AL.com reports. “It could get final passage as early as next week.” It “bipartisan support and no opposition.” Maybe now Ohio can be embarrassed enough to do the same. For Ohio’s mess, see Can Ohio overcome dysfunction to fix Biden ballot conflict? It’s unclear.

That’s the headline of this Houston Chronicle article, but the body of the article (which is behind a paywall) notes that there is a disagreement among experts on the point. Because the podcast payments went to a PAC, there’s a complaint filed with the FEC that Cruz violated campaign finance laws by soliciting money for the PAC.

Matt Vasilogambros for Stateline:

“This month, Wisconsin joined 27 other states that have banned or restricted local governments’ use of private donations to run cash-strapped election offices, buy voting equipment or hire poll workers for Election Day.

“All of the state laws came in the past four years, pushed by conservative lawmakers and activists who claim that Democratic voters disproportionately benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in grants primarily funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, during the 2020 presidential election.

“Courts and federal regulators have rejected those claims, but the debate over the role of outside money reveals a broader worry among election experts, who say there are significant shortcomings in local government funding of election offices. That includes not just Election Day duties and vote counting, but also the year-round administrative work of maintaining voter rolls and taking care of and updating voting equipment. …

“Money from Congress has been limited. This year, congressional leaders agreed to provide $55 million in election grant funding for states to distribute locally. That is around as much as Los Angeles County alone spent conducting a gubernatorial recall election in 2021. …

State money for elections varies widely. Lawmakers in some states do not allocate any of their budget to local election officials.  …

“Other states do allocate some local election funding in their budgets, but often not at a level that would allow for major equipment replacement, said Matthew Weil, executive director of the Democracy Program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a D.C.-based think tank.”

I concur with this sentiment expressed by Matt: “I don’t necessarily disagree with banning private funding in elections. But that does require that counties, states and the federal government step up and fund elections at the levels they need to provide the services that voters have come to expect.”

If funding falls below a level where it becomes impossible for the government to conduct the election, would that constitute a constitutional violation? A theory of this sort was pursued in Ohio after its debacle of a performance in 2004, and it survived a motion to dismiss. (As I recall, the case was settled after Jennifer Brunner became Ohio’s Secretary of State, and so the claim never went to trial on the merits.) As anyone who has studied or been involved in school funding litigation, suing the government for failure to provide adequate funds for an essential public service is extremely challenging–but not altogether impossible. It would seem a violate of the federal Constitution, as interpreted in Bush v. Gore, for a state to hold a popular vote for the appointment of its presidential electors, but then fail to provide adequate funding for all the state’s eligible voters to participate in the popular vote in a meaningful way. As a practical matter, it would be difficult to proof that funding was so inadequate as to essentially deprive some voters, but not others, of an opportunity to cast a ballot–and thus cause those voters to end up being disenfranchised. But at some point, the lines at polling places may be so long because of inadequate resources to constitute functional disenfranchisement. It’s a line-drawing problem.

USA Today:

“The bill’s prospects are uncertain. Secretary of State Frank LaRose said it includes some good ideas, but other parts are entirely unworkable or need significant revision. …

“DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney said it’s important to maintain confidence in elections but added that lawmakers can’t “keep going back to that well with further bills dealing with the same thing in a different way without different fact patterns.” The Ohio Association of Election Officials is still reviewing House Bill 472, said the group’s executive director, Aaron Ockerman.”

N.Y. Times reports. The country shouldn’t be in the position where a sitting governor and potential vice-presidential nominee won’t say that Mike Pence did the right thing by accepting Biden’s valid Electoral College victory, but unfortunately that’s where we are right now.

N.Y. Times opinion column explaining the prosecution’s overly expansive conceptive of “election fraud”: “Mr. Bragg has adopted a weak theory of “election interference,” and Justice Juan Merchan described the case, in his summary of it during jury selection, as… Continue reading

N.Y. Times reports on the formation of American Sunlight Project by Nina Jankowicz and Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos: “The inception of the group, the American Sunlight Project, reflects how divisive the issue of identifying and combating disinformation has become as the 2024… Continue reading

POLITICO reports on new polling that suggests RFK Jr. might pull support from Trump as well as Biden. Although the story doesn’t say so, the key point should be that a well-designed electoral system wouldn’t let a third-party or independent… Continue reading

AP reports: “The court’s conclusion: James Holkeboer’s conduct was improper but not a crime. He was charged with election fraud. But Holkeboer’s lawyers pointed out that the state law used by prosecutors only bars acts that change the… Continue reading

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The focus of the story is “Trump’s decision to attack Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe.” Some details: “Meagan Wolfe will try and steal another election,” Trump said in an interview earlier this month with conservative radio … Continue reading

Arizona Republic. No surprise: “Legal experts had predicted the court would not exercise its discretion to add the case to its docket, citing well-established legal precedent and the court’s low acceptance rate.” Moreover: “U.S. District Judge John Tuchi dismissed their … Continue reading