[EL] ELB News and Commentary 8/30/17

Wed Aug 30 08:34:27 PDT 2017

“Judges: NC lawsuit over partisan gerrymander will proceed”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94502>
Posted on August 30, 2017 8:32 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94502> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
WRAL<http://www.wral.com/judges-nc-lawsuit-over-partisan-gerrymander-will-proceed/16914474/>:
A federal lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s congressional districts will move forward, a panel of federal judges decided Tuesday, instead of being put on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court tackles issues relevant to the case.
Common Cause v. Rucho is one of several lawsuits in North Carolina that have targeted election maps drawn by the General Assembly’s Republican majority. But instead of alleging that voters’ race was used to draw unconstitutional maps, plaintiffs in this case argue that the congressional map redrawn last year is overly partisan<http://www.wral.com/new-challenge-says-nc-congressional-maps-overly-partisan/16038294/>, amounting to a partisan gerrymander instead of a racial one.
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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>

“Kansas’ ballot box has too many locks”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94500>
Posted on August 30, 2017 8:29 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94500> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Wichita Eagle editorial:<http://www.kansas.com/opinion/editorials/article170048942.html>
Kansas handed out 40,872 provisional ballots and discarded a third of them. Some reasons for throwing them out: The voter moved to another county but didn’t update registration; trying to vote in the wrong jurisdiction; and not being registered at all.
One obvious weakness in the system came from Kansas’ online registration site.<https://www.kdor.ks.gov/Apps/VoterReg/Default.aspx> Residents went to a voting place thinking they were registered because of misleading confirmations in the online system.
The election office knew of the erroneous confirmations but didn’t notify voters. The election office told county officials to count the ballots of those affected only if they brought a printout of their online confirmation. Otherwise, those voters were given provisional ballots that were later discarded.
It’s not known how many online registrants had ballots thrown out because of the website mistake, but even a few is too many. Voters who make the effort to register online should have confidence in the system to know they’re registered if a confirmation message appears. Online registration should be the easiest and most accurate way to become a Kansas voter.
Kobach should spend the fall making sure the avenues that led to so many dismissed ballots are shut by next August’s primaries, while still maintaining the integrity of the voting process. For a state our size, tossing that many ballots isn’t trying to help voters – it’s more likely trying to shut them out.
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Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, provisional ballots<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=67>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“Republican NC senator, facing a new district, says he’s not running in 2018”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94498>
Posted on August 30, 2017 8:25 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94498> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
The News and Observer reports.<http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/under-the-dome/article170078462.html>

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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>

“How to Get Rich in Trump’s Washington”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94496>
Posted on August 30, 2017 8:18 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94496> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Nick Confessore has this piece<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/magazine/how-to-get-rich-in-trumps-washington.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0> for the NYT magazine, with the subhead: “”His presidency has changed the rules of influence in the nation’s capital — and spawned a new breed of lobbyist on K Street.”
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Posted in lobbying<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=28>

“Cyber experts were blocked in their push to patch voting systems in 2016”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94494>
Posted on August 29, 2017 10:33 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94494> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Troubling McClatchy report: <http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article170006067.html>
They knew Russian operatives might try to tamper with the nation’s electronic voting systems. Many people inside the U.S. government and the Obama White House knew.
In the summer of 2016, a cluster of volunteers on a federally supervised cybersecurity team crafting 2018 election guidelines felt compelled to do something sooner. Chatting online, they scrambled to draw up ways for state and local officials to patch the most obvious cyber vulnerabilities before Election Day 2016.
Their five-page list of recommendations focused on two gaping holes in the U.S. election system. It warned that internet voting by at least some citizens in 32 states was not secure and should be avoided. And, critically, it advised how to guard voting and ballot-counting machines that the experts knew could be penetrated even when disconnected from the internet.
But the list was stopped in its tracks. A year later, even as U.S. intelligence agencies warn that Russian operatives have their eyes on 2018 and beyond, America’s more than 7,000 election jurisdictions nationwide still do not have access to those guidelines for shielding the voting process.
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Posted in chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

DC Circuit Rejects Johnson, Stein Antitrust and First-Amendment Complaints About Presidential Debate Exclusion<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94492>
Posted on August 29, 2017 7:57 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=94492> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Judge Brown opinion,<https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/3C9F51CF890774B68525818B005016B2/$file/16-7107-1690481.pdf> with a Judge Pillard concurrence. The majority opinion begins:
Every four years, we suffer through the celebration of democracy (and national nightmare) that is a presidential election. And, in the end, one person is selected to occupy our nation’s highest office. But in every hard-fought presidential election there are losers. And, with quadrennial regularity, those losers turn to the courts. See, e.g., Perot v. FEC, 97 F.3d 553 (D.C. Cir. 1996); Fulani v. Brady, 935 F.2d 1324 (D.C. Cir. 1991); Johnson v. FCC, 829 F.2d 157 (D.C. Cir. 1987). Today’s challenge concerns 2012 third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Their Complaint presents novel claims under antitrust law and familiar First Amendment allegations. The district court dismissed the Complaint, finding Plaintiffs lacked Article III standing, antitrust standing, and in the alternative, failed to state a claim for which relief could be granted. See Johnson v. Comm’n on Presidential Debates, 202 F. Supp. 3d 159 (D.D.C. 2016). For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.
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Posted in ballot access<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=46>, third parties<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=47>

--
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
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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