“Arizona RNC delegation chair: ‘I would lynch’ county election official”

chicanery

WaPo:

Earlier this month, Shelby Busch — chair of Arizona’s delegation to the Republican convention — was in court trying to learn the identities of local elections workers. Under oath, she said she was unaware of any threats that had been made against the people who helped run the last presidential election and the midterm election that followed.

This week, video emerged that showed Busch saying she would “lynch” the official who helps oversee elections in Maricopa County: Stephen Richer, a fellow Republican.

“Let’s pretend that this gentleman over here was running for county recorder,” Busch said, seeming to refer to someone off-camera in the video, which was recorded at a public meeting in March. “And he’s a good Christian man that believes what we believe. We can work with that, right? That, that’s unity.”

“But,” she said moments later, “if Stephen Richer walked in this room, I would lynch him. I don’t unify with people who don’t believe the principles we believe in and the American cause that founded this country. And so, I want to make that clear when we talk about what it means to unify.”

Richer, who posted the video on social media this week, is Jewish.

Busch said Thursday that “the statement was a joke and was said in jest.” She did not address additional questions.

“I do not condone and would never condone violence against anyone,” Busch said in a statement. “It was political hyperbole and no way meant as a threat of violence.”

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Election Law Academics Update

election law biz

Here’s my yearly roundup of election law academic hires, promotions moves, visits, accolades:

Ellen Aprill is Senior Scholar in Residence at the Lowell Milken Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofits at UCLA (and continues as the John E Anderson Professor in Tax Law Emerita​ at Loyola LA)/

Wilfred Codrington III will be joining the faculty of Cardozo School of Law as the Walter Floersheimer Professor of Constitutional Law and will serve as co-director of the Floersheimer Center on Constitutional Democracy.

David Froomkin will be starting as an assistant professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center.

Anthony Gaughan will be a visiting professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

Ruth Greenwood was appointed as an Assistant Clinical Professor at Harvard Law School as of January 1 2024, and is still the Founding Director of the Election Law Clinic.

Rick Hasen was named the Gary T. Schwartz Endowed Chair in Law at UCLA and continues as the Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project.

Manoj Mate joined the University at Buffalo School of Law, State University of New York as a Professor of Law.

Lia Merivaki will be Associate Teaching Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy, and an Associate Research Professor at the Massive Data Institute, Georgetown University (beginning August 1).

Michael Morse  won a teaching award for Election Law at Penn.

Spencer Overton returned to GW Law as the Patricia Roberts Harris Research Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Multiracial Democracy Project.

Doug Spencer has been named the Ira C. Rothgerber Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

Franita Tolson is now Dean and Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law at USC.

Congratulations all!

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“An Alabama Town’s New Mayor Was Locked Out. 3 Years Later, He Will Return.”

Voting Rights Act

NYT:

Nearly four years after Patrick Braxton won the mayoral election for the small town of Newbern, Ala., in November 2020, he could soon get to serve his first term.

Mr. Braxton said in a lawsuit that, after he won the election, he never received access to manage the town’s finances, was barred from opening the municipal mailbox and was even locked out of the town hall, after the locks had been changed twice in six months.

Finally, on Friday, Newbern and Mr. Braxton filed a settlement agreement that, if approved by Judge Kristi K. DuBose of the Southern District of Alabama, will allow Mr. Braxton to begin his first term — three and a half years after it started.

“Every time I turned a corner, there was another obstacle in my way,” Mr. Braxton, a handyman who has long worked as a community volunteer, said in an interview.

A town of about 130 people, Newbern had not held an election for mayor since 1965 and instead allowed mayors to pick their successors. The town, where a majority of residents are Black, had never had a Black mayor. That more than five decade long streak without an election ended when Mr. Braxton filed the paperwork to run for mayor in the town’s 2020 election and, since he was the only person to do so, became the first Black mayor in Newbern’s history.

But over the next three years, the town’s incumbent leaders tried to bar Mr. Braxton from serving in the role, according to the lawsuit, in which he accused town leaders of racial discrimination. The lawsuit names the former mayor, Haywood Stokes III. Last week, the town and Mr. Braxton agreed on a settlement that would instate Mr. Braxton as the town’s rightful mayor, ensure the town holds regular elections, and require the town to admit to violating a series of laws, including the Fifteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act.

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“America needs a bigger House”

legislation and legislatures

In the Detroit News, I have this op-ed with Michigan state representative Andrew Fink. It begins:

Michigan’s population grew by 2% in the last decade and now has more than 10 million inhabitants. But those Census figures couldn’t stop the state from losing a seat in the House of Representatives, dropping to 13 members.

When states grow in population, they shouldn’t lose influence in Washington. It’s time to expand Congress to represent the interests of a growing national population by amending the Constitution.

Representative Fink has introduced a joint resolution in the Michigan legislature to ratify the last pending amendment of James Madison, which would guarantee a representative in the House for every 50,000 people. (Fink is the first representative to introduce such legislation in any state in recent memory, but perhaps a reader with a longer memory can think of another instance!) That would expand the size of the House from 435 to around 7000. And it can be done without any congressional action.

I’m sure some readers would strongly oppose such a measure or think of it as absurd. We defend reasons to think why much more robust legislative oversight and a House much more closely connected to the people would be a good thing. (Professor Danielle Allen has been among those writing more recently on the topic and in defense of it, such as in this Washington Post piece.)

Congress approved the amendment in 1789, and 11 states ratified it. It would take 27 more for it to become an amendment to the Constitution. But if even one state ratified, we think it might spur serious reflection in Congress about what the appropriate size of the House ought to be–perhaps less than 7000, but something that would spur Congress to react.

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Supreme Court Publishing Snafu Leads to Early Publication of Draft in Idaho Abortion Case Ending the Stay and Dismissing Case as Improvidently Granted; Some Thoughts on Justice Barrett’s Draft Concurrence

Supreme Court
Unlike the Dobbs leak, this seems inadvertent. Bloomberg scoop: The US Supreme Court is poised to allow abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho, according to a copy of the opinion that was briefly posted on the court’s website. The… Continue reading