[EL] Alarcon verdict

Rick Hasen rhasen at law.uci.edu
Wed Jul 23 12:07:49 PDT 2014 

    The Mixed Alarcon Verdict: Time To Abolish Candidate Residency
    Requirements <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=63654>

Posted on July 23, 2014 12:06 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=63654>by 
Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The LA Times Soumya Karlamaga reports 
<https://twitter.com/skarlamangla/status/492016725190123521>that former 
LA City council member Richard Alarcon was found guilty on some, but not 
most, counts of voter fraud and perjury (his wife was found guilty on 
some charges as well). There will be a motion for a new trial and 
appeals from the Alarcons. At issue was whether Alarcon and his wife 
intended to return to his in-district home while he worked outside his 
district. This trial, like the Ron Wright trial, turns on the meaning of 
"domicile" and candidate residency laws which require getting into the 
head of a politician (never a comfortable place to be) and discerning 
his intent.

In my view, it is time to abolish candidate residency laws. (This is not 
an excuse for Wright or Alarcon---if they violated the rules as they 
were at the time they were running, then they should be punished. It is 
an argument about going forward).

Here is what I wrote in /Slate/ 
<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2011/01/let_rahm_run.html>a 
few years ago, when an Illinois court said that Rahm Emanuel could not 
run for mayor of Chicago because he was not a resident (while he was 
serving as White House Chief of Staff in Washington DC:

    Monday's decision is wrong on many levels. Whether Emanuel's move to
    D.C. for a year should affect his mayoral chances is a question for
    the voters, not the courts, to decide. Emanuel's residency is no
    secret---it has been a defining campaign issue. If Chicago voters
    don't want to vote for Emanuel because they think he's a
    carpetbagger (even though this strains credulity given his
    longstanding Chicago ties), they can reject him at the ballot box.
    Now, in a nonpartisan election, they'll have to choose among a long
    list of candidates, none of whom has polled as strongly as Emanuel.
    Finally, should a politician really face a penalty like this for
    serving the president? Is it really true that no good deed goes
    unpunished?

    The appellate court's overly technical reading of Illinois law risks
    denying Chicago voters their first-choice candidate for mayor. For
    no good reason, the court has thrust itself into the political
    thicket. If there's time, the Illinois Supreme Court should get the
    judiciary out of the fray and leave the question of who should be
    Chicago's mayor to the voters.

The Illinois Supreme Court went on to reverse the lower court and allow 
Emanuel on the ballot and the voters elected him.

The idea that we need to protect voters from carpetbagging outsiders is 
outdated and patronizing. If voters don't want the outsider to be the 
representative, they can vote that way. But does anyone think the 
quality of Alarcon's representation of his district depended at all on 
whether his primary residence was a few miles outside his district? And 
even if they did, the remedy would be to vote him out of office.

There's no good reason to let prosecutors go after politicians on cases 
which require rummaging through the clothes and baby pictures in a 
politician's house. This leaves open room for selective prosecutions and 
mistakes. Let's repeal these candidate residency laws.

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Posted in residency <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=38>

-- 
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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