[EL] ELB News and Commentary 5/25/16
Rick Hasen
rhasen at law.uci.edu
Wed May 25 08:56:05 PDT 2016
“Inquiry Highlights Terry McAuliffe’s Ties to Chinese Company”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83127>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:53 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83127>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/25/us/politics/terry-mcauliffe-wang-wenliang.html?ref=politics&_r=0>:
Four years ago, one of China’s largest agricultural importers sent
representatives to theDemocratic National Convention
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/d/democratic_national_convention/index.html?inline=nyt-org&version=meter+at+5&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fpolitics%2Findex.html%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26pgtype%3DHomepage%26module%3DSectionsNav%26version%3DBrowseTree%26contentCollection%3DPolitics%26contentPlacement%3D2%26t%3Dqry325&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click>in
Charlotte, N.C., hoping that meetings with elite party officials
might yield business opportunities. The company, the Dandong Port
Group, was particularly focused on the governors in attendance,
according to an interview with Dandong’s general counsel broadcast
by Chinese state television.
“If you really want to influence, let’s say, U.S.-China policy,”he
said
<https://youtu.be/OiZm2hIMDs4?version=meter+at+5&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fpolitics%2Findex.html%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26pgtype%3DHomepage%26module%3DSectionsNav%26version%3DBrowseTree%26contentCollection%3DPolitics%26contentPlacement%3D2%26t%3Dqry325&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click>,
“it’s almost worth it to have emphasis and influence on the state
level.”
The meetings, arranged by a former South Carolina governor, marked a
period of expansion in the United States for Dandong and its
affiliated companies, involving negotiations with officials in
Washington, Arkansas, South Carolina and Virginia. But now, the
company’s widening influence is coming under scrutiny by federal
prosecutors, who are examining the relationship between Dandong’s
wealthy and connected chairman, Wang Wenliang, and Gov.Terry
McAuliffe
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/terry_mcauliffe/index.html?inline=nyt-per&version=meter+at+5&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fpolitics%2Findex.html%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26pgtype%3DHomepage%26module%3DSectionsNav%26version%3DBrowseTree%26contentCollection%3DPolitics%26contentPlacement%3D2%26t%3Dqry325&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click>of
Virginia, a Democrat who was elected in 2013.
A federal law enforcement official said the inquiry included
$120,000 in contributions that a New Jersey construction firm
controlled by Mr. Wang made to Mr. McAuliffe’s 2013 campaign and
inaugural committee. That official and a second law enforcement
official, both of whom asked for anonymity to discuss the matter,
said it was a preliminary inquiry of Mr. McAuliffe’s campaign
donations, and they provided no detail about the nature and scope of
any potential violations being scrutinized.
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,chicanery
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>
“McAuliffe in ‘shock’ over FBI investigation of campaign money,
personal finances” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83125>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:38 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83125>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
WaPo reports.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/mcauliffe-in-shock-over-fbi-investigation-of-campaign-money-personal-finances/2016/05/24/d5b8e362-21b8-11e6-9e7f-57890b612299_story.html>
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,chicanery
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>
“Top GOP financiers coalescing around Trump-RNC fundraising effort”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83123>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:36 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83123>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Matea Gold
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/24/top-gop-financiers-coalescing-around-trump-rnc-fundraising-effort/>for
WaPo.
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,campaigns
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>
“Waukesha county clerk: Weekend voting gave ‘too much access’ to
Milwaukee, Madison” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83121>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:33 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83121>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Yeesh! God forbid people of color and poor people living in Wisconsin
cities have easy access
<http://chippewa.com/news/state-and-regional/waukesha-county-clerk-weekend-voting-gave-too-much-access-to/article_6702283a-306e-5b8f-a4da-0f7432ac2ea2.html>to
the ballot.
Ozaukee County as a whole is about 95 percent white and neighboring
Waukesha County is about 94 percent white. With Washington County —
96 percent white — they make up the state’sdeep-red “WOW counties.”
<https://law.marquette.edu/assets/marquette-lawyers/pdf/marquette-lawyer/2014-fall/2014-fall-p08.pdf>The
deeply conservative counties form an arc around Democratic Milwaukee
County, which is 65 percent white.
Novack said she believes eliminating weekend voting “level(s) the
playing field” between large urban areas and smaller suburban and
rural communities that lack the resources to staff weekend hours.
“If there’s an office open 30 days versus an office that’s only open
10 work days, there are obviously voters that have a lot more access
than someone else,” Novack said. “There has to come a point where
it’s just giving over-access … to particular parts of the state.”
Asked whether she thought voters in Milwaukee and Madison —
communities that previously used weekend voting — had too much
access, Novack said, “too much access to the voters as far as
opportunities.”
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Posted inelection administration
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,The Voting Wars
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
“Judge rules against election materials law”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83119>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:30 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83119>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Great Falls Tribune
<http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2016/05/24/judge-rules-election-materials-law/84880274/>:
A federal judge has once again struck down a law that requires
candidates who criticize the voting records of another candidate to
offer details on the vote.
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Posted inUncategorized <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Civic Groups Ask Courts to Stop Unlawful Voter Purging Practice”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83117>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:28 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83117>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Demos
<http://www.demos.org/press-release/civic-groups-ask-courts-stop-unlawful-voter-purging-practice>:
Yesterday, a voting rights coalition asked the federal court to stop
Ohio’s practice of removing properly registered voters from its
voter registration list simply because they have not voted in recent
elections. The plaintiffs, who initiated the lawsuit in early
April, are composed of civic groups and a longtime Ohioan who was
disenfranchised by this process.
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Posted inelection administration
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,NVRA (motor voter)
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=33>
“Sometimes ‘People’ = ‘Legislature'”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83115>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:26 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83115>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Seth Barrett Tillman
<http://originalismblog.typepad.com/the-originalism-blog/2016/05/sometimes-people-legislatureseth-barrett-tillman.html>:
This is a response to ProfessorsSaikrishna Bangalore Prakash & John
Yoo, People ≠ Legislature, 39 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy
341 (2016 <http://ssrn.com/abstract=2770182>) (noted on this blog
here
<http://originalismblog.typepad.com/the-originalism-blog/2016/05/saikrishna-prakash-john-yoo-people-legislaturemichael-ramsey.html>).
Professors Prakash and Yoo’s position is that “[a]s used in the
Constitution, ‘Legislature’ refers to a multimember lawmaking body
that is distinct from the people.” Prakash & Yoo,/supra/at 355. I
have to admit, that my own intuition is consistent with their view.
But I am not sure that my intuition counts for much. The Framers and
ratifiers spoke to this issue, albeit unevenly, but what many wrote
does not easily square with Prakash & Yoo’s position.
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Posted inlegislation and legislatures
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>,Supreme Court
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>
“Rethinking Voter ID: Its Rationale and Impact”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83113>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:24 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83113>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Graeme Orr and Tracey Arklay have postedthis draft
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2779848>on SSRN
(forthcoming, /Australian Journal of Political Science/). Here is the
abstract:
Voter ID is a contentious issue in electoral democracies worldwide.
This article surveys arguments for and against voter ID in the
Australian context, presenting data from the first election in the
country to require it. The data demonstrate a differential impact on
regional electorates and on electorates with concentrations of
Indigenous voters. Whilst the law in question (from the State of
Queensland) was moderate in its overall impact, confusion created by
it may have suppressed turnout. The law has since been repealed, but
voter ID now has the support of a conservative majority on the
Commonwealth Parliament’s electoral matters committee. We conclude
that voter ID is not a solution to eliminating fraud, but an
additional bureaucratic layer upon the ritual of casting a ballot
and a hurdle with unintended consequences.
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Posted inelection administration
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,The Voting Wars
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
“(One More) One More Time: Ohio Court Re-Establishes ‘Golden Week'”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83111>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:22 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83111>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
A ChapinBlog
<http://editions.lib.umn.edu/electionacademy/2016/05/25/one-more-one-more-time-ohio-court-re-establishes-golden-week/>.
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Posted inelection administration
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,The Voting Wars
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
“Judge makes no decision on campaign contributions”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83108>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:19 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83108>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
AP:
<http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/judges-makes-no-decision-on-campaign-contributions/article_129c29cd-2d5c-5b2d-ad1b-6d3ebeec5d22.html>
HELENA — A federal judge is considering a request by state attorneys
to issue a stay on part of his ruling last week that invalidated
campaign contribution limits approved by Montana voters in 1994.
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>
“Bill to cloak U.S. ‘dark money’ seen as harmful to charity fraud
fight” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83106>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:18 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83106>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Reuters reports.
<http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-charities-idUSKCN0YF2PJ>
Share
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,tax law
and election law <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=22>
“Trump Unveils Stable of Republican Donors”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83104>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:17 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83104>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Bloomberg reports.
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-05-24/trump-unveils-stable-of-republican-donors?cmpid=BBD052516_POL&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=>
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>
“These States Are Stepping Up To Reform Money In Politics In 2016”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83102>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:10 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83102>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Paul Blumenthal
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/2016-campaign-finance-reform_us_57449f87e4b0b14fc0e64565>for
HuffPo.
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>
“Taxpayer-funded campaigns have been a disaster in New York”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83100>
Posted onMay 25, 2016 8:08 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83100>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Paul Jossey oped
<http://nypost.com/2016/05/24/taxpayer-funded-campaigns-have-been-a-disaster-in-new-york/>in
the NY Post.
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>
“Court upholds former California senator’s voter fraud conviction”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83098>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 7:35 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83098>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
SacBee:
<http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article79676442.html>
A Los Angeles County appeals court on Tuesday upheld former state
Sen. Rod Wright’s conviction on charges of perjury and voter fraud.
In 2014, a jury found Wright guilty of eight felonies for
registering to vote at a home he owned in Inglewood, even though he
actually lived several miles away in the upscale neighborhood of
Baldwin Hills, just outside the district where he ran for office in
2008.
You can find the unpublished unanimous opinion of the California Court
of Appealat this link
<http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/B260216.PDF>.
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Posted inchicanery <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>,residency
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=38>
“Meet the expert witnesses testifying in Wisconsin’s federal voter
ID trial” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83096>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 7:30 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83096>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Cap Times reports.
<http://www.wiscnews.com/news/state-and-regional/article_5b181de8-2e6d-5958-9064-60d63eab405c.html>
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Posted inelection administration
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,The Voting Wars
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>,voter id
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=9>
Listen to the Recording of the En Banc 5th Circuit Hearing in Texas
Voter ID Case <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83094>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 3:07 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83094>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Listen.
<http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/OralArgRecordings/14/14-41127_5-24-2016.mp3>
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Posted inelection administration
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,The Voting Wars
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>,voter id
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=9>,Voting Rights Act
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>
Ohio Will Appeal Voting Rights Ruling
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83091>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 2:52 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83091>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
So reports
<http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/05/24/ohio-golden-week-ruling.html#>the
Colmbus Dispatch.
See myearlier analysis<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83086>of the case.
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Posted inelection administration
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,The Voting Wars
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
“The Revival of the Three-Fifths Clause in a Rhode Island Prison
Gerrymandering Case” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83089>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 1:33 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83089>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Derek the Muller
<http://excessofdemocracy.com/blog/2016/5/the-revival-of-the-three-fifths-clause-in-a-rhode-island-prison-gerrymandering-case>:
A federal district court handed down amemorandum and order for
summary judgment
<https://www.scribd.com/doc/313704960/Davidson-v-City-of-Cranston>in/Davidson
v. City of Cranston/, a case concerning “prison gerrymandering” in
Rhode Island. The court concluded that the city improperly drew
districts that included all of the incarcerated individuals in a
prison into a single district, distorting representation and voting
strength in other districts.
One might have concluded that the Supreme Court’s recent decision
in/Evenwel v. Abbott/mandated this case come out the other way.
There, the Court permitted Texas to use total population in drawing
its districts, even if it included non-citizens (i.e., non-voters)
in its population base. Had the case come out the other way and some
voter- or citizen-based measure been required for drawing
districts,prison gerrymandering may well have ended
<http://excessofdemocracy.com/blog/2015/6/could-evenwel-v-abbott-end-prison-gerrymandering-and-other-potential-implications>.
AsAdam Liptak
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/us/politics/aclus-own-arguments-may-work-against-it-in-voting-rights-case.html>and
others noted, a win for Texas in/Evenwel/would deeply undermine
constitutional arguments against prison gerrymandering. After all,
prisoners are people ineligible, just like non-citizens or children.
They’re drawn into districts with the rest of the total population.
Instead, one must come up with a political theory for
excluding/this/set of non-voters from redistricting, but
not/other/sets of non-voters.
In a recently-published article in the Harvard Journal of Law &
Public Policy,/Perpetuating “One Person, One Vote” Errors/
<http://ssrn.com/abstract=2697719>, I highlight the deep problems
that arise when courts attempt to insert ever more-detailed theories
of political representation into the constitutional doctrine of “one
person, one vote.” Mercifully, I remarked, the decision
in/Evenwel/leaves some discretion to the states (and cities) in
redistricting.
But the decision in/Davidson/takes away some of this discretion. And
it does so using bizarre support from the Three-Fifths Clause. It
even suggests prisoners are less worthy of representation than slaves.
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Posted infelon voting <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=66>,redistricting
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>
“CBS2 Investigation Uncovers Votes Being Cast From Grave Year After
Year” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83086>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 12:14 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83086>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
This story
<http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2016/05/23/cbs2-investigation-uncovers-votes-being-cast-from-grave-year-after-year/>from
CBS2’s David Goldstein is sure to make a lot of waves in CA.
CBS2 compared millions of voting records from the California
Secretary of State’s office with death records from the Social
Security Administration and found hundreds of so-called dead voters.
Specifically, 265 in Southern California and a vast majority of
them, 215, in Los Angeles County alone.
The numbers come from state records that show votes were cast in
that person’s name after they died. In some cases, Goldstein
discovered that they voted year after year.
Across all counties, Goldstein uncovered 32 dead voters who cast
ballots in eight elections apiece, including a woman who died in
1988. Records show she somehow voted in 2014, 26 years after she
passed away.
It remains unclear how the dead voters voted but 86 were registered
Republicans, 146 were Democrats, including Cenkner.
I’d like to know more information on how many of these are from absentee
ballots (the story mentions one that day) and how many are at polling
places, where sometimes what looks like fraud is administrative error,
such as people signing on the wrong lines. Let’s wait and see what the
inevitable investigations show before we jump to conclusions that this
is a major problem in CA. But at the very least, the state needs to do
a MUCH better job removing deceased voters from the rolls.
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Posted inchicanery <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>,election
administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>
“Federal court questions whether Texas voter ID law can offer
accommodations” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83084>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 12:09 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83084>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
WaPo
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/strict-texas-voter-id-law-faces-federal-court-test-ahead-of-presidential-contest/2016/05/24/c17b8838-2130-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html?postshare=8501464108909704&tid=ss_tw>:
With the U.S. Supreme Court watching, judges on a federal appeals
court here Tuesday questioned whether accommodations could be made
to protect minority voters and still save Texas’s
strictest-in-the-nation voter ID law in time for the presidential
contest in November.
There did not seem to be much support for striking down the law or
blocking its use among the 15 judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 5th Circuit who heard oral arguments Tuesday morning.
But several questioned why Texas did not have more fallback
provisions — as other states do — for voters who lacked the kinds of
identification that the state requires.
On this idea of “softening” harsh voter id laws judicially, see
my**Softening Voter ID Laws Through Litigation: Is it Enough?,/Wisconsin
Law Review Forward/(forthcoming 2016) (draft available
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=80636>).
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Posted inelection administration
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,The Voting Wars
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>,voter id
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=9>,Voting Rights Act
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>
“Bernie Sanders asks for recanvass of Kentucky primary vote”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83082>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 12:05 pm
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83082>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
WaPo reports.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/24/bernie-sanders-asks-for-recanvass-of-kentucky-primary-vote/>
Share
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Posted inelection administration
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,political parties
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=25>,primaries
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=32>
Major New Edition of “The Law of Democracy,” (Issacharoff, Karlan,
Pildes, Persily) Available for Fall
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83076>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 11:58 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83076>byRichard Pildes
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>
The significantly revised new edition of/The Law of Democracy,/which now
includes Professor Nate Persily as our new co-author, is available from
us in page proofs and will be published over the summer. The new
edition will also feature a website, available to teachers, where we
will post maps and other visual material that can be used to enhance
teaching. We want to thank the many academics who have contributed
their suggestions to this new edition.
From the preface to this new edition, here are a few brief excerpts
that describe some of the major changes to the book:
Our treatment of campaign finance has been significantly enhanced.
We have reorganized and expanded the materials in Chapter 5 to cover
this increasingly dominant subject. We have included more background
material to help students appreciate the various critical actors in
the system, and for casebook users who have clamored for years for
the inclusion of the actual decision in/Buckley v. Valeo/, your wish
has been granted. We have also organized the materials a bit more
conceptually, so that the early parts of the Chapter focus on
“corruption” and the expenditure/contribution divide, while the
later portions of the chapter focus on key organizational entities,
such as political parties and corporations. In addition, we have
expanded our coverage of SuperPACs and other contemporary financing
vehicles; added new material on lobbying and the boundary between
crime and ordinary democratic politics; and enhanced our coverage of
disclosure, as that issue has taken on greater importance and become
more controversial.
While our coverage of campaign finance has expanded, we have
condensed some of our coverage of the Voting Rights Act and related
issues. We have compressed the four chapters in the Fourth Edition
that dealt with qualitative vote-dilution claims into two chapters
in the new edition. We have integrated the racial and partisan vote
dilution issues in a new approach; a new Chapter 6 now presents the
constitutional vote dilution issues first in the race context and
then in the partisan gerrymandering context. Chapter 7 is devoted
exclusively to the Voting Rights Act. We have shortened the
legislative history of Section 2, and tightened our coverage of
Section 2 vote-dilution claims, while adding coverage of Section 2
vote-denial claims. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision
in/Shelby County v. Holder/, we have streamlined significantly our
coverage of the preclearance regime of Section 5, while preserving
the core issues that continue to have current implications.
We’ve managed to revise the book without it getting any longer, thereby
defying our earlier prediction that casebooks, like people, always grow
heavier as they age. We will not disclose which of the casebook authors
cannot say the same about themselves.
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Posted inUncategorized <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
“Shareholder Proposal Settlements and the Private Ordering of Public
Elections” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83075>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 11:46 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83075>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Sarah Haan has postedthis draft
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2780592>on SSRN
(forthcoming, /Yale Law Journal/). Here is the abstract:
Reform of campaign finance disclosure has stalled in Congress and at
various federal agencies, but it is steadily unfolding in a
firm-by-firm program of private ordering. Today, much of what is
publicly known about how individual public companies spend money to
influence federal, state, and local elections – and particularly
what is known about corporate “dark money” – comes from disclosures
that conform to privately-negotiated contracts.
The primary mechanism for this new transparency is the settlement of
the shareholder proposal, in which a shareholder trades its rights
under SEC Rule 14a-8 – and potentially the rights of other
shareholders – for a privately-negotiated social policy commitment
by corporate management. Settlements of campaign finance disclosure
proposals have been memorialized in detailed private agreements that
set the frequency, format, and substance of disclosure reports, are
enforced by private actors, and typically are not available to other
shareholders, corporate stakeholders, or the public. Proposal
settlements are producing a body of private disclosure law that
increases corporate transparency to advance First Amendment values,
and is exempt from First Amendment scrutiny. The private disclosure
standards themselves are a mixed bag: effective at filling some gaps
in public campaign finance disclosure law, but inadequate to make
corporate electoral spending transparent in advance of elections.
As a form of private electoral regulation, the proposal settlement
mechanism raises issues of democratic transparency, participation,
accountability, and enforcement. This Article challenges the
characterization of proposal settlements as “voluntary” corporate
self-regulation, provides a framework for understanding
settlement-related agency costs, and shows how settlement subverts
the traditional justifications for the shareholder proposal itself.
Solutions that address the democratic and corporate governance
problems of settlement largely overlap, suggesting a path forward.
I heard Sarah present this at a conference a few months ago and look
forward to reading this draft!
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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>
Prison Gerrymandering Case Succeeds in Cranston, Rhode Island
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83072>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 11:41 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83072>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
District court opinion.
<http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/Davidson.v.Cranston.decision.pdf>
Update: See this press release
<http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/2016/05/24/cranston_ruling/>from
Prisoners of the Census.
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Posted infelon voting <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=66>
“New Federal Trial Eyes Wisconsin’s Legislative Map”
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83070>
Posted onMay 24, 2016 11:36 am
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=83070>byRick Hasen
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Wisconsin Public Radio reports
<http://www.wpr.org/new-federal-trial-eyes-wisconsins-legislative-map>.
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Posted inUncategorized <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>
--
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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