[EL] ELB News and Commentary 1/11/14

Sat Jan 11 09:27:56 PST 2014

<http://electionlawblog.org/>

    "Bozeman legislative candidate asks court to halt vote-reporting
    law" <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57881>

Posted on January 11, 2014 9:25 am 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57881>by Rick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Missoulian 
<http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/bozeman-legislative-candidate-asks-court-to-halt-vote-reporting-law/article_b2096482-7a53-11e3-8a52-001a4bcf887a.html>: 
"A Bozeman legislative candidate has asked a federal court to 
temporarily block enforcement of a new state law that requires published 
campaign materials about a legislator's record to include every vote 
taken by the lawmaker on that issue."

Chances of this challenge's success: sky high

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Posted in campaigns <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

    "In Defense of 'Super PACs' and of the First Amendment"
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57879>

Posted on January 11, 2014 9:23 am 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57879>by Rick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Joel Gora has posed this draft 
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2376894>on SSRN 
(/Seton Hall Law Review/). Here is the abstract:

    This article is a defense of "Super PACs" and of the First Amendment
    principles that they embody, namely, that we need a robust,
    wide-open and uninhibited discussion of politics and government in
    order to make our democracy work. Like the famous Citizens United
    ruling in 2010, Super PACs have gotten a bad press and have been
    widely condemned as threats to democracy. But Super PACs are really
    nothing new. They trace their origins back to Buckley v. Valeo, the
    Supreme Court's landmark 1976 free speech ruling which rejected any
    justification for limiting the independent expenditures for
    political speech. Thus, the day after Buckley, individuals and
    groups were free to spend whatever they wished to support or oppose
    political candidates. Whether they were allowed to join together for
    such purposes was less clear. But Citizens United removed any
    lingering doubt by holding that any speaker -- individual,
    corporate, union, non-profit -- was free to make independent
    expenditures without prohibition or limitation. Based on those
    principles, a federal appeals court easily and unanimously ruled
    that what one person or group could do individually, several people
    or groups could do cooperatively, namely, pool their resources to
    get out their common message. That is a Super PAC.

    As a result, Super PACs played a noticeable role in the 2012 federal
    elections. But despite popular misconception, they did not dominate
    or control those elections, accounting for only 10 percent of the
    campaign spending, almost all contributions to them were fully and
    publically disclosed, and almost no corporations played any role in
    any such Super PAC spending. Indeed, so far as is known not a single
    Fortune 500 company spent a single dollar to support a Super PAC.
    Rather, Super PACs enabled more speech and debate in our political
    process, a result to be desired most significantly under the First
    Amendment. So, rather than being a threat to democracy, Super PACs
    have been a boon.

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Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

    "U.S. justices agree to hear challenge to Ohio speech law"
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57877>

Posted on January 11, 2014 9:17 am 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57877>by Rick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Reuters reports 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/10/us-usa-court-freespeech-idUSBREA091AI20140110>.

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Posted in campaigns <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

    Republican FEC Commissioners Issue Statement on Why Crossroads GPS
    Need Not Register as Political Committee
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57875>

Posted on January 10, 2014 9:23 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57875>by Rick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

See here <http://eqs.fec.gov/eqsdocsMUR/14044350970.pdf>.

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Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, federal 
election commission <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>

    Key figures in #Bridgegate--Baroni, Samson--also key figures in suit
    to block Lautenberg replacement of Torricelli
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57872>

Posted on January 10, 2014 9:20 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57872>by Rick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Remember New Jersey Democratic Party v. Samson 
<http://law.justia.com/cases/new-jersey/supreme-court/2002/a-24-02-opn.html>?

I have an extensive discussion of  the case in the Democracy Canon 
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1344476>.

Baroni, Forrester's lawyer, wrote his own article: William E. Baroni, 
Jr., Administrative Unfeasibility: The Torricelli Replacement Case and 
the Creation of a New Election Law Standard, 27 SETON HALL LEGIS. J. 53 
(2002).

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Posted in Uncategorized <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

    "Supreme Court to mull right to lie in political ads"
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57869>

Posted on January 10, 2014 9:07 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57869>by Rick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Politico reports 
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2014/01/supreme-court-to-mull-right-to-lie-in-political-ads-180995.html>.

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Posted in campaigns <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

    Democratic FEC Commissioners Issue Statement on Why Crossroads GPS
    Should Register as Political Committee
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57867>

Posted on January 10, 2014 4:19 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57867>by Rick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Here <http://t.co/CxAzTPwnnx>.

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Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, federal 
election commission <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>

    "Bitcoin Takes Stage In Texas Senate Campaign"
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57865>

Posted on January 10, 2014 4:05 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57865>by Rick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NPR reports 
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2014/01/10/260572933/bitcoin-takes-stage-in-texas-campaign>.

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Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

    Breaking: Supreme Court Takes Case Involving False Campaign Speech
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57863>

Posted on January 10, 2014 12:06 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=57863>by Rick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Today the Court issued an orde 
<http://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/011014zr_bp24.pdf>r 
granting cert in /Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. /

The cert. petition 
<http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/SBA_Cert_Petition.pdf>raises 
two questions, the second of which is substantive on the question of 
false campaign speech laws:

    Did the Sixth Circuit err by holding, in direct conflict with the
    Eighth Circuit, that state laws proscribing "false" political speech
    are not subject to pre-enforcement First Amendment review so long as
    the speaker maintains that its speech is true, even if others who
    enforce the law
    manifestly disagree?

Marcia Coyle's preview of this case 
<http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleSCI.jsp?id=1202615481907&kw=Campaign%20Lies%20Are%20Common%2C%20But%20Are%20They%20Actionable%3F&et=editorial&bu=National%20Law%20Journal&cn=20130814&src=EMC-Email&pt=Supreme%20Court%20Brief%20Headlines&slreturn=20140010150405> 
is here. It is not clear to me that the Court in this case is going to 
reach the merits of the constitutionality of laws barring false campaign 
speech (the Court may instead simply say that courts have to decide such 
challenges). But if the Court reaches the merits, I believe the Court is 
likely to hold at least some state laws barring false campaign speech 
unconstitutional. I've addressed the issues of the constitutionality of 
limits on campaign lies after /US v. Alvarez/ inA Constitutional Right 
to Lie in Campaigns and Elections? 
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2151618>

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Posted in campaigns <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

-- 
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://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org

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