[EL] ELB News and Commentary 11/23/15
Rick Hasen
rhasen at law.uci.edu
Mon Nov 23 07:53:06 PST 2015
77% of Public Supports Spending Limits in Elections, According to
Pew Report <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77757>
Posted onNovember 23, 2015 7:43 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77757>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Here
<http://www.people-press.org/files/2015/11/11-23-2015-Governance-topline-for-release.pdf> is
the study. The public believes money’s influence is growing.
NO QUESTION 111
ASK PHASE A FORM 1 ONLY [N=1,505]:
Q.112F1 Thinking about spending on political campaigns and issues,
which comes closer to your view
[READ AND RANDOMIZE]?
Aug 27-
Sep 13,
2015
20 Individuals and organizations should be able to spend as much
money as they want [OR]
77 There should be limits on the amount of money individuals and
organizations can spend
3 Don’t know/Refused (VOL.)
ASK PHASE A FORM 1 ONLY [N=1,505]:
Q.113F1 Which comes closer to your view on the influence of money on
politics and elected
officials [READ AND RANDOMIZE]?
Aug 27-
Sep 13,
2015
76 Money has a greater influence on politics and elected officials
today than in the past
[OR]
22 Money’s influence on politics and elected officials today is
little different than it’s
been in the past
2 Don’t know/Refused (VOL.)
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,campaigns
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>
“Employer Political Coercion: A Growing Threat”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77755>
Posted onNovember 23, 2015 7:32 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77755>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
American Prospect:
<http://prospect.org/article/employer-political-coercion-growing-threat>
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 Supreme Court’s decision in/Citizens
United/, employers now have broad legal rights to campaign for
political candidates inside their firms as well as in the public
arena. And thanks to new technology, they have the means to track
their employees’ political opinions and activities.
Managers and supervisors can now legally require their workers to
participate in politics as a condition of employment. For instance,
in most states, managers have the legal right to mandate worker
attendance at a political rally for a favored candidate—and fire or
punish workers who decline to participate. Consider the following
examples from recent years of employers engaging their workers in
politics:…
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,campaigns
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>
“North Carolina’s Shell Game of Electoral Apartheid: How the Board
of Elections Shoved Black Voters Away From the Ballot Box in 2014”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77753>
Posted onNovember 23, 2015 7:31 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77753>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Insightus <http://insight-us.org/fair_places.html>:
Between the 2012 and 2014 elections the total number of Early Voting
sites operated by North Carolina county boards of elections,
statewide, increased modestly: from 363 to 366. But that same period
witnessed substantial changes in those sites’/locations/. According
toVoting Information Project
<https://www.votinginfoproject.org/>data, 114 sites operating in
November 2012 were no longer open in November 2014, replaced by 117
different sites. The impact on the average voter (across all races)
was fairly insignificant: an increase from about 3.5 miles in 2012
to 3.6 miles in 2014 — a difference of only about 300 feet (roughly
one city block).
But a look at the aggregate impacts/by race/reveals a startlingly
different picture (Figure 1, below). While the average/white/voter’s
distance to his or her nearest Early Voting site increased by just
26 feet in 2014,/the average black voter’s distance increased by a
quarter of a mile/. Summing that up over the members of each race,
that’s an aggregate increase in distance-to-poll of just 21,000
miles for white voters (71% of the electorate), but more than
350,000 miles for black voters (22% of the electorate). That latter
distance is the equivalent of a trip from the Earth to the Moon, and
half way home again.
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Posted inelection administration
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,The Voting Wars
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
“Senator Rubio’s Stealthy Donors” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77751>
Posted onNovember 23, 2015 7:25 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77751>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT editorial.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/opinion/senator-rubios-stealthy-donors.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=1&utm_source=MIP+Rapid+Response+Clips&utm_campaign=6f83dff02c-Rapid_Response_Clips_11_20_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c84a1c1212-6f83dff02c-391766117>
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,tax law
and election law <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=22>
“On gun control, Newsom seems to be following Bloomberg’s strategic
lead” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77749>
Posted onNovember 23, 2015 7:23 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77749>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Another California
politician<http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-pol-ca-guns-newsom-20151122-story.html>hitching
his wagon to a potentially popular ballot measure.
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Posted incampaigns <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>,direct democracy
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=62>
“At End of Sheldon Silver’s Corruption Trial, the ‘Law Guys’ Take
Over” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77747>
Posted onNovember 22, 2015 5:57 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77747>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/nyregion/at-end-of-sheldon-silvers-corruption-trial-the-law-guys-take-over.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share>
As the public corruption trial of State AssemblymanSheldon Silver
<http://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/sheldon-silver?8qa>heads to
closing arguments on Monday, the clash in the courtroom has been
handled largely by well-staffed government and defense legal teams,
each with a wealth of experience in handling corruption cases.
But on Thursday, two unfamiliar lawyers took the stage to try to
shape the instructions that the judge will give to the jury before
deliberations.
In a case in which no witness testified directly to knowledge of an
illegal quid pro quo, howJudge Valerie E. Caproni
<http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/nGetInfo?jid=3487&cid=999&ctype=na&instate=na>tells
jurors to interpret the evidence as it relates to the law could sway
deliberations — a fact certainly not lost on the government or the
defense.
The two lawyers had largely disappeared during Mr. Silver’s
three-week trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan; James M.
McDonald sat quietly at the end of the prosecution table, while
Robert K. Kry, a defense lawyer, did not even show up in court.
But it was clear late on Thursday, with the parties and the judge
seated around a conference table and the jury not present, that Mr.
McDonald and Mr. Kry had critical roles as legal specialists in the
case — “the law guys,” as several experts put it — a role the public
rarely hears about.
The law guys must master the legal aspects of the case, and be
steeped in precedents and in issues that might become the focus of
an appeal or need to be responded to in court at a moment’s notice.
This is of particular importance in public corruption cases, where
the rules changed about five years ago, after the Supreme Court
imposed the requirement in honest services fraud cases that the
government prove a quid pro quo. Four of the seven counts against
Mr. Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who had
been the longtime Assembly speaker, involved alleged honest services
fraud.
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Posted inbribery <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=54>,chicanery
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>
“Did Louisiana just elect ‘wrong’ governor due to flaw in Top 2
runoff method?” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77745>
Posted onNovember 22, 2015 3:13 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77745>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Rob Richie
<http://www.fairvoteblog.com/2015/11/did-louisiana-just-elect-wrong-governor.html>:
Before jumping to the conclusion that Edwards’ majority win
indicates he would have won under any electoral system, think again.
Edwards benefited from a classic problem with traditional two
runoff-systems. That is, one of the two advancing candidates (Sen.
Vitter) was in fact the weakest Republican among the three that ran.
In fact, it’s quite likely that either of the other two Republicans
in that first round would have defeated Edwards, just asRepublicans
won all six of the other statewide contest
<http://electionresultsmobile.sos.la.gov/results.html?gaelectiondate=20151024&galevel=Statewide>s,
including a runoff for lieutenant governor yesterday by more than
10%. It’s also quite likely that Edward would have lost if there had
been an earlier runoff only among Republicans or if Louisiana has
extended its use of ranked choice voting
<http://www.fairvote.org/reforms/instant-runoff-voting> ballots from
use by overseas and out-of-state military voters to all voters. But
the state’s so-called “majority system” in fact did not provide a
majority outcome.
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Posted inalternative voting systems <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=63>
Beware Buying Overseas Airline Tickets @Expedia: No Seat Selection
or Changes–And No Disclosure! <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77740>
Posted onNovember 22, 2015 2:46 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77740>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
If you are in the market to buy a ticket somewhere overseas, be careful
buying the ticket from Expedia (and the many companies Expedia now owns,
<http://www.expediainc.com/expedia-brands/>including Orbitz,
Travelocity, Hotels.com, Trivago, etc.). I just bought a ticket for a
work trip to Japan, and it turns out that Expedia failed to disclose
that this is a special fare that does not allow seat selection until 72
hours before flight time, and Expedia misrepresented the ticket could be
changed (such as to a higher class of service, so that I could do seat
selection) with a change fee. It is totally non-changeable. I’ve now
started action against Expedia in small claims court. I would have
considered a class action (as a friend told me he contemplated when this
happened to him), but, as is exceedingly common these days (and
explained inthis excellent NY Times series
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitration-everywhere-stacking-the-deck-of-justice.html>),
Expedia requires arbitration of most claims (except individual claims in
small claims court), andtheir agreement bars class actions
<https://www.expedia.com/p/info-other/legal.htm>.
Below the fold I give the details of what happened to me with Expedia in
the letter I sent to Expedia. No doubt this is a first-world problem,
and there are many more pressing things in the world. But it is one of
the many examples of large corporations counting on individuals to not
have the time or means or experience to file one of these lawsuits. We
all increasingly have to put up with this garbage in large part thanks
to Supreme Court decisions which make class actions easy for large
companies to exclude, and without the class action, it is usually not
cost effective to bring such claims. (I didn’t even bother mentioning in
the letter that Expedia also failed to honor its lowest price guarantee
when I found the ticket cheaper at Vayama and JustFly.)
The bottom line is that had Expedia not told me I could make changes to
the ticket by paying a fee to the airline, and had they disclosed this
was a special ticket that did not allow for advanced seat selection, I
never would have bought from them. I would have paid more and bought
directly from the airline. As a tall guy I need an aisle seat on a 13
hour flight and I’m willing to pay for it. I’m hoping to get redress
from the legal system, but that will only help me. I hope this blog
post, which will become searchable in Google and other search engines,
will at least alert others to the problem. /Caveat emptor/: Let the
buyer beware of the Expedia family of companies.
Continue reading→ <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77740#more-77740>
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Posted inUncategorized <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Donald Trump Isn’t Ruling Out Independent Run” – But I Think He’s
Just Blowing Smoke <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77738>
Posted onNovember 22, 2015 11:52 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77738>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
ABC News
<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-isnt-ruling-independent-run/story?id=35335721>:
Republican presidential frontrunnerDonald Trump
<http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/donald-trump.htm>would not rule
out making a run for president as an independent despite signing a
pledge over the summer saying he would support the eventual GOP
nominee instead of running a third-party bid.
“I’m going to have to see what happens. I will see what happens. I
have to be treated fairly,” Trump said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”
when asked about a new guerrilla effort by operatives within
theRepublican Party
<http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/us/republican-party.htm>to derail
Trump’s candidacy. “When I did this, I said I have to be treated
fairly. If I’m treated fairly, I’m fine. All I want to do is [have]
a level playing field.”
Between sore loser laws andonerous ballot access requirements
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=75423>, running as an independent
candidate would be quite a tall order (even if I thought Trump was
willing to use his considerable resources, which I don’t).
More likely (though still unlikely) is a brokered convention in which
Trump is the Kingmaker.
Most likely is the Rubio campaign fighting over whether Trump gets to
make a primetime address at the convention.
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,campaigns
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>
“California vintner John Jordan wants to shape politics — on his
terms” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77736>
Posted onNovember 22, 2015 11:41 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77736>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
LAT
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-politics-john-jordan-gop-donor-20151118-story.html>on
the rise of the mini-Kochs:
Jordan, like an emerging group of donors, wanted more control. So he
decided to eliminate the middle man and set out on his own two years
ago to choose the targets he wanted to help. He developed strategies
and crafted the messaging, down to the content of the ads.
Jordan followed a model set by the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer,
though he has a fraction of their wealth. Still, in the 2014 cycle,
the multimillionaire was among the nation’s top 25 donors to groups
not tied directly to a candidate or political party, according to
the Center for Responsive Politics.
Earier this month, Jordan made his first independent move in the
2016 presidential election, airing 60-second ads during the fourth
Republican debate touting Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as the GOP’s
best bet to take on Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
The television and online ads cost more than $100,000 and were
funded by a super PAC that Jordan created called Baby Got PAC. The
name is a homage to a 1990s hip-hop song celebrating the size of
women’s derrieres.
For Jordan, the wordplay reflects his singular approach to politics
and life — fun-loving, scornful of political correctness and
disdainful of doing the same thing, or following the same strategy,
because that’s how it has always been done.
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,campaigns
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>
“Who Turned My Blue State Red?” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77734>
Posted onNovember 21, 2015 12:50 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77734>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Alec MacGillis i
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinion/sunday/who-turned-my-blue-state-red.html?smid=tw-share>n
NYT Sunday Review:
IT is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the
country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by
Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor
shredding that net.
In his successful bid for the Senate in 2010, the libertarian Rand
Paul railed against
<http://prospect.org/article/unbearable-lightness-rand-paul>“intergenerational
welfare” and said that “the culture of dependency on government
destroys people’s spirits,” yet racked up winning margins in eastern
Kentucky, a former Democratic stronghold that is heavily dependent
on public benefits. Last year, Paul R. LePage, the fiercely
anti-welfare Republican governor of Maine, wasre-elected despite a
highly erratic first term
<http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/paul-lepage-craziest-governor-reelection-112583>—
with strong support in struggling towns where many rely on public
assistance. And earlier this month, Kentucky elected as governor a
conservative Republican who had vowed to largely undo the Medicaid
expansion that had given the state the country’slargest decrease in
the uninsured under Obamacare, with roughly one in 10 residents
gaining coverage
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/next-kentucky-governors-aca-animus-raises-concerns-in-coal-country/2015/11/09/5143a0ea-8492-11e5-8ba6-cec48b74b2a7_story.html>.
It’s enough to give Democrats the willies as they contemplate a map
where the red keeps seeping outward, confining them toever narrower
redoubts of blue
<http://politicalmaps.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2012-usa-election-map-by-county-nyt.png>.
The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over
those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting
against their own interests.
But this reaction misses the complexity of the political dynamic
that’s taken hold in these parts of the country. It misdiagnoses the
Democratic Party’sgrowing conundrum with working-class white voters
<http://thedemocraticstrategist-roundtables.com/?page_id=60>. And it
also keeps us from fully grasping what’s going on in communities
where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers
havedetected alarming trends in their mortality rates
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html?_r=0>.
In eastern Kentucky and other former Democratic bastions that have
swung Republican in the past several decades, the people who most
rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and
large, not voting against their own interests by electing
Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as
voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly
disconnected from the political process.
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Posted invoting <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=31>
“Goodbye, Speech Police” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77732>
Posted onNovember 21, 2015 11:52 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77732>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
WSJ editorial
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/goodbye-speech-police-1447977191>dances on
the grave of the GAB.
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,election
administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,The Voting Wars
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
“GOP supporters file suit to loosen Alaska’s strict campaign
donation limits” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77730>
Posted onNovember 21, 2015 11:51 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77730>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
The /Alaska Dispatch News /reports.
<http://www.adn.com/article/20151120/gop-supporters-file-suit-loosen-alaskas-strict-campaign-donation-limits>
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>
“Clinton’s campaign-finance hypocrisy”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77728>
Posted onNovember 21, 2015 11:51 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77728>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Larry Noble WaPo oped
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/clintons-campaign-finance-hypocrisy/2015/11/20/64f6be08-8d78-11e5-ae1f-af46b7df8483_story.html?postshare=4831448116439588&tid=ss_tw>:
Yet according to Brock, that is exactly what the Clinton campaign is
doing. No presidential candidate claiming to have discovered a
loophole to justify coordinating with a super PAC can make a
credible claim that campaign finance reform is part of her “vision
for America.” Clinton should either disavow the right to coordinate
with Correct the Record or stop saying she wants to “end the flood
of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our elections,
corrupting our political system, and drowning out the voices of too
many everyday Americans.” It’s time for Clinton to correct the record.
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>
“Democrat Wins Mississippi House Race After Drawing Straw”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77726>
Posted onNovember 20, 2015 8:06 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77726>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/us/mississippi-house-race-comes-down-to-one-deciding-straw.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news>:
Moments after winning, Mr. Eaton, who raises cattle and grows timber
and soybeans, attributed his win to a farmer’s luck. “There’s always
happiness in a good crop year,” he said.
A lawyer for Mr. Tullos said that a challenge had been filed with
the State House of Representatives. Mr. Tullos, a lawyer himself,
declined to comment but had said he planned a challenge if he lost
the draw. He had cited concerns about the way a county election
board handled nine paper “affidavit ballots” filed by voters who
believed their names were erroneously left off the voter rolls.
Resorting to a game of chance to break an electoral tie is common in
many states, and coin tosses are often used to settle smaller local
races. But in few instances had the pot been as rich as this: If Mr.
Tullos had won, his fellow Republicans would have gained a
three-fifths supermajority in the State House of Representatives,
the threshold required to pass revenue-related bills.
At stake, potentially, was hundreds of millions of dollars in tax
revenue. The three-fifths requirement has allowed the Democratic
minority to block Republican tax-cut proposals in the past on the
grounds that Mississippi needs the revenue to finance schools and
other services. Republicans, who also control the State Senate and
governor’s mansion, say the cuts, including a proposal to phase out
the state’s corporate franchise tax, will jump-start the economy and
promote job growth….
Some Democrats wondered whether the Republican-controlled House
would be able to impartially judge the matter. On Thursday, Greg
Snowden, the Republican House speaker pro tempore, predicted that
“every member of the House will treat this with the utmost seriousness.”
“It’s not a game,” he said.
Share
<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D77726&title=%26%238220%3BDemocrat%20Wins%20Mississippi%20House%20Race%20After%20Drawing%20Straw%26%238221%3B&description=>
Posted invoting <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=31>
“Inglewood City Council’s new hours aren’t exactly welcoming”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77724>
Posted onNovember 20, 2015 4:39 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77724>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
LAT editorial
<http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-adv-inglewood-council-20151119-story.html>:
Earlier this year, the same council took advantage of a loophole in
state election law to approve the construction of a giant football
stadium without conducting a full environmental review or taking a
vote of the people. Then the city filed a federal lawsuit against
resident Joseph Teixeira, alleging he violated copyright law by
using snippets of official council meeting footage in YouTube videos
that criticized Mayor James T. Butts Jr. Calling the lawsuit a
“serious threat to critical political expression,” a federal judge
tossed out the city’s claims and ordered it to pay Teixeira’s
lawyers $117,741 in fees.
Since then, The Times reported, the city has stopped posting council
meetings on YouTube. It’s also cut the time residents can speak
during the meetings’ public comment period from two minutes per
person to one. So it’s understandable that residents, especially
those skeptical of the city leadership, feel the move to daytime
meetings is part of trend to limit participation and curtail
opposing views.
Share
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Posted inchicanery <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>,legislation and
legislatures <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>
“Mysterious pro-Mitch McConnell group bankrolled by megadonors”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77722>
Posted onNovember 20, 2015 4:31 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77722>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
CPI
<http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/11/20/18887/mysterious-pro-mitch-mcconnell-group-bankrolled-megadonors>:
A secretive nonprofit group that helped boost Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky during his hotly contested 2014
re-election bid itself raised more money than McConnell’s
challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes, according to copies of the
group’s tax filings obtained by theCenter for Public Integrity
<http://www.publicintegrity.org/>.
The Kentucky Opportunity Coalition raised more than $21 million
during 2013 and 2014, including $15 million last year alone,
according todocuments the group filed this week
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2519461-kentucky-opportunity-coalition-irs-form-990-for.html>with
the Internal Revenue Service. Most of the money came from just a
handful of wealthy — and anonymous — donors.
Share
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,tax law
and election law <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=22>
“Koch Spy Agency Led by Voter Fraud Huckster”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77720>
Posted onNovember 20, 2015 7:25 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=77720>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Oh this is interesting
<http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/11/12980/koch-spy-voter-fraud>:
The Kochs have been complaining about a “lack of civility in
politics” as they seek to boost their public image–but one of their
top operatives helped propel perhaps the most egregious case of
race-baiting voter fraud hucksterism in recent years.
At the same time that the Kochs have been on a PR blitz, publicly
spinning an image of themselves
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/us/koch-brothers-brave-spotlight-to-try-to-alter-their-image.html?_r=1>as
well-intentioned patriots trying to make the world a better place
and decrying “character assasination
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303978304579475860515021286>,” they’ve
been quietly ramping up a clandestine surveillance and intelligence
gathering operation focused on their perceived political enemies,
Ken Vogelreports at /Politico/
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/the-koch-brothers-intelligence-agency-215943>.
At the helm of this “competitive intelligence” operation is a man
named Mike Roman, Vice President of Research for Kochs’ Freedom
Partners and who was paid $265,000 last year, according toFreedom
Partners’ recent tax filing
<http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/11/12979/freedom-partners>.
But who is Mike Roman? He’s been described generally as a longtime
GOP operative. However, he’s also the guy who was behind the release
of the 2008 “New Black Panthers scaring old white ladies at the
polls” video. The clip dominated Fox News for months and went on to
fuel unfounded allegations that the Obama administration’s
Department of Justice was biased against white people.
Roman made a name for himself by releasing the video, which showed
two New Black Panther Party (NBPP) members holding billy clubs
outside a Philadelphia polling place, on his voter
fraud-peddling “Election Journal” website. He then worked with
<http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2011/01/what_you_didnt_hear_about_the.html>Republican
vote fraud conspiracist J. Christian Adams to try uncovering
evidence that voters were intimidated–which they could not find. But
that didn’t stop Roman, along with Fox News and the conservative
echo chamber, from conjuring up avast racist conspiracy
<http://mediamatters.org/research/2010/07/07/conservative-media-use-new-black-panthers-case/167383>inside
the Obama administration, a theme that continues today
<http://rickwells.us/archives/14344>.
Share
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Posted infraudulent fraud squad <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>
--
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
hhttp://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org
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