[EL] ELB News and Commentary 3/28/15
Rick Hasen
rhasen at law.uci.edu
Sat Mar 28 09:49:14 PDT 2015
Is Jeb Bush Losing the Sheldon Adelson Primary?
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71358>
Posted onMarch 28, 2015 8:27 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71358>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT.
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/03/27/g-o-p-hawks-upset-with-bush-after-baker-speech-on-israel/>
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,campaigns
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>
“Voter turnout disparity was key in razor-thin O.C. supervisor race”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71356>
Posted onMarch 28, 2015 7:24 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71356>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
LAT
<http://www.latimes.com/local/orangecounty/la-me-lost-election-20150328-story.html#page=1>:
The upset marked a political earthquake in central Orange County, an
ethnically diverse area dominated by Latinos in Santa Ana and Asian
Americans in the Little Saigon area. It’s the only part of Orange
County where Democrats hold a voter registration advantage over
Republicans.
But a Los Angeles Times analysis of election results shows how
Republicans can still win because Asian American voter turnout is so
much higher than Latino turnout.
The close election loss
The close election loss
<http://www.latimes.com/visuals/graphics/la-me-g-lost-election-20150326-htmlstory.html>
The outcome, the analysis found, turned on the high number of Santa
Ana voters who failed to return the absentee ballots that had been
mailed to them.
In the core of Santa Ana, where voting heavily favored Correa, only
22% of the absentee voters got around to returning their ballots,
far below the state and county’s 50% return rate for absentee
ballots in the 2014 general election. The unreturned ballots
represented tens of thousands of votes.
Andrew Do, by contrast, got a big boost because more than 40% of the
absentee voters in Little Saigon returned their ballots.
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Posted incampaigns <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>,voting
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=31>
“Court Sides With Challenge to Alabama’s ‘Racial Gerrymander'”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71354>
Posted onMarch 28, 2015 7:20 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71354>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Marcia Coyle reports
<http://www.nationallawjournal.com/supremecourtbrief/id=1202721647190/Court-Sides-With-Challenge-to-Alabamas-Racial-Gerrymander>for
NLJ.
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Posted inredistricting <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>,Supreme Court
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>,Voting Rights Act
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>
“State high court won’t hear arguments in John Doe cases”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71352>
Posted onMarch 28, 2015 6:22 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71352>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
<http://www.jsonline.com/news/state-high-court-wont-hear-arguments-in-john-doe-cases-b99467758z1-297846101.html>:
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday it would not hear arguments
— in secret or in public — as it considers whether to allow an
investigation to continue that has looked into whetherGov. Scott
Walker’s
<http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/scott-walker-290106981.html>campaign
illegally worked with conservative groups in recall elections.
“The prospect of oral argument creates severe tension between
important and conflicting priorities,”the court wrote
<http://media.jrn.com/documents/johndoeoralarguments.pdf>, citing
the long tradition of open courts and the secrecy of the John Doe.
Instead, the court will decide the matter based on hundreds of pages
of briefs that have been filed in the cases, mostly in secret,
because the court also rejected a special prosecutor’s argument that
the secrecy genie has already largely escaped the bottle.
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,chicanery
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>
“The people’s representatives should be elected”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71350>
Posted onMarch 27, 2015 3:32 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71350>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Dania Korkor and Rob Richie oped
<http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-special-elections-20150329-story.html>in
the /Baltimore Sun./
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Posted inUncategorized <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Campaign Money Tests Wisconsin Justices’ Impartiality”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71348>
Posted onMarch 27, 2015 3:22 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71348>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Fascinating Monica Davey NYT report.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/28/us/in-wisconsin-campaign-money-tests-justices-impartiality.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0>
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,campaigns
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>,judicial elections
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=19>
“Applying Citizens United to Ordinary Corruption”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71346>
Posted onMarch 27, 2015 9:06 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71346>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
George Brown has postedthis
draft<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2584075>on SSRN
(forthcoming, /Notre Dame Law Review/). Here is the abstract:
Federal criminal law frequently deals with the problem of corruption
in the form of purchased political influence. There appear to be two
distinct bodies of federal anti-corruption law — one concerning
campaign finance regulation, and one addressing corruption in the
form of such crimes as bribery, extortion by public officials, and
gratuities to them. The latter body of law presents primarily issues
of statutory construction, but it may be desirable for courts
approaching these issues to have an animating theory of what
corruption is and how to deal with it. At the moment, the two bodies
of law look like two ships passing in the night.
The Supreme Court has rendered important decisions in both areas.
However, it is only in the campaign finance cases that the Court has
articulated a vision of corruption. A well-known recent example is
the 2010 decision in Federal Election Commission v. Citizens United.
There the Court stated that “influence” and “access” brought about
through campaign support, including contributions, are not
corruption. The Court appears to embrace a narrow view of what is
corruption, tied closely to the concept of quid pro quo.
This Article raises the question whether cases such as Citizens
United and other campaign finance decisions should have generative
force outside the electoral context. I contend that they should not
— that preventing purchased political influence, whether generalized
or particularized, is central to the federal anti-corruption
enterprise. The matter is presented both on a theoretical level, and
through examination of Supreme Court cases in what might be called
the field of “ordinary corruption.” This examination yields an
unclear picture. Some cases appear to be in harmony with the
campaign finance decisions, raising the possibility that the Court
does hold a unified view of corruption. However, the decision in
Evans v. United States embraces a broad view of corruption in
construing a key federal statute: the Hobbs Act. Evans has had
extraordinary generative force in the lower federal courts. In
particular, they have diluted any requirement of specificity in the
concept of quid pro quo by emphasizing the presence of a “stream of
benefits” as a means of securing somewhat generalized influence with
public officials. The lower courts have thus reached results that
further broad anti-corruption goals while ignoring intimations of a
narrow view in the campaign finance cases. To the extent that the
Supreme Court may extend this narrow view to ordinary corruption,
the result could, as it has in the past, be a major ruling reining
in the lower courts. The two ships would, in effect, collide.
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Posted inbribery <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=54>,campaign finance
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,chicanery
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>
Are You a Student Taking an Election Law or Legislation Course This
Semester? <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71344>
Posted onMarch 27, 2015 8:55 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=71344>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Then you might want to check out myExamples and Explanations study aid
<http://www.amazon.com/Examples-Explanations-Legislation-Statutory-Interpretation/dp/1454845414/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401919780&sr=8-1&keywords=hasen+legislation>.
From the book description:
An up-to-date, user-friendly, and clear student-oriented treatise
tackling the complex subjects in this field, including statutory
interpretation, lobbying, bribery, campaign finance law, and voting
rights. Suitable for use with courses in Legislation and Regulation,
Statutory Interpretation, Election Law, Voting Rights, and Campaign
Finance. Features an easy-to-follow correlation chart that matches
the book’s coverage to the leading casebooks. Written by one of the
leading voices in the field of election law and legislation. No
other statutory supplement is as comprehensive, up-to-date, and full
of examples (and answers) to test student knowledge.
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Posted inpedagogy <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=23>
--
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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