[EL] Pilot of Ebenchbook effort; W&M Law School

[Adam Ambrogi]

Was glad to see that Rick featured the EBenchbook pilot <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83445> that Rebecca Green and her great team at W&M Law school <http://law.wm.edu/academics/intellectuallife/researchcenters/electionlaw/> and the Nat’l Center for State Court <http://www.ncsc.org/> Judges have pulled together. Wanted to give it a specific plug on this listserve (as most of the practicing election lawyers, election geeks, and journalists are likely members). Bookmark it, please spread the word; especially for those in the pilot states of FL, VA, & CO. 

I think that our ability to pull together experts to make the code more accessible, definitions linked and content or context described will hopefully make our jobs easier, and help serve judges, attorneys, journalists or scholars who are not as familiar with the complexity of how election law operates within the states.  Obviously this is a work in process, and I know that we and W&M welcome feedback as the content expands.  I think it is a goal if this project works to expand to other states in later years, we’ll need experts who serve as experts in those states to be able to provide content/feedback. 

ebenchbook.wm.edu/ <http://ebenchbook.wm.edu/>

Hope this is useful to you in your practice, study or administration of elections.

Best,
Adam

For example: Florida’s provision in statute about ‘closed primaries’: http://ebenchbook.wm.edu/florida/statutes/%C2%A7-0101-021-elector-to-vote-the-primary-ballot-of-the-political-party-in-which-he-or-she-is-registered/ <http://ebenchbook.wm.edu/florida/statutes/%C2%A7-0101-021-elector-to-vote-the-primary-ballot-of-the-political-party-in-which-he-or-she-is-registered/>

Defined terms are linked in the code text; cross references to related subjects are linked below the code section; state and federal cases that are relevant are listed below. Regulations are also linked as well as potential further reading. 

The annotation in yellow states in a pop-up box: 
"Annotation: April 1, 2016 1:13 pm
Florida is generally a closed primary state. However, the 1998 Constitution Revision Commission proposed and the voters adopted a provision which provides that if all candidates for an office are from the same party and there is no general election opposition, all voters, regardless of party affiliation, are allowed to vote for that office in the primary election. These races are called universal primary contests.

The Division of Elections issued an advisory opinion (DE 00-06) that if a write-in candidate has qualified, that constitutes general election opposition and the primary will be closed."


Adam Ambrogi
Program Director, Responsive Politics
Democracy Fund
1333 New Hampshire Ave., NW Suite 730
Washington, DC 20036
202-212-6892(office)
@adamambrogi
Check our our 2014 Annual Report at: https://2014report.democracyfund.org/



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20160608/6efeec2c/attachment.html>