…he county vote “should not be certified.” WaPo: After three hours of tense deadlock on Tuesday, the two Republicans on an election board in Michigan’s most populous county reversed course and voted to certify the results of the Nov. 3 election, a key step toward finalizing President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Now, they both want to take back their votes. In affidavits signed Wednesday evening, the two GOP members of the four-member Wa…
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…day night and certified the results of the Nov. 3 election after initially deadlocking 2-2 along party lines, which could have delayed the state process for authorizing results. The deadlock decision was lauded by Republicans but decried by Democrats. During a public comment session, the vote was described as a targeted attack on majority-Black Detroit. The change in course was approved by the two Republican and two Democratic canvassers with the…
Continue reading…the Biden-Harris slate. And again, perhaps Congress would get stuck in a deadlock over multiple slates of electors, unable to move because of divided government between the House and Senate. All of these scenarios are unlikely if cooler heads prevail, but they might give a political party pause before attempting to select replacement candidates. The uncertainty of what might happen makes the simple process of selecting replacements and instruct…
Continue reading…Gonna break some precedent to not confirm in party pairs, but it will restore a quorum if Trainor confirmed so the FEC can then defend itself when it is sued for inaction and partisan deadlock….
Continue reading…ing in a California high school, have seemingly no effect on the political deadlock. It seems extremely difficult to see how the political process is failing to prevent a policy over-reaction. Miller’s post raises the question of what (if anything) political process theory has to say about constitutional provisions, like the Second Amendment, that endorse values completely unrelated to the structure and operation of democracy. John Hart Ely famous…
Continue reading…ion, and lucky for us you can get it from behind the paywall: An August 22 deadlock by the Federal Election Commission regarding a request for an advisory opinion highlights the complicated role that tax law plays in regulating campaign finance. It underscores important differences between section 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) organizations not only under section 501(c), but also under section 527. Moreover, because the resignation of the FEC vice chair ha…
Continue reading…s $100 million.)… She took a deep dive into possible solutions to partisan deadlock and reviewed the players in the diffuse field known as democracy reform: Small groups that push for changes in the electoral system.Some of the avenues her groups are pursuing include ranked-choice voting, in which voters rank candidates in order of their preference. Proponents of this method argue that it reduces the tendency of primaries to reward candidates who…
Continue reading…his conflict are ambiguous and vulnerable to partisan posturing. Bicameral deadlock, in which the Senate claims one presidential winner while the House claims the other, would resemble the disputed Hayes-Tilden election of 1876 in a way that Bush v. Gore in 2000 did not. This kind of bicameral deadlock, if it lasted until noon on January 20, 2021, would cause serious difficulties in the capacity of the nation to transition from one presidential te…
Continue reading…OR 2019-10 Commission consideration of AOR 2019-10 Price can now go ahead and try to do this anyway, but he cannot claim he relied upon a green light from the FEC. (Many more aggressive political folks use FEC deadlock as a green light.) If Price goes ahead, there could be an FEC complaint and lawsuits. But those will take a long time to resolve and Price might treat it as the cost of doing business….
Continue reading…See here. If the FEC deadlocks, Price will have to decide whether to go forward with his plan and risk liability for doing so. But given how lax FEC enforcement is these days, it is not clear how much of a risk this is….
Continue reading…ifiers) with the prospect of the matter going to the courts in the case of deadlock. Second, for both IRCs and other redistricting bodies, the redistricting criteria used to draw district lines need to be formally ranked or ordered by tiers to give more clarity as to their priority. With respect to partisan fairness, the underlying standard should be defined as explicitly as possible. Thirdly, with respect to the above point, we should not fool…
Continue reading…— on 4.9 percent of requests per year, with a number of years featuring no deadlocks. Since 2008, the annual deadlock rate has jumped to 24.1 percent. While the FEC has been able to produce advisory opinions on straightforward and routine matters, requests stuck in deadlock cover novel or controversial issues, such as whether candidates can appear in super PAC ads and how political action committees can use Twitter. Like the advisory opinion proce…
Continue reading…eign national. The fine brought cheers for the FEC, an agency infamous for deadlock, and heartened people on both sides of the aisle who want better enforcement of campaign finance laws. There’s just one catch: Right to Rise came out ahead. Newly-released documents tell the tale. In exchange for a $1.3 million contribution, the super PAC paid a $390,000 fine. The difference—$910,000 in illegal money—is the super PAC’s to keep. So much for the chee…
Continue reading…ens United World Katherine Shaw Chapter 7: Beyond Repair: FEC Reform and Deadlock Deference Daniel P. Tokaji Chapter 8: The People’s Pledge: Campaign Finance Reform without Legal Reform Ganesh Sitaraman Chapter 9: Super PAC Insurance: A Private Sector Solution to Reform Campaign Finance Nick Warshaw Chapter 10: Constraining and Channeling Corporate Political Power in Trump’s America Kent Greenfield Chapter 11: Reforming Lobbying Maggie M…
Continue reading…result from a party-line split. This chapter argues that this practice of “deadlock deference” should be abandoned because it is wrong as a matter of law and harmful as a matter of policy. Abandoning deadlock deference would not only conform to recent Supreme Court precedent regarding Chevron deference, but also help remedy the worsening problem of party-line stalemates on the FEC. Because Article III judges rather than partisan commissioners woul…
Continue reading…ld take a majority to do anything on the board. In the event of a partisan deadlock, default rules would kick in that would benefit Republicans, such as one early voting site per county, and only during business hours. The court held that this power grab violated three provisions of the North Carolina state constitution (the separation of powers clause, the executive powers clause, and the faithful execution clause. The unanimous court relied heav…
Continue reading…ostly a distraction. The FEC is not much of a problem for the Republicans: Deadlock has worked well enough for them. So why bother to take on this new fight? How much more could the FEC not do? But if the Republicans did cooperate with the President to pack the Commission with their own, it would cast new light on the reasons why an agency like this might be wisely structured to be 50-50, with no party controlling. Democrats and reformers, resisti…
Continue reading…al Election Commission Reveals the Unlikelihood of Draining the Swamp. The deadlocks have allowed a lot of questionable and illegal activity to go through because the chances of FEC enforcement (or court action in the face of a deadlocked FEC) are small. I will miss having Commissioner Ravel on the Commission—she, along with longtime FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub—has used every opportunity to call public attention to deadlock at the FEC and the…
Continue reading…preventing foreign campaign money from influencing U.S. elections led to a deadlock between Democratic and Republican commissioners at the FEC’s first meeting in 2017. FEC Democrats said the agency should clamp down on a possible threat of foreign campaign money, in a contentious debate set against a backdrop of wider concerns about foreign interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Republican commissioners responded that recent intelligence…
Continue reading…thority under the Rules Clause of the U.S. Constitution and is likely unenforceable—a situation that could result in chaos and constitutional deadlock after a closely contested presidential election….
Continue readingVia Chris Geidner’s story on the Supreme Court’s refusal (on a 4-4 deadlock) to stay the 4th Circuit order stopping some of North Carolina’s strict voting laws, comes this curious statement from North Carolina’s governor, Pat McCrory: “North Carolina has been denied basic voting rights already granted to more than 30 other states to protect the integrity of one person, one vote through a common-sense voter ID law,” McCrory said in the statement….
Continue reading…NYT WaPo WSJ NPR AP BuzzFeed HuffPo CNN Reuters LAT USA Today NBC Bloomberg The Hill SCOTUSBlog Lyle Denniston And see my own analysis, “#SCOTUS 4-4 Tie in NC Voting Case Leaves Lower Court Ruling in Place and Shows Us Power of Appeals Courts Post-Scalia….
Continue reading…, we’ve been promised, and more to come), there is very likely to be a 4-4 deadlock on the merits, meaning the Court won’t be able to do its work. It also means that how the Court handles not only voting rights but a whole host of issues depends on the outcome of the presidential election. The Supreme Court really matters. Finally, in the interim, this really empowers the lower courts, both the federal courts of appeal and state Supreme Courts. As…
Continue reading…e another post-election dispute such as Bush v. Gore, then the court could deadlock 4-4. The result in Trump v. Clinton would then affirm whatever lower court heard the case — likely a state supreme court. Most state supreme court justices are elected. Therefore, without a full bench on the US Supreme Court, the presidential election could come down to some elected judges in a swing state. That is no way to run a democracy. To be sure, many people…
Continue readingGreg Stohr for Bloomberg: At the shorthanded U.S. Supreme Court, the next deadlock may affect the November election. A group of voting-rights cases is making its way to a court that’s all but guaranteed to have a lingering vacancy through the election. The divisive nature of the issues may leave the eight justices unable to decide who can cast the ballots that will determine control of the White House and Congress. The disputes involve voter-iden…
Continue readingBauer: The FEC has once again deadlocked on an enforcement case and left an important question dangerously open. Months ago, the FEC could do nothing useful with a case about the use of LLCs to make contributions. Now it is inviting trouble, and not for the first time, with a case about how hard a corporation may press its employees to support the employer’s political program. In the recent case, the FEC was forced by the usual 3-3 division to di…
Continue readingBloomberg BNA: The Federal Election Commission deadlocked on whether to investigate charges that coal company owner Robert Murray violated campaign finance laws by coercing employees to make campaign contributions, according to documents released May 20. The action on Murray and his Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp. followed a similar deadlock last year over charges that employees and their families were required to attend a 2012 rally for Republica…
Continue readingSenior federal district court judge Charles Lovell has issued this 30 page opinion granting summary judgment to plaintiffs challenging key provisions of Montana’s campaign finance law, including individual and committee contributions to candidates for governor and state offices. This case has been bouncing around for years, and has been on remand from the 9th Circuit, but at bottom the trial court found the following: applying the 9th Circuit’s e…
Continue reading…potentially to the United States Supreme Court, where the Court could well deadlock 4-4 (leaving any 4th Circuit ruling in place). And all of these appeals will have to happen in short order for it to affect how the 2016 elections take place under the Purcell principle. Here is my overall impression having read/skimmed the 485 pages: the judge does a very thorough job going through the evidence of the law’s burdens on voters and the state’s intere…
Continue reading…nspiracy theory film ahead of the 2012 election that claimed that President Obama’s real father was Franklin Marshall Davis, described as “an American Communist.” The FEC ultimately voted in February to close the case without taking any action — an increasingly common occurrence with the 3-3 deadlock at the commission that is divided between the two parties. Though no action was taken, Goodman said the implication of the Democrats’ position could…
Continue reading…while it’s true we’ll be choosing a president and one-third of the Senators in 2016, the other two-thirds won’t be chosen until 2018 and 2020. Only after these votes is it fair to consider whether to confirm a president’s nominee.” After the Supreme Court’s 4-4 deadlock in a case last week involving the power of public sector unions, everyone recognizes the stakes of who controls the Supreme Court could not be higher. According to the insider, McC…
Continue reading…o we want to take the chance of having an even number of justices deciding that dispute, hoping that the court will not deadlock 4-4?…
Continue reading…How does a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission skeptical of regulation enforce the law? Is there a sound basis for limiting foreign money in elections? Why does the FEC deadlock along party lines, and what can be done about staff unhappiness at the FEC? On Episode 11 of the ELB Podcast, we talk to Republican FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman. You can listen to the ELB Podcast Episode 10 on Soundcloud or subscribe at iTunes….
Continue reading…erg said he could not in good conscience enter a race that could lead to a deadlock in the Electoral College — and to the election of Mr. Trump, or perhaps Senator Ted Cruz of Texas….. Trevor Potter, the election lawyer who was counsel to John McCain’s 2008 campaign, was retained to assemble legal teams to handle local and state ballot-access issues, and address constitutional questions that could arise from an inconclusive result in the Electoral…
Continue reading…the Senate would almost certainly shift the court in the direction of stricter voting rights enforcement and a greater willingness to take account of race when considering redistricting and election law matters But the more likely scenario in the near term — deadlock over Scalia’s replacement — could have a similar effect by leaving the court less likely to come up with the five votes required to set precedents on such matters and to issue emergen…
Continue reading…und in favor of Al Gore, the most likely outcome (see here and here) was a deadlock in which the Republican-controlled House voted to recognize the Bush slate of electors and the Senate (probably divided 50-50 between the parties with Vice President Gore breaking the tie) voted to recognize the Gore slate. This is true in part because the Electoral Count Act, the obscure statue enacted in 1887 to break such deadlocks between the houses, would like…
Continue readingRelease: A deadlock by the U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Public Citizen’s request that the agency close a loophole of its own making that allows federal contractors to make campaign contributions through subsidiaries means the loophole remains. The 3-3 vote came Tuesday evening. “It’s irresponsible for the agency to let stand a policy that guts a key campaign finance rule,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Cit…
Continue reading…omberg BNA: The Federal Election Commission appeared to be moving toward a deadlocked vote in a ruling over the legality of activities by single-candidate super PACs in the 2016 campaign. Commissioners postponed a final vote following a discussion at a commission meeting Oct. 29 of a key advisory opinion (AO 2015-09). The vote on the ruling, requested by prominent Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, was delayed until the next scheduled FEC meet…
Continue reading…ive for anyone paying attention to developments in campaign finance, including voters. It is also fair to wonder whether the Federal Election Commission and the I.R.S. will act to enforce existing laws. In recent years, the election agency has been frozen by partisan deadlock, and the I.R.S. has been cowed by Congress, while politically active groups have pushed through boundaries that once seemed impregnable, even in the opaque world of campaign…
Continue reading…ions made up equally of Republicans and Democrats. But Olsen said he had concerns about eliminating the judges and about putting equal numbers of appointees from both parties on the new commissions. In controversial cases, the two boards could deadlock and end up doing nothing, he said. “If it’s set up so they never agree on anything, then nothing gets investigated,” Olsen said. Olsen said he would prefer to see the judges remain part of the syste…
Continue reading…An intentional recipe for deadlock in one of our most bitterly partisan state governments….
Continue reading…ainst a group of 2016 candidates for alleged campaign violations. “They’re probably trying a combination — to embarrass the Republicans and also to have an excuse for doing it themselves.” Should the commission deadlock on the request by refusing to act on it or splitting in a 3-to-3 vote, Mr. Noble said, “most of the aggressive lawyers will say it gives them a green light” to engage in similar tactics….
Continue reading…ains incapacitated by the ideological divide between its Democratic and Republican commissioners, according to a study (PDF) Public Citizen released today. In “Roiled in Partisan Gridlock, Federal Election Commission is Failing,” Public Citizen found that deadlocked votes by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on enforcement actions and audits remain at an all-time high. Partisan deadlock prevents actions on regulations and advisory opinions as…
Continue reading…the scope of federal versus state power in setting election rules for federal elections. A potential complication: a new EAC that could well deadlock on any decisions about how to litigate this case….
Continue readingBloomberg BNA: The Federal Election Commission deadlocked on whether to investigate a long-pending case involving alleged violation of campaign finance rules by the American Future Fund (AFF), a nonprofit organization linked to the so-called Koch Network of politically active nonprofits, according to documents released by the FEC on Dec. 29. Republican and Democratic FEC commissioners voted along party lines regarding a staff recommendation to in…
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