[EL] Republican Nirvana
jboppjr
jboppjr at aol.com
Tue Jul 7 10:29:31 PDT 2015
Waldman's article surely sets a modern record for the number of distortions and misrepresentations per column inch. But what is most noteworthy is his willful blindness. Absurdly low contribution limits are the wellspring from which superpacs and c4 participation in politics flows and not a word about them. Contribution limits are the handy work of reformers, not free speech Republicans. And until this is fixed, reformers will just continue to play whack-a-mole and the system will continue to lose transparency and accountability. Jim Bopp
Sent via the Samsung Galaxy Note® 4, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
-------- Original message --------
From: Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu>
Date: 07/07/2015 12:36 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: [EL] ELB News and Commentary 7/715
“Republicans have won the battle
over money in politics. Should anyone celebrate?”
Posted on July 7,
2015 9:32 am by Rick Hasen
Paul Waldman at The Plum
Line.
Posted in campaign finance, campaigns
“Trump’s Super-PAC
in a (Post Office) Box”
Posted on July 7,
2015 9:29 am by Rick Hasen
Bloomberg reports.
Posted in Uncategorized
“In Rio Grande Valley, Some Campaign Workers
Are Paid To Harvest Votes”
Posted on July 7,
2015 9:26 am by Rick Hasen
NPR:
This week,
NPR examines public corruption in South Texas. The FBI has
launched a task force to clean up entrenched wrongdoing by
public servants in the Rio Grande Valley. In the final
part of this series, we
examine vote-stealing and election fraud.
A new FBI
anti-corruption task force is trying to clean up the Rio
Grande Valley of Texas. According to the Justice Department,
in 2013, more public officials were
convicted for corruption in South Texas than
in any other region of the country. One of the practices the
task force is looking at is vote-stealing.
They’re called politiqueras
— a word
unique to the border that means campaign worker. It’s a
time-honored tradition down in the land of grapefruit
orchards and Border Patrol checkpoints. If a local candidate
needs dependable votes, he or she goes to apolitiquera.
In recent years,
losing candidates in local elections began to challenge vote
harvesting by politiqueras in the Rio Grande
Valley, and they shared their investigations with
authorities. After the 2012 election cycle, the Justice
Department and the Texas attorney general’s office filed
charges.
Posted in chicanery
Bauer Critical of SCOTUS AZ
Redistricting Decision and Renzi Cert. Denial
Posted on July 7,
2015 9:17 am by Rick Hasen
Interesting read:
The doctrinal fine
points are open to be debate, but it is hard to escape the
impression that Court believes readily in the failures of
the democratic process and the part played in this breakdown
by self-interested legislators. And it won’t overlook
wrongdoing or allow the legislator’s constitutional
defenses–perhaps also judged to be tainted by
self-interest?–to get in the way.
Posted in redistricting, Speech or Debate Clause, Supreme Court
“Why Nonprofits
Get Away With Campaigning”
Posted on July 7,
2015 9:15 am by Rick Hasen
Noah Feldman column.
Posted in campaign finance
“Who Owns Your Politics?”
Posted on July 7,
2015 9:12 am by Rick Hasen
New America Foundation:
A common piece of
advice for new hires is to avoid talking about politics,
sex, and religion in the workplace. But it may be
increasingly difficult for workers to keep their politics to
themselves. Thanks to the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme
Court decision from 2010, as well as new organizational
infrastructure developed over the past decade, employers now
have broad legal rights and the technical means to campaign
for political candidates in the workplace. Managers and
supervisors can even require that their workers participate
in politics as a condition of employment.
Employer
mobilization is important to understand because it
offers companies an opportunity to shape public policy
using a resource already at their disposal: their
workforce. Debates over corporate lobbying and the power
of business in politics thus ought to consider employer
mobilization just as much as they focus on campaign
contributions and lobbyists.
This policy brief
provides an important contribution to our understanding
of the prevalence of employer mobilization and how firms
think about mobilization as a political strategy.
Subsequent sections document the history of employer
mobilization, tracing the social, economic, and
political shifts that have made mobilization more
appealing to firms in recent decades. The final portion
of this brief describes why and how political reformers
should take action to end the most coercive forms of
employer mobilization, suggesting a range of possible
legislative and voluntary actions that would shield
workers from political intimidation in the workplace.
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez
is a doctoral candidate in government and social
policy at Harvard University. He studies the political
economy of the United States, with an emphasis on the
politics of organized interests, especially business,
and public policy.
To read the whole
paper, click here.
Posted in campaign finance, campaigns
Breaking: DC Circuit En Banc Unanimously
Upholds Ban on Federal Contractor Contributions to
Candidates
Posted on July 7,
2015 8:39 am by Rick Hasen
You can read the 62-page opinion at this link. This is quite a
big deal, especially in its unanimity. The en banc DC Circuit
in Wagner v. FEC holds
that the ban on contractor contributions to federal candidates
is supported by two interests: (1) preventing corruption and
(2) promoting sound merit-based administration of federal
contracts. On the first point, the court discussed the
special dangers of corruption which occur in the contracting
process. The court surveys various state and federal
corruption scandals, many of which involve the procurement of
government contracts. On the second interest, the court relies
in large part on the Hatch Act cases, in particular on the
government’s interest in somewhat curtailing the First
Amendment activities of government employees in order to
assure a merit-based governmental process.
Perhaps what is most important
doctrinally about this ruling is the court’s rejection of the
argument that a higher level of scrutiny should apply because
the law imposes a ban, rather than merely a limit, on contractor
contributions. Relying upon the Supreme Court’s decision in FEC v. Beaumont(which
upheld the ban on corporate contributions to candidates), the
Court held the ban was still subject to the lesser “exacting
scrutiny” which applies to contribution limits. Opponents of
the ban have argued that Beaumont‘s reasoning has been undermined
by more recent Supreme Court cases, such as Citizens United. But
the DC Circuit did not accept that argument.
This question (the vitality of Beaumont and the
constitutionality of a ban, rather than limit on
contributions) remains the most interesting issue which could
provide a basis for the Supreme Court to grant cert. in the
case. It is not clear whether the Court will bite on this one,
for reasons I will be writing about in coming days.
Also interesting is that the DC
Circuit did not address whether federal contractors may make
contributions to Super PACs. (“Nor do they challenge the law
as the Commission might seek to apply it to donations to PACs
that themselves make only independent expenditures, commonly
known as “Super PACs.” Oral Arg. Recording 5:59-26:33 (“Super
PACs . . . . are not at issue here; none of my clients wants
to make a contribution to them or anything like them.”).) If
indeed contractors can make such contributions, then the ban
won’t be all that effective in stopping corruption.
[This post has been updated.]
Posted in campaign finance
“Nonprofit Group Tied to Marco Rubio Raises
Millions While Shielding Donors”
Posted on July 6,
2015 8:50 pm by Rick Hasen
NYT reports.
Posted in campaign finance, tax law and election law
“On eve of
historic voter suppression trial, battle lines are drawn
in NC-NAACP v McCrory (Part I)”
Posted on July 6,
2015 2:53 pm by Rick Hasen
DocDawg at Daily Kos.
Posted in Department of Justice, election administration, The Voting Wars, voter id, Voting Rights Act
“Here are the secret ways super PACs and
campaigns can work together”
Posted on July 6,
2015 1:36 pm by Rick Hasen
Matea Gold on how
coordination does not really mean coordination.
Posted in campaign finance, campaigns
“State to review thousands of motor voter
registration complaints”
Posted on July 6,
2015 1:34 pm by Rick Hasen
The Houston Chronicle reports.
Posted in NVRA (motor voter)
SCOTUS AZ Redistricting Case
Affecting Arguments over Standing in Immigration Case
Posted on July 6,
2015 1:33 pm by Rick Hasen
Josh Gerstein explains.
Posted in Supreme Court
“Why Company Towns
Are Bad for People”
Posted on July 6,
2015 9:36 am by Rick Hasen
Must read Victor Valle at Zocalo on the most
recent “election” in LA County’s “City of Industry.
Posted in Uncategorized
“Supreme Court Sends Signals to Request
Cases They Want to Hear”
Posted on July 6,
2015 8:26 am by Rick Hasen
New Adam Liptak Sidebar column:
Supreme Court justices like to say
that they have no agenda. Cases come to them unbidden. They
decide the ones that need deciding.
The reality
is more complicated. The justices sometimes use their
opinions to send messages about the kinds of cases they
would like to hear.
Bat signals
sent in the term that just ended included one from Justice
Anthony M. Kennedy, who asked for a case about solitary
confinement, and another from Justices Stephen G. Breyer and
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who asked to consider the
constitutionality of the death penalty.
The next
term, which starts in October, will feature three cases
brought at least partly in response to similar invitations.
I have written about this phenomenon
and related ways Supreme Court Justices try to move the law in Anticipatory Overrulings,
Invitations, Time Bombs, and Inadvertence: How Supreme
Court Justices Move the Law, 61 Emory Law Journal 779 (2012).
[corrected link]
Posted in Supreme Court
“Analysis: Despite Ruling, Redistricting
Reformers Pessimistic”
Posted on July 6,
2015 8:15 am by Rick Hasen
Ross Ramsey in the Texas Tribune:
Texas does not have an
independent redistricting commission and is probably not
going to get one.
But the lawmakers who
have been ignoring the idea for years lost one of their
excuses: In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme
Court turned back a challenge to Arizona’s commission,
saying the voters had the right to take that power away from
legislators.
Posted in Elections Clause, redistricting, Supreme Court
“One for the People”
Posted on July 6,
2015 8:11 am by Rick Hasen
Steven Mazie for The Economist on the SCOTUS AZ
redistricting case.
Posted in redistricting, Supreme Court
“The Health of State Democracies: Liberty
and Justice for All?”
Posted on July 6,
2015 8:08 am by Rick Hasen
D.C. Event Tuesday:
Please join the Center
for American Progress Action Fund as it launches a new
report on the health of state democracies.
The U.S. Constitution
guarantees certain rights and privileges within our
democracy. In practice, however, the extent to which
citizens experience the robust benefits of a truly
democratic society is too often determined by decisions made
at the state level. Examining the areas of accessibility of
the ballot, strength of representation in state government,
and influence in the political system, going off report “The
Health of State Democracies” contends that these issues must
be addressed in sum—and no longer in silos.
Join the Center for
American Progress Action Fund for a panel discussion with
state policymakers and other democracy experts as they speak
to the challenges and opportunities ahead—from in-state
legislative and ballot measure campaigns, to removing
structural barriers so that voters truly have a voice in the
democratic process, to a broader look at the need to address
these issues as a comprehensive package of pro-democracy
reforms.
Featured
panelists:
Former Sen. Nina Turner (D-OH)
Sen. Roger Katz (R-ME)
Del. Alfonso Lopez (D-VA)
Dara Lindenbaum
, Senior Associate at Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein &
Birkenstock
Moderated
by:
Michele Jawando, Vice
President for Legal Progress, Center for American Progress
Action Fund
Coffee
will be served at 9:30 a.m.
RSVP
RSVP for this event →
Posted in election administration, The Voting Wars
“Walker office operating as if proposed open
records exemptions are law”
Posted on July 6,
2015 7:29 am by Rick Hasen
JS Online:
Gov. Scott Walker
announced over the weekend that Republicans would not create
new exceptions to the state’s open records law, but for
months the all-but-certain presidential candidate has been
operating as if the exemptions were already in place.
Two months ago, Walker
declined to make public records related to his proposal to
rewrite the University of Wisconsin System’s mission
statement and release the Wisconsin Idea from state law. He
argued he didn’t have to release those records to the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and others because they were part
of his office’s internal deliberations.
The Progressive
magazine and the Center for Media and Democracy sued Walker
over those denials. The cases are pending in Dane County
Circuit Court.
Posted in Uncategorized
--
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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