[EL] ELB News and Commentary 6/18/16

Fri Jun 17 21:16:34 PDT 2016

“Latest on Uber, Lyft: Council member sues mayor to void Prop 1 vote”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83643>
Posted on June 17, 2016 8:40 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83643> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Austin American-Statesman<http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/local-govt-politics/council-member-zimmerman-files-lawsuit-to-void-aus/nrhnC/?icmp=statesman_internallink_invitationbox_apr2013_statesmanstubtomystatesmanpremium>:

Austin City Council Member Don Zimmerman has filed a lawsuit against<http://cityhall.blog.statesman.com/2016/06/16/zimmerman-challenges-prop-1-vote/> Mayor Steve Adler that challenges the May 7 electoral defeat of Proposition 1 and attacks the city’s “Swiss-cheese regulation” of ride-hailing companies.

The suit filed late Thursday in Travis County state District Court argues that the vote should be voided because Prop 1’s ballot language “misled the voters and omitted chief features of the amendment, distorting the true essence of the amendment.”

Those omissions include the amendment’s financial effect and whether it can be enforced at all, the 21-page suit said.
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Posted in direct democracy<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=62>

“Kansas election law created chaos”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83641>
Posted on June 17, 2016 6:12 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83641> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Wichita Eagle editorial:<http://www.kansas.com/opinion/editorials/article84276407.html>

Legislators and the governor should stop taking legal advice from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, and start taking some responsibility for the chaos created by the law requiring people prove U.S. citizenship to register to vote.

As it is, the burden of guaranteeing at least partial voting rights in Kansas is falling on judges – most recently the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ refusal last week to temporarily block a May order<https://ecf.ksd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2016cv2105-129> by U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson.

In response, Kobach’s office told<http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article83803472.html> county election officials late Tuesday to start registering affected Kansans. They had tried to register to vote when they applied for or renewed a driver’s license, as intended by the federal 1993 “motor-voter law,” but had their applications put on hold or thrown out for lack of citizenship proof. Counting past and future motor-voter applicants, the state thinks as many as 50,000 voter registrations could be involved.
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Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“State’s Tab Defending Voter ID $3.5 Million So Far”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83639>
Posted on June 17, 2016 4:38 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83639> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Making it harder for people to vote for no good reason has cost Texas some money<https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/17/texas-tab-voter-id-lawsuits-more-35-million/>.
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Posted in The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“Reprecincting and Voting Behavior”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83637>
Posted on June 17, 2016 12:19 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83637> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Brian Amos, Dan Smith, and Casey Ste. Clair have written this article<http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-016-9350-z> for Political Behavior.  Here is the abstract:

Despite the expansion of convenience voting across the American states, millions of voters continue to cast ballots at their local precincts on Election Day. We argue that those registered voters who are reassigned to a different Election Day polling place prior to an election are less likely to turn out to vote than those assigned to vote at the same precinct location, as a new precinct location incurs both search and transportation costs on reassigned voters. Utilizing voter file data and precinct shape files from Manatee County, Florida, from before and after the 2014 General Election, we demonstrate that the redrawing of precinct boundaries and the designation of Election Day polling places is not a purely technical matter for local election administrators, but may affect voter turnout of some registered voters more than others. Controlling for a host of demographic, partisan, vote history, and geospatial factors, we find significantly lower turnout among registered voters who were reassigned to a new Election Day precinct compared to those who were not, an effect not equally offset by those voters turning to other available modes of voting (either early in-person or absentee). All else equal, we find that registered Hispanic voters were significantly more likely to abstain from voting as a result of being reassigned than any other racial group.
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Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>

“Donald Trump’s big money bait-and-switch; Presumptive GOP nominee embracing super PACs, megadonors he once decried”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83635>
Posted on June 17, 2016 12:11 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83635> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Dave Levinthal for CPI<https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/06/17/19762/donald-trumps-big-money-bait-and-switch>:

Now Trump is no longer spurning super PACs and eschewing tony private fundraisers tailor made for 1 percenters. Rather he’s tolerating, if not embracing, the post-Citizens United<https://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/10/18/11527/citizens-united-decision-and-why-it-matters> era of cash-flush politics that, until recently, Trump considered anathema to his largely anti-establishment presidential bid.

That may surprise some likely voters, who in a recent Center for Public Integrity/Ipsospoll<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2786938-Campaign-Finance-IPSOS-1.html> ranked Trump well ahead of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton — anavowed<https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/campaign-finance-reform/>campaign finance reformer —  on the question of which candidate, if elected president, would do the most to make elections less reliant on big money.

Trump’s campaign refused to answer questions about how Trump’s attitude toward political money has shifted. But an analysis of Trump’s statements on the matter demonstrates how it most certainly has.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“The First Amendment and a phony foreign threat”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83633>
Posted on June 17, 2016 9:35 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83633> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Brad Smith<http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/campaign/283672-the-first-amendment-and-a-phony-foreign-threat> in The Hill:

Those opposed to free speech are once again threatening to use the Internal Revenue Code and the IRS to chill First Amendment freedoms. This time they raise the imaginary specter of election involvement by “foreigners.” The battleground is a little-known, burdensome and unnecessary IRS form, Schedule B of Form 990, filed by nonprofits.

No law requires it, but the IRS makes all tax-exempt organizations provide the names and addresses of their major contributors on Schedule B. It is illegal for the IRS to disclose this information, for good reason – donors to politically unpopular organizations rightly worry that if their identities become public they could be subject to threats or harassment in today’s charged ideological climate. And the recipient non-profits reasonably fear that even the possibility of disclosure would reduce donations, lessening their ability to participate in the marketplace of ideas.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, tax law and election law<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=22>

“Republican Senator Bill Seitz blasts John Kasich over veto of voting bill”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83631>
Posted on June 17, 2016 9:33 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83631> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Columbus Post Dispatch<http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/06/17/john-kasich-vetoes-republican-backed-voting-bill.html>:

Gov. John Kasich vetoed a bill today that Democrats likened to a poll tax.

Kasich didn’t come close to using those words, but he nixed the measure because it would have required anyone requesting an extension of Election Day polling hours to post a bond equivalent to what the additional time would cost the state. If a court overturned the extension, whoever filed the request would forfeit the bond, which could easily total tens of thousands of dollars.

Kasich noted that Ohio judicial rules already allow judges to require bonds.
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Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

--
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<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>
http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org<http://electionlawblog.org/>
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