…d we not be allowed to consider such statements as proof of racial bias in jury selection out of fear of “chilling” campaign speech? It’s difficult to win cases requiring proof of discriminatory intent precisely because politicians are usually circumspect when they have discriminatory views. Trump is the rare candidate who speaks his mind, and he told us why he wanted to keep Muslims out of the U.S. Candidates tend to keep their promises. If voter…
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…of Justice moreover views Texas redistricting litigation as the potential grand prize and lusts for the day when it can reimpose preclearance via Section 3(c). Of course, these are just personal impressions based on demeanor and attitude. More objectively verifiable are the witch hunts and fishing expeditions that the DoJ conducted in pursuit of its goals. I give two examples…. The DoJ wholly failed, but not for lack of trying. There was, and is,…
Continue reading…is in turn supported by reliable data and WBOE’s failure to use available jury excuse information, a reasonable inference can be drawn that WCBOE is not making a reasonable effort to conduct a voter list maintenance program in accordance with the NVRA. See Martinez-Rivera, 166 F. Supp. 3d at 793-94 (holding that allegations of voter rolls containing more registered voters than citizens eligible to vote—a 105% registration rate—gave rise to a stro…
Continue reading…seen as the future of Republican politics in Alabama, attended some of the grand jury testimony. Then Mr. Bentley, in his second and final term, chose Mr. Strange as Mr. Sessions’s replacement in the Senate and scheduled a special election for 2018. When his appointment was announced, Mr. Strange, 63, said the rampant speculation about an inquiry involving the governor was “unfair to him and unfair to the process.” He also said, in a remark that h…
Continue readingFort Worth Star-Telegram: “I thought I was doing something right for my country. When they gave me the sentence they just broke my heart, and they didn’t just break my heart, but I already knew my family was going to be broken, my kids especially,” Ortega said Monday during an interview at the jail, where she will remain for about a month until being transported to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice facility. “To me, it’s like, ‘Wow, I can’t…
Continue reading…that the data was flawed given the number of false positives — including a Brooklyn-born World War II vet. Ultimately, only 85 people were removed from the voting rolls. State officials began to pursue a second attempt at a purge in advance of the 2014 election but then abandoned that effort, too. Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, called Phillips’ claim “fake news.” “There is no credible evidence I have…
Continue reading…“It feels great,” said attorney John O’Hara as he left Brooklyn Supreme Court. “When you’re a convicted felon, it’s like you’re a second-class citizen. We are going to go have a chicken quesadilla.” O’Hara’s protracted fight for vindication ended when the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit looked at his case and reversed his voter fraud conviction. O’Hara, a political outsider and thorn in the side of the Brooklyn Democratic Party…
Continue reading…ffice violated federal voter registration law by erasing more than 117,000 Brooklyn voters from the rolls before the primary election simply because they had not voted in previous elections. The filing accused the board of failing to take several steps that are normally required before a voter’s name is removed, and also raised concerns about how the board oversaw the Brooklyn office’s handling of the voter rolls. Interesting timing. As I told New…
Continue reading…a courtroom where we’re asking questions and developing information.” The grand jury would investigate a leak of materials to the Guardian US, an arm of the British newspaper, which published hundreds of leaked documents from a closed secretive John Doe investigation looking into Walker raising millions of dollars for a supposedly independent group to help win the 2011 and 2012 recalls…. Schimel said he won’t investigate a leak of materials to ot…
Continue reading…Watch this story grow. Update: De Blasio Is Fined $48,000 for Campaign Finance Violations…
Continue reading…WaPo: President-elect Donald Trump claimed Friday night that African Americans came through for him “big league” in the November election and said those who stayed home were “almost as good” as those who voted for him. Trump’s comments came during a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., the latest stop on an ongoing “thank you” tour of states where the Republican prevailed against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton….
Continue reading…rrogated by law enforcement officials and forced to testify before a grand jury. Ninety-two-year-old Willie Bright was so frightened of “the law” that he wouldn’t even admit he’d voted. In January 1985, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, the 39-year-old US Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, charged Turner, his wife Evelyn and Hogue with 29 counts of mail fraud, altering absentee ballots and conspiracy to vote more than once. They faced…
Continue reading…ract: This short essay, part of a symposium on “Free Speech Under Fire” at Brooklyn Law School, argues that academic efforts to fit campaign finance restrictions within the rubric of the First Amendment have distorted First Amendment doctrine, and contributed to a decline in respect for free speech generally. The essay briefly reviews and critiques recent scholarship by Robert Post (“Citizens Divided”), Richard Hasen (“Plutocrats United”), Larry L…
Continue reading…l illness. The case shows this isn’t a problem that’s going to happen on a grand scale…. Over the weekend, Trump upped his dangerous rhetoric, suggesting that in November cheating at the polls in “certain sections of the state” would hand Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to Clinton. Never mind that Clinton is ahead in that battleground state by about 9 percentage points. Trump’s “certain sections” reference is a dog whistle to those who wrongly beli…
Continue reading…inia Law Review, Forthcoming Abstract: Entrenchment is fundamental to law. Grand documents like the U.S. Constitution, and mundane ones like city and corporate charters, entrench themselves against change through supermajority rules and other mechanisms. Entrenchment frustrates responsiveness, but it promotes stability, a rule of law virtue extolled for centuries. It does so through a straightforward channel: entrenched law is difficult to change….
Continue reading…s); Lee Drutman (New America); Diana Dwyre (Cal. State, Chico); Joel Gora (Brooklyn Law School). ———————————————————————————– U.S. Federal Campaign Finance in a time of Transition Sat, September 3, 8:00 to 9:30am, Marriott, Salon KL A group of academics are working together to identify what we do and don’t know about campaign finance in American federal elections. The U.S. system of campaign finance is undergoing a major transformation. The group’…
Continue reading…ia; his lawyer argued he suffered from mental illness. The case shows this isn’t a problem that’s going to happen on a grand scale….
Continue reading…ence, filed a petition with the Douglas Country District Court to summon a grand jury to investigate whether the secretary of state’s office committed election fraud in 2014. Davis, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Barbara Ballard, D-Lawrence, in House District 44, said the secretary of state’s office may have intentionally failed to register voters who had tried to register through the state’s online system during the last election, even if they…
Continue reading…he evidence and find the facts necessary to convict. And in this case, the jury wasn’t told that there had to be pressure or advice to convict McDonnell of bribery. The trial judge instead told the jury that official acts may include “acts that a public official customarily performs, including acts ‘in furtherance of longer-term goals’ or ‘in a series of steps to exercise influence or achieve an end.’” It’s possible that the jury would have convic…
Continue reading…next month and was expected to feature a who’s who of state lawmakers, including Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), who testified before a grand jury in the case and who prosecutors planned to call as a witness….
Continue reading…Tuesday upheld former state Sen. Rod Wright’s conviction on charges of perjury and voter fraud. In 2014, a jury found Wright guilty of eight felonies for registering to vote at a home he owned in Inglewood, even though he actually lived several miles away in the upscale neighborhood of Baldwin Hills, just outside the district where he ran for office in 2008. You can find the unpublished unanimous opinion of the California Court of Appeal at this…
Continue reading…the case. Justice Kagan later expresses concern at the very least with the jury instructions and how the case was handled, suggesting the possibility of a remand with proper instructions (but I don’t think that’s likely.) Michael Drebeen, the government’s excellent lawyer (making his 100th Supreme Court argument, for which he was commended at the end of the argument) had a tremendous amount of trouble with hypotheticals raised by the Chief Justice…
Continue reading…s said, “and the Court has previously found that the elements of the charged violation of the Act can be readily explained to a jury in eight lines of text.”…
Continue reading…NYT: The federal investigation of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign fund-raising apparatus has expanded to focus on efforts to raise money for Democratic candidates for the State Senate in 2014, when the party was battling to retake the chamber, according to people with knowledge of grand jury subpoenas issued in the inquiry….
Continue readingNPR: Following widespread irregularities at polls in Brooklyn Tuesday, New York City officials are calling for major reforms at the Board of Elections. The problem was first identified in a an analysis of state voter enrollment statistics by WNYC’s Brigid Bergin. The Board of Elections then confirmed that more than 120,000 voters have been dropped from the rolls in Brooklyn alone since November. “No other borough in New York City nor county in th…
Continue reading…NYDN: More than 200 outraged New York voters have joined a lawsuit claiming the party affiliation on their voter registration changed without their consent. The voters say they are unfairly being shut out of Tuesday’s primary. The suit, to be filed Monday in Brooklyn, calls for New York to be an open primary state, allowing anyone to vote in primaries regardless of party affiliation….
Continue reading…st major inquiry of its kind during the mayor’s two-year tenure. A federal grand jury in Manhattan has begun hearing evidence in the case, according to several people briefed on the matter. The inquiry has come to focus on the two fund-raisers: Jona Rechnitz, who raised money for Mr. de Blasio’s campaign and was also a donor to both the campaign and to a nonprofit group that supported the mayor’s agenda; and Jeremy Reichberg, who held a fund-raise…
Continue readingMilwaukee Journal-Sentinel: The state’s first major test of its voter ID law arrived with historic turnout and scattered long lines, prompting Republicans to dismiss claims it suppresses the vote and Democrats to maintain it played at least a role in some delays. U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman also said Tuesday that he thought the law would help Republicans win the presidential election in Wisconsin for the first time in 32 years, and a former legislat…
Continue readingAP: A jury found Friday that a Montana lawmaker coordinated with and received services from conservative corporate groups in violation of state campaign laws, a ruling that could lead to his removal from office and bolster the state’s defense of its low campaign contribution limits. Rep. Art Wittich, R-Bozeman, took $19,599 worth in-kind contributions that he didn’t disclose from organizations affiliated with the National Right to Work Committee…
Continue reading…ice that he now holds,” the governor’s executive order reads. Grant, 50, and two others are accused of intimidating and bribing voters in the 2015 election that led to Grant’s victory. In six cases examined, a grand jury found that Grant, Mia Antionette Nowells and James Randolph unlawfully marked absentee ballots or forced people to vote for them, according to the 25-count indictment released Monday….
Continue reading…Here are videos from the excellent Brooklyn Law conference: Video: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 The first link is to Floyd Abrams’ keynote address. The third link is a panel on campaign finance and the First Amendment, which includes Brad Smith, Sabeel Rahman, and me, moderated by Joel Gora….
Continue reading…LAT: Huerta, 30, is one of at least five lower-level Martinez staffers who solicited and collected $5 and $10 contributions to the councilwoman’s re-election effort, according to interviews with several of her constituents in the San Fernando Valley. Those small contributions, part of a federal grand jury investigation, were a major factor in Martinez’s success in collecting $65,360 in taxpayer “matching funds” for her campaign….
Continue reading…he big question, however, is how far he would be willing to go in overturning or greatly extending precedent. On that, the jury is still out. …
Continue reading…stricting litigation where they’ve always belonged. But Personhuballah also has the potential to be a seminal case about appellate standing more generally andprobabilistic injury. And with Spokeo likely to be affirmed by a divided court, it may be the only big standing decision this term we get….
Continue reading…ction law and see what that might say about him as a Justice (I have been doing this since the nomination of John Roberts). So the jury is still out on this question….
Continue reading…cusses their empirical studies which reveal, among other things, that mock grand jurors are exceedingly willing to indict a fictitious officeholder and CEO of a corporation for what amounts to an independent expenditure. Their paper reveals a fundamental tension at the heart of campaign finance jurisprudence. The framework set forth in Buckley v. Valeo suggests that, if independent expenditures are proven to create an appearance of corruption, the…
Continue reading…lded two empirical studies. First, in a highly realistic simulation, three grand juries deliberated on charges that ”independent” campaign spending in a Congressional race met the legal standard for bribery of the candidate. Second, 1276 nationally-representative online respondents considered whether to convict in such a scenario, with five variables manipulated randomly to enhance generalizability. In both studies, jurors found quid pro quo corru…
Continue reading….” Naturally, Mr. Trone made it into anInternet ad. Ms. Matthews, calling it misleading, demanded he take it down. (He has not.) This came after the spying episode, in which two young Trone canvassers tried to infiltrate the Matthews and Raskin campaigns. By last week, at the grand opening of his 8,000-square-foot campaign headquarters in a Rockville, Md., strip mall just outside the Beltway, the wine magnate was fending off comparisons to another…
Continue reading…Upcoming events related to my book: February 26, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Law School (First Amendment symposium) (details and rsvp) February 29, Decatur, Ga, Georgia Center for the Book at DeKalb County Public Library, 7:15 pm (details) March 1, Miami, University of Miami (12:30 pm talk at law school)…
Continue reading…ool event next Friday, Feb. 26: Friday, February 26 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Brooklyn Law School Subotnick Center 250 Joralemon St. Brooklyn RSVP by Wednesday, February 24 www.brooklaw.edu/freespeech-symposium Review the Agenda. About the Symposium For free speech, it may be the best of times, yet the worst of times. The Roberts Supreme Court may be the most speech-protective Court in a generation, extending free speech protection on a number of fro…
Continue reading…Brooklyn Law: As a young lawyer for the ACLU, Professor Joel Gora argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Buckley v. Valeo case. Here he reflects on the history of the case and its continuing impact on campaign finance law….
Continue reading…Wow this looks like a great event at Brooklyn Law Jan. 26, featuring Judge Buckley!…
Continue reading…the grant to the first question in the cert. petition (the second was on a jury issue), and that question reads: I. Under the federal bribery statute, Hobbs Act, and honest-services fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. §§ 201, 1346, 1951, it is a felony to agree to take “official action” in exchange for money, campaign contributions, or any other thing of value. The question presented is whether “official action” is limited to exercising actual governmental p…
Continue reading…; “Seats limited. RSVP to events@scholarsstrategynetwork.org) February 26, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Law School (First Amendment symposium) (details and rsvp) February 29, Decatur, Ga, Georgia Center for the Book at DeKalb County Public Library, 7:15 pm (details) March 1, Miami, University of Miami (12:30 pm event; details) March 16, Berkeley, CA, University of California, at Berkeley, 3:30 pm (with Tom Mann and Bertrall Ross) (details) March 31, Winter…
Continue reading…on Wednesday that quoted Scalia’s comments, which were previously unreported, and asked that they be kept from the jury….
Continue reading…S What Will the Presidential Elections Cost Us? Richard L. Hasen LOCATION: Grand Central Market 317 S Broadway Los Angeles, CA 90013 Parking is $6 after 5 PM at 308 S. Hill St., just south of 3rd St. Our presidential elections cost us billions in dollars—and they can cost even more in terms of their impact on our civic culture and understanding of issues. But it isn’t always easy to identify exactly how money shapes our politics. How exactly do ca…
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