The Procedural Train Wreck Before the Court This Week in the LA Congressional Redistricting Case

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The stay applications before the Supreme Court this week on Louisiana’s congressional map represent the biggest procedural quagmire in a Voting Rights Act I can recall seeing:

1. One federal court held that Louisiana’s newly enacted map, after the 2020 Census, violated the VRA.

2. When LA then then enacted a remedial map, a different federal court held the remedial map violated the Constitution. So right now, LA has no valid map for this year’s congressional elections.

3. But on top of this, LA’s Secretary of State has told the Court she has to have a map in place by May 15th — Wednesday — to meet critical election deadlines that start rolling out.

The stay issues will be fully briefed before the Court this am. LA asks the Court to stay the second federal court decision, let it use a map this fall which that lower court has has held unconstitutional, but also hear the case on the merits down the road.

4. On the merits, if the Court agrees to hear the case this fall, the case presents the tension between the use of race in redistricting that the VRA might require and the constitutional constraints that also apply to the use of race in redistricting (particularly when a State is creating a remedial map after a judicial finding that the VRA requires a remedy). This is the search for what Chief Justice Roberts called, in the case I argued on these issues from Alabama, “the sweet spot” on the use of race in redistricting.

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“Wisconsin Supreme Court to revisit ruling that banned most ballot drop boxes”

absentee ballots

NBC News: The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today in a case that could result in the use of absentee ballot drop boxes for the upcoming presidential election. The case provides an opportunity for the Court’s liberal majority to reverse a decision made in the last election cycle that only the legislature can introduce absentee ballot drop boxes. Voting Rights Activists argue that is not correct and that the Wisconsin Elections Commission has discretion to make the decision. Wisconsin requires that absentee ballots be returned by mail or in person, but they argued it is unclear if the latter is limited to returning ballots to the election clerk’s office.

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The Law of Assembly on Campus

First Amendment theory,

Democratic politics involves far more than voting in elections. Yet, while we spend endless hours preoccupied with largely fabricated problems with elections, few pay any attention to the law of protest and assembly or its inadequacies. When we do, the question is essentially, “when would it be legal to disband the inconvenience and disruption that is protest?” This past week, I had the pleasure of engaging in an informal discussion with John Inazu (Wash U.), Ashutosh Bhagwat (UC Davis) and Tim Zick (William and Mary) about the legal and constitutional dimensions of recent campus protests and the problem with this narrow conception of the question. Beyond those issues that John identifies in his linked blog, our conversation discussed the problems with policing protests and the role of universities and colleges in our democracy.

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“Johnson’s ‘intuition’ clashes with data on illegal voting”

election administration, vote buying, voter id

The Hill: The numbers, agreed on by both left- and right-of-center institutes, speak for themselves:

“The Brennan Center study from the 2016 general election showed an estimated 30 incidents of suspected — not confirmed — noncitizen votes out of 23.5 million, which is 0.0001 percent of the votes cast. So the Speaker’s intuition is incorrect,” she told The Hill.

That’s a conclusion that’s also been reached by the libertarian Cato Institute, with one of its experts calling the claims one of the “most frequent and less serious criticisms” relating to migration.”

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“In top races, Republicans try to stay quiet on Trump’s false 2020 claims”

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Washington Post reports that while those auditioning for Vice President maybe embracing Trump’s narrative, Republican candidates in tight races are being intentionally vague, redirecting the focus on election rules. Also not good.

“[Unlike in 2022], many of the Republicans running alongside Trump in swing races are being far more ambiguous about their stance on 2020. Whether they have previously dismissed or embraced his claims, GOP nominees in some of the year’s most critical races are now evading the question and changing the topic. A number of them have steered clear of his most brazen allegations but tried to endear themselves to Trump’s supporters by questioning voting rules.”

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“Montana’s Tribal Voters Could Determine the Makeup of the Senate”

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Politico.

Native Americans are always an important voting bloc in Montana, where they make up 6.5 percent of the population, per U.S. Census data. But this November, their involvement could potentially impact the entire nation.

Control of the Senate may hang on the outcome of the Montana Senate race, where Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is up for reelection in this reliably red state, likely facing off against Republican Tim Sheehy, whom former President Donald Trump has endorsed. Trump won Montana by nearly 17 percentage points in 2020, and Tester won by 3.5 percentage points — or nearly 18,000 votes — in 2018. Montana’s tribes comprise about five percent of the voting bloc, nearly twice the margin by which Tester won his last race.

Native voters are “hugely important to the Democratic base,” says Jim Messina, an Obama White House alum and former adviser to Tester with deep political roots in Montana. Tester ousted Republican Sen. Conrad Burns in 2006 in part by siphoning off some of Burns’ support among Native Americans. “Tester was able to cut into that bloc and really move them towards him,” Messina says.

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