[EL] ELB News and Commentary 9/19/15

Fri Sep 18 19:08:24 PDT 2015

    Trump Says He’d Spend $100 Million to Get Elected
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76076>

Posted onSeptember 18, 2015 7:04 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76076>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

That<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/us/politics/donald-trump-republican-nomination.html?ref=politics>wouldn’t 
do the trick.

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,campaigns 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

    “FEC to Vote on Super PAC Advisory Opinion”
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76074>

Posted onSeptember 18, 2015 7:02 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76074>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Ken Doyle 
<http://news.bna.com/mpdm/MPDMWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=75999005&vname=mpebulallissues&jd=a0h2z8r5a5&split=0>for 
Bloomberg BNA:

    The Federal Election Commission has signaled that it will vote in
    the coming weeks on a potentially major advisory opinion request
    seeking to clarify legal limits on super political action committees
    (super PACs) and other campaign spending groups during the 2016
    campaign.
    The request, which came from Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias
    of the firm Perkins Coie, was expected to be posted on the FEC
    website late Sept. 18, starting the clock ticking on a 60-day period
    during which the FEC is required by law to consider it. Elias had
    requested that the FEC expedite the request and rule on it within 30
    days, but it was not clear if this would happen.
    Also uncertain was whether the six FEC commissioners, who have been
    deeply divided on enforcement and regulatory questions concerning
    campaign spending groups, would be able to muster the required
    four-vote majority to answer Elias’s legal questions. The
    commissioners are evenly divided among three recommended by
    Democrats and three by Republicans.

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,campaigns 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>,federal election commission 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>

    Rich Liberal Elites Don’t Like Wealth Distribution—and Yale Law
    Students Love Efficiency <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76072>

Posted onSeptember 18, 2015 4:48 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76072>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Ray Fisman and Daniel Markovits 
<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_dismal_science/2015/09/income_inequality_rich_democrats_don_t_care_about_the_problem_any_more_than.single.html>in 
Slate:

    The conventional view of America as a classless society has long
    sided with Hemingway—the only difference is the money. But our
    results suggest that, at least when it comes to attitudes toward
    inequality, Fitzgerald is right: Elite Americans are not just
    middle-class people with more money. They display distinctive
    attitudes on basic moral and political questions concerning economic
    justice. Simply put, the rich place a much lower value on equality
    than the rest. What’s more, this lack of concern about inequality
    among the elite is not a partisan matter. Even when they
    self-identify as progressive Democrats, elite Americans value
    equality less highly than their middle-class compatriots. his
    finding has profound implications for public policy. Contemporary
    American politics presents an enduring mystery. Why does the public
    policy response to nearly five decades of rising economic inequality
    remain so tepid, even as large majorities of Americans consider
    inequality excessive, and even under a two-term Democratic
    president? Ourstudy
    <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6254/aab0096.abstract?sid=121580e9-c559-4974-883c-7b278eeb0c07>,
    published Tursday in the journal/Science/, co-authored with
    colleagues Pamela Jakiela and Shachar Kariv, proposes an answer:
    Regardless of party, the elite donors whose money dominates
    politics, and the elite officeholders whose decisions set policy,
    don’t value economic equality. When the American government abjures
    egalitarian policies, it is implementing the bipartisan preferences
    of the American elite…

    What’s more, elite Americans show a far greater commitment to
    efficiency over equality than ordinary Americans. And this time, the
    bias toward efficiency increases with each increment of eliteness.
    The ALP subjects split roughly evenly between focusing on efficiency
    and focusing on equality; the Berkeley students favored efficiency
    over equality by a factor of roughly 3-to-2; and the Yale Law
    students favored efficiency by a factor of 4-to-1.

    Yale Law students’ overwhelming, indeed almost eccentric, commitment
    to efficiency over equality is all the more astonishing given that
    the students self-identified as Democrats rather than
    Republicans—and thus sided with the party that claims to represent
    economic equality in partisan politics—by a factor of more than
    10-to-1. An elite constituted by highly partisan Democrats thus
    showed an immensely greater commitment to efficiency over equality
    than the bipartisan population at large.

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

    Quote of the Day: Corporate Campaign Money Edition
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76070>

Posted onSeptember 18, 2015 2:16 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76070>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

“The influence of economic power culminates by turning the electoral 
process into a political game of marked cards, an odious pantomime that 
turns the voter into a puppet, crumbling in one blow citizenship and 
democracy.”

—Brazil Supreme Court Justice Rosa Weber 
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d13f4042158e4c7ba5718194d4866eb9/brazils-top-court-bans-corporate-political-financing>, 
in a ruling banning corporate contributions to political campaigns

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

    “Some recoil at using FEC as model for elections overhaul in
    Wisconsin” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76068>

Posted onSeptember 18, 2015 1:34 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76068>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Indeed. 
<http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/some-recoil-at-using-fec-as-model-for-elections-overhaul/article_471a3f0c-a4e6-547f-b0f1-00b9188d303f.html>

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,election 
administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,federal election 
commission <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>

    “Election 2016: Why Money Won’t Matter”
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76066>

Posted onSeptember 18, 2015 10:49 am 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76066>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Thad Kousser 
<https://igs.berkeley.edu/news/election-2016-why-money-wont-matter>at IGS:

    With the imperfect storm of Citizens United, Super PACs, the Clinton
    Fundraising Machine, the Trump Fortune, and the Sheldon Adelsons of
    the world blowing money toward the presidential contenders at
    hurricane force, 2016 is almost certain to be the most expensive
    presidential campaign on record. But it may also be the one in which
    money matters the least.

    The rationale behind this proposed paradox is simple: the serious
    candidates’ fortunes will not be dictated by how much campaign cash
    they can raise because nearly everyone will have enough money to
    run, and run hard. With so much money in the system, war chests are
    not the scarce resource they once were in presidential races. Nearly
    every candidate already has a sizeable kitty, or can legitimately
    hope to raise well if they perform well. What this means is that the
    dynamics of this primary campaign may be far different than they
    have been in the past, and the impact of money on November’s
    election will likely be the same non-story that it was in the era of
    public financing.

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,campaigns 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

    “CCP files amicus brief urging Supreme Court to take campaign
    finance case” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76064>

Posted onSeptember 18, 2015 10:48 am 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76064>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Release 
<http://www.campaignfreedom.org/2015/09/18/ccp-files-amicus-brief-urging-supreme-court-to-take-campaign-finance-case/>:

    The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP), America’s largest
    nonprofit dedicated solely to defending First Amendment rights to
    political speech and assembly, today announced that it filed an
    amicus brief with the US Supreme Court in the case of/Yamada v.
    Snipes/. In the case, A-1 A-Lectrician, Inc., an electrical
    construction company, paid for newspaper advertisements and was
    required by the state of Hawaii to register as a PAC or political
    committee. A-1 sued and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld
    Hawaii’s law, contrary to the precedents set in the/Citizens
    United/and/Buckley/decisions. A-1 has asked the Supreme Court to
    review the decision.

    “Hawaii’s law hampers speech with complex paperwork burdens that
    generate no useful information,”*said David Keating, President of
    CCP*. “This law makes it more difficult for groups of people to
    speak in the public square, and we urge the Supreme Court to take
    this case and strike down this junk disclosure law.”

    To read CCP’s brief,click here.
    <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001emtI4y1SdiQvUKtAGSccpqgeTmq5-QmZwnYXP6FXM7FGJjazkMBtLy9zoArD-pIfpFGg4cOy8nHV-6eI3Y26QRzg0Q_7QubG79T-AQ_bF3HIHrMMtUBvDgxFp9RcT-qA_A0SCSamSqTzaf_58zuQovtSrBQ6gFf4TP0ajxXgCOIMh8oKAb0fkFOLUWJT7boQ9Mr0g8GwJPGdX9QKzszJdDRfpNBoTgjQy_Eu4-GiJ5XunwtPOroUxyJD74s0sVhc9AxqG6OdlQ4=&c=qJpve28dd0FJQ65zQZVZ6cldshMSLLZGDsxGQCmvWvxWOzqi_oFJLw==&ch=skudNboW1TSEfIHtNuL4vfkdFCyqkfWA-TTGEXrF21lKLS09SrSf-w==>

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

    “Democratic candidate Lawrence Lessig decries ‘catch-22’ TV debate
    eligibility” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76062>

Posted onSeptember 18, 2015 8:59 am 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76062>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The Guardian 
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/18/democratic-candidate-lawrence-lessig-tv-debate-catch-22>:

    Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig, the newest candidate to enter the
    race for the Democratic nomination, is bracing himself to be
    excluded from the party’s first debate next month because he has
    been left out of national polling.

    To qualify for the debate Democratic candidates must earn at least
    1% in three national polls in the six weeks before the debate. But
    Lessig, a political neophyte running a single-issue campaign based
    on campaign finance reform, said he can’t possibly compete if he is
    not being counted.

    “There’s a catch-22 to the process,” Lessig said, adding: “It’s only
    fair to apply that standard if it’s actually being tested.”

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

    Weiner and Vandewalker Respond to Edsall NYT Column on Party
    Campaign Financing <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76060>

Posted onSeptember 18, 2015 8:38 am 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=76060>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT 
<http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/18/opinion/campaign-finance-reform.html?_r=0>letter 
to the editor: “Thomas B. Edsall is right to worry about the increasing 
influence of the superrich on our elections (“Can Anything Be Done About 
All the Money in Politics? 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/opinion/can-anything-be-done-about-all-the-money-in-politics.html>,” 
column,nytimes.com <http://nytimes.com/>, Sept. 16). But his solution — 
to let party committees take unlimited contributions — would be the 
wrong approach.”

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,political 
parties <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=25>

-- 
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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