[EL] more news 2/11/16
Rick Hasen
rhasen at law.uci.edu
Thu Feb 11 12:01:03 PST 2016
Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS manages to make it even harder to find
the dark money in U.S. politics” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=79848>
Posted onFebruary 11, 2016 11:57 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=79848>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
I have writtenthis oped
<http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hasen-green-light-for-more-dark-money-20160212-story.html>for
the LA Times. It begins:
If you know nothing else about a candidate except that he or she is
backed by the Koch brothers or George Soros, it’s often enough to
help you make an informed decision about how you want to vote.
Unfortunately, this week it became clear that finding out which
plutocrats, corporations and interest groups are bankrolling
American elections is only going to get harder.
The blog at the indispensable website OpenSecrets.org, of the Center
for Responsive Politics, reported Tuesday that theIRS
<http://www.latimes.com/topic/business/internal-revenue-service-ORGOV000010-topic.html>had
quietly granted 501(c)(4) nonprofit status to Karl Rove’s political
group Crossroads GPS. That implicitly gives a green light to “social
welfare groups” to spend enormous sums on political ads, all without
disclosing where these groups get their money.
It’s a decision that will hurt our democracy. And it might never
have happened if the IRS hadn’t hamhandedly singled outtea party
<http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics-government/tea-party-movement-ORCIG000068-topic.html>groups
for investigation a few years earlier.
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,tax law
and election law <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=22>
35 Groups Write Letter to EAC Director Newby to Withdraw Recent
Letters Making It Harder to Register to Vote
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=79845>
Posted onFebruary 11, 2016 10:18 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=79845>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Here’s the letter:
<http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/newby-letter.pdf>
The undersigned are a collection of good-government, disability
rights, civil rights, and voting rights groups that work to protect
the right of every eligible American to vote. We
write now urging you to immediately withdraw your letters addressed
to the chief elections officers in Kansas, Georgia, and Alabama
permitting changes to the federal voter registration
form and to ensure that the instructions on the form reflect
governing law and policy prohibiting the requirement of documentary
proof-of-citizenship with the form.
Such changes – which unlawfully permit a handful of states to
require documentary proof of citizenship in addition to the sworn
attestation under penalty of perjury – run afoul of
present Election Assistance Commission (EAC) policy and procedure
and are inconsistent with recent court cases. The EAC has previously
addressed this very matter and declined to
make the change on documentary proof that you recently authorized.
EAC Vice-Chair Thomas Hicks, one of the Commissioners to whom you
report, has deemed your recent
communication a “unilateral” move amounting to a “material” change.i
Any material change must be adopted by a quorum of the Commissioners
after notice and public comment, as
required by the Administrative Procedures Act, the Help America Vote
Act, and the National Voter Registration Act. That has not occurred
here.
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Posted inelection administration
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,Election Assistance Commission
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=34>,The Voting Wars
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
“The new frontier of voter tracking”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=79843>
Posted onFebruary 11, 2016 9:45 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=79843>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Marketplace
<http://www.marketplace.org/2016/02/10/business/new-frontier-voter-tracking>:
The New Hampshire presidential primary may be over, but there are
many primaries coming up in other states around the country
and voters will likely turn out in droves to cast their ballots.
One company is tracking voter characteristics through some likely
sources — their phones.Dstillery <http://dstillery.com/>is a big
data intelligence company that sells targeted advertising
information about consumers to big companies like Microsoft and Comcast.
But in the Iowa primary, the company tried its hand at compiling
voter traits.
“We watched each of the caucus locations for each party and we
collected mobile device ID’s,” Dstillery CEO Tom Phillips said.
“It’s a combination of data from the phone and data from other
digital devices.”
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Posted incampaigns <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>
--
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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