

Votebeat: After years of speculation about the “death” of in-person voting, the latest national data shows a bit of a rebound: Americans are returning to the polls in person. According to a new MIT report titled “How We Voted… Continue reading

“Trump’s DOJ has fired dozens of prosecutors, upending decades-old norm”

July 19, 2025, 7:18 amauthoritarian threats in US, Department of Justice, election subversion riskDan Tokaji

WaPo reports: The Department of Justice under the Trump administration has fired dozens of career prosecutors during the past six months, making the dismissal of federal attorneys — generally a move reserved for cases of misconduct — almost commonplace.… Continue reading

“Gabbard Claims Obama Administration Tried to Undermine Trump in 2016”

July 19, 2025, 4:23 amauthoritarian threats in US, election subversion riskDan Tokaji

NYT: “The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday issued the latest in a series of reports from the Trump administration attempting to undermine the eight-year-old assessment that Russia favored the election of Donald J. Trump in… Continue reading

Remembering Bob Stein

July 19, 2025, 4:20 amUncategorizedDan Tokaji

Rice political scientist Bob Stein died yesterday. The Lena Gohlman Fox Professor of Political Science, he served on the Rice faculty for 46 years. Bob was an expert in voting behavior and an active member of the election scholar… Continue reading

“Wisconsin elections officials find clerk broke laws over uncounted ballots”

July 18, 2025, 9:17 amelection administrationDan Tokaji

AP, with news from here in Madison: Wisconsin elections officials declared Thursday that the former clerk of the state’s capital city broke several laws related to not counting nearly 200 absentee ballots in the November presidential election, but they… Continue reading

The recent rash of DOJ voter file “requests”

July 18, 2025, 7:44 amDepartment of Justice, voter registrationprivacy actJustin Levitt

Recent reports have disclosed that DOJ has now “asked” at least nine states for copies of their voter rolls, and I know that there are at least a handful of counties that have separately also received requests/demands for the county’s… Continue reading

“The Court’s Liberals Are Trying to Tell Americans Something”

July 18, 2025, 5:36 amauthoritarian threats in US, Supreme CourtDan Tokaji

Aziz Huq in The Atlantic: In recent Supreme Court terms, Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson have issued defiant dissents that push back against a seemingly endless cascade of conservative opinions. The three tend to take… Continue reading