[EL] ELB News and Commentary 4/15/13
Rick Hasen
rhasen at law.uci.edu
Sun Apr 14 21:19:03 PDT 2013
"Mitch McConnell is in No Mood for Bipartisanship"
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49309>
Posted on April 14, 2013 9:16 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49309>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/bipartisanship-tempered-by-toxic-relationships-90043.html?hp=t1>:
"The Senate minority leader has signaled privately that he has no
interest in sitting in the same room as Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.) to discuss a possible "grand bargain" on budget and tax issues,
Senate insiders tell POLITICO. McConnell is fine with talking to Obama
--- just talking at this point --- but he doesn't want Reid there when
it happens."
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Posted in legislation and legislatures
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>, political parties
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=25>, political polarization
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=68> | Comments Off
Speaking Monday in San Diego on The Voting Wars Revised
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49306>
Posted on April 14, 2013 9:13 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49306>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Details.
<http://www.acslaw.org/SanDiegoVotingWarsRevisited#.UWhU-gXIe8Y.twitter>
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Posted in The Voting Wars <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60> |
Comments Off
"When Election Regulators are Mocked"
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49303>
Posted on April 14, 2013 9:11 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49303>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT Editorial
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/opinion/sunday/the-federal-election-commission-is-mocked.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss>:
"It is an open scandal in Washington that the Federal Election
Commission is completely ossified as the referee and penalizer of abuses
in national politics."
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Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, federal
election commission <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24> | Comments Off
'Washington confronts still-divided America"
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49300>
Posted on April 14, 2013 9:08 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49300>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Dan Balz
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/washington-confronts-still-divided-america/2013/04/12/3b5167e4-a386-11e2-82bc-511538ae90a4_story.html>:
"Bipartisanship and cross-party alliances are suddenly in vogue in the
Senate this spring. The question is whether the Senate is a leading
indicator of a change in politics or largely an aberration in a nation
divided along red and blue lines."
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Posted in legislation and legislatures
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>, political parties
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=25>, political polarization
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=68> | Comments Off
"America's Problem is Not Political Gridlock"
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49297>
Posted on April 14, 2013 9:04 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49297>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Interesting perspective
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/cf203c54-a2c6-11e2-9b70-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2QSh8caW4>
from Larry Summers.
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Posted in legislation and legislatures
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>, political parties
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=25>, political polarization
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=68> | Comments Off
"The Republican Advantage: The decline of swing districts and the
rise of partisanship spells trouble for House Democrats."
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49294>
Posted on April 14, 2013 9:02 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49294>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Charlie Cook
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/cook-report/the-republican-advantage-20130411>:
By now, the trend lines are clear. In 1998, we found 164 swing
seats---districts within 5 points of the national partisan average,
with scores between R+5 and D+5 (a score of R+5 means the district's
vote for the Republican presidential nominees was 5 percentage
points above the national average). The data 15 years ago showed
just 148 solidly Republican districts and 123 solidly Democratic
seats. Today, only 90 swing seats remain---a 45 percent
decline---while the number of solidly Republican districts has risen
to 186 and the count of solidly Democratic districts is up to 159.
In 1998, the median Democratic-held district had a PVI score of D+7,
and the median Republican-held district had a PVI score of
R+7---pretty partisan, but far from monolithic. Today, those median
numbers are D+12 and R+10, and that 22-point gulf is the main
structural driver of the political paralysis we lament today. Not
coincidentally, the most Democratic and the most Republican House
districts have never been further apart---Democratic Rep. Jose
Serrano's Bronx seat in New York City is D+43 on our scale, and
Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry's Texas Panhandle district is
R+32---a 75-point chasm.
Don't miss this graph
<http://cdn-media.nationaljournal.com/?controllerName=image&action=get&id=27785&width=314>.
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Posted in legislation and legislatures
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>, political parties
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=25>, political polarization
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=68>, redistricting
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6> | Comments Off
"Does Boehner benefit from breaking the Hastert rule?"
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49291>
Posted on April 14, 2013 1:59 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49291>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Sarah Binder blogs
<http://themonkeycage.org/2013/04/13/does-boehner-benefit-from-breaking-the-hastert-rule/>.
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Posted in legislation and legislatures
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>, political polarization
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=68> | Comments Off
"Reassessing Colorado's Turnout" <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49288>
Posted on April 14, 2013 1:10 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49288>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Michael McDonald:
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-p-mcdonald/colorado-turnout_b_3080980.html>
Colorado legislators are
<http://denver.cbslocal.com/2013/04/08/colorado-democrats-push-for-big-election-changes/>contemplating
changes to their
<http://denver.cbslocal.com/2013/04/08/colorado-democrats-push-for-big-election-changes/>election
laws this week that may result in higher turnout. A report issued by
Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler
<http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/newsRoom/publications/2012GeneralElectionReview.pdf>
figures prominently in the deliberations, which triumphantly touts
"the most successful (election) in Colorado history," implying that
no changes are needed.
However, claims in the report that Colorado's voter turnout
increased compared to 2008, while turnout declined elsewhere are not
supported by the facts. I reassess the report with the best
available data --- my United States Elections Project
<http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm> --- which the Colorado
Secretary of State's office analyzed selectively. With Colorado
considering changes to its election laws, policy makers should make
their decisions with the most accurate information.
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Posted in voting <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=31> | Comments Off
"Statutory Interpretation from the Inside --- An Empirical Study of
Congressional Drafting, Delegation and the Canons: Part I"
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49285>
Posted on April 13, 2013 1:34 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49285>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Abbe Gluck and Lisa Schultz Bressman have posted this draft
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2244952> on SSRN
(forthcoming /Stanford Law Review/). This looks to be a top-of-the-pile
must read. Here is the abstract:
What role should the realities of the legislative drafting process
play in the theories and doctrines of statutory interpretation and
administrative law? The ongoing debates frequently turn on empirical
assumptions about how Congress drafts and what interpretive rules
Congress knows, but there has been almost no testing of whether any
of these assumptions reflect legislative reality. We have attempted
to fill that void. This is the first of two Articles reporting the
results of the most extensive empirical study to date --- a survey
of 137 congressional counsels drawn from both parties, both chambers
of Congress and spanning multiple committees --- on topics ranging
from drafters' knowledge and use of the textual and substantive
canons of interpretation, to legislative history, the administrative
law deference doctrines, the legislative process and the
Court-Congress relationship.
Our findings have implications for virtually every swath of the
interpretive debates. We can report, for instance, that there are
some canons that our drafters know and use --- Chevron and the
presumption against preemption, for example, but that there are
other canons that our drafters know, but consciously reject in favor
of political or other considerations, including the presumption in
favor of consistent usage, the rule against superfluities, and
dictionary use; and still other canons, like Mead and noscitur a
sociis, that our drafters do not know as legal rules but that seem
to be accurate judicial reflections of how Congress drafts. Our
interviews also elicited a treasure trove of information about key
influences on the drafting process that legal doctrine rarely
considers, from the variety of audiences for legislative history, to
the way in which the personal reputation of particular agency heads
affects delegation decisions, to the fact that drafting conventions
depend on the type of statute being drafted and its path through
Congress.
All of these findings, and many others, allow us to press for a more
precise answer to one of the fields' foundational questions: that
is, what should be the purpose of these canons of interpretation?
Judges, often using the unhelpful generalization that they are
Congress's "faithful agents," have legitimized these doctrines using
a variety of conflicting justifications, some of which turn on
empirical reality, some of which do not, and most of which aim to
justify many different types of canons that seem to be doing very
different types of work. Do the canons reflect how Congress actually
drafts, and so effectuate legislative supremacy? Or do judges use
the canons for more dialogical reasons, such as to encourage
Congress to draft more precisely --- and does Congress listen? Might
the canons, despite how "neutral" some appear, instead be understood
to effectuate judicial values that are external to the legislative
process --- such as advancing constitutional norms or imposing
coherence on the U.S. Code? Our study illuminates this variety
across the normative bases for the canons also reveals that each set
of justifications rests on a very different vision of the judicial
power and the Court-Congress relationship.
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Posted in legislation and legislatures
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>, statutory interpretation
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=21> | Comments Off
"It Might Be America's least super super-PAC"
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49282>
Posted on April 13, 2013 1:29 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49282>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
WaPo
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kentucky-group-is-the-pac-that-couldnt-shoot-straight/2013/04/12/3d0e4818-a386-11e2-9c03-6952ff305f35_story.html>on
ProgressKy. Hard to imagine Senator McConnell having better luck.
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Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,
campaigns <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12> | Comments Off
"Lawmakers: Tackle Redistricting or Wait for Courts?"
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49279>
Posted on April 13, 2013 1:26 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49279>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Ross Ramsey
<http://www.texastribune.org/2013/04/12/lawmakers-tackle-redistricting-or-wait-courts/>
for the Texas Tribune:
Greg Abbott <http://www.texastribune.org/directory/greg-abbott/> is
selling a redistricting nostrum, telling Texas legislators they
could cut their legal risks by adopting new political maps right away.
It is a hard sell. Lawmakers are getting along so well they
practically break out into song every day. Abbott, the state's
attorney general, is offering them one of the most reliably divisive
issues in existence, saying they could get themselves --- and him,
too, by the way --- out of a lot of gnarly legal fights by endorsing
maps drawn by federal judges instead of defending their own. They're
balking.
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Posted in Department of Justice <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=26>,
redistricting <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Voting Rights Act
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15> | Comments Off
"Obama advocacy group raises $4.8 million"
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49277>
Posted on April 12, 2013 11:57 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=49277>
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
USA Today:
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/04/12/organizing-for-action-president-obama-fundraising/2077201/>
President Obama's new advocacy organization collected roughly $4.8
million during the first three months of the year, the group
announced Friday.
"In just the first few months of this brand-new organization,
109,582 supporters stepped up and invested in what we're building
together -- from the grass roots up," Organizing for Action's
executive director Jon Carson wrote in an e-mail to supporters. He
said the average donation was $44.
The fundraising total is far less than the president's re-election
campaign typically raised during a three-month period. It
underscores the early challenge in transforming Obama's fundraising
operation --- which raised more than $1 billion for his re-election
--- into a post-election force to advance his second-term agenda on
immigration, gun control and other issues.
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Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, tax law
and election law <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=22> | Comments Off
-- Rick Hasen Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science UC
Irvine School of Law 401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000 Irvine, CA
92697-8000 949.824.3072 - office 949.824.0495 - fax rhasen at law.uci.edu
http://law.uci.edu/faculty/page1_r_hasen.html http://electionlawblog.org
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