[EL] ELB News and Commentary 1/12/17

Thu Jan 12 07:44:25 PST 2017

“Trump team dredges up misleading claims of black voter fraud at Sessions’ AG hearing”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90449>
Posted on January 12, 2017 7:26 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90449> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Mic reports.<https://mic.com/articles/165152/trump-team-dredges-up-misleading-claims-of-black-voter-fraud-at-sessions-ag-hearing#.vggOkBxFW>

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Posted in chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, Department of Justice<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=26>, fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

FEC Delays Action Until March on Whether to Remove Social Workers Party Harassment Exemption from Campaign Finance Disclosure Laws<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90447>
Posted on January 12, 2017 7:18 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90447> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
As noted.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, federal election commission<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>

“The Trump Conflict-Of-Interest Plan, On its Own Terms”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90445>
Posted on January 12, 2017 7:05 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90445> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Bauer blogs.<http://www.moresoftmoneyhardlaw.com/2017/01/trump-conflict-interest-plan-terms/>
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Former Wisconsin judges seek rules on campaign donations”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90443>
Posted on January 11, 2017 5:01 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90443> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:<http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2017/01/11/former-judges-seek-rules-donations/96430238/>
More than 50 retired jurists on Wednesday asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to require judges and justices to step aside when hearing cases involving those who helped bankroll their elections.
The proposal<http://graphics.jsonline.com/jsi_news/documents/judicial%20petition%20final%20with%20%20signatures.pdf> from the 54 former judges comes seven years after the high court adopted rules<http://archive.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/82319592.html> that said campaign spending, on its own, isn’t enough<http://archive.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/67012672.html> to force a judge off a case.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, judicial elections<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=19>

“American Employers as Political Machines”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90440>
Posted on January 11, 2017 4:49 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90440> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez has written this article<http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/687995> for the Journal of Politics. Here is the abstract:
American employers are increasingly engaging their workers in the political process. Drawing on original surveys of firms and workers, this paper examines the extent to which employers act as political machines, channeling their employees into politics in ways intended to support corporate interests. I show that employer political requests greatly increased the likelihood that employees would report participating in politics around the 2014 election and employer requests were roughly as effective as those from unions and political parties. I also find that employer mobilization was most effective when employers used warnings of job loss to motivate participation and when employers could monitor the behavior of their employees, suggesting that employers are indeed acting as a type of political machine. My results shed light on the ways that American firms recruit workers into politics and show that employer mobilization of workers may be an important source of political power for business.
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Posted in campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“Entertainment and the Opportunity Cost of Civic Participation: Monday Night Football Game Quality Suppresses Turnout in US Elections”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90438>
Posted on January 11, 2017 4:47 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90438> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Matthew Postoski and R. Urbatsch have written this article<http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/688174> for the Journal of Politics.  Here is the abstract:
Raising the opportunity cost of people’s time may reduce their commitment to social obligations such as voting. Notably, entertaining sporting events can be strong civic distractions, as commentators throughout history have lamented. To consider sporting events’ influence on political behavior, this paper examines the effect of Monday Night Football games the day before US general elections from 1970 to 2014. More attractive games, such as those that feature more prominent and competitive match-ups or that feature local or high-scoring teams, may entice people to consume more entertainment and thus have less time to devote to civic affairs. When preelection football game quality increases from its 25th to 75th percentile, voter turnout falls by between 2 and 8 percentage points. These effects are somewhat weaker among those more interested in politics and do not appear in placebo tests on other political behaviors occurring before the preelection game.
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Posted in voting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=31>

“Government Ethics Leader Calls Trump’s Plan to Avoid Conflicts Inadequate”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90436>
Posted on January 11, 2017 4:40 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90436> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/us/politics/trump-organization-business-conflicts.html?smid=tw-share>
Just hours after President-elect Donald J. Trump<http://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/donald-trump?inline=nyt-per> said he would not sell his vast business empire and would instead hand it over to a trust controlled by his two oldest sons, the government’s top ethics monitor said his plan was wholly inadequate and would leave the president vulnerable to “suspicions of corruption.”
The unusual public criticism from Walter M. Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, followed Mr. Trump’s most detailed explanation yet of his plans to distance himself from the global business operations of the Trump Organization. No modern president has entered the White House with such a complicated array of holdings.
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Posted in conflict of interest laws<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=20>

“Eric Holder to Lead Democrats’ Attack on Republican Gerrymandering”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90434>
Posted on January 11, 2017 4:34 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90434> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/us/eric-holder-to-lead-democrats-attack-on-republican-gerrymandering.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1>
Mr. Holder said his initiative would unfold on three fronts: In court, where Democrats will challenge Republican-drawn maps they see as violating the law; on the campaign trail, where they will seek to win offices that influence redistricting; and through ballot referendums in states that allow voters to give direct approval to laws mandating new procedures for legislative apportionment….
For the moment, at least, Democrats are portraying their campaign as a matter of fairness, criticizing Republicans for having mangled the maps in places like Ohio and Michigan, so that solidly purple states are represented disproportionately by Republicans.
Democrats believe that where states have drawn maps by nonpartisan means, or by court order, it has tended to benefit them. Republicans have tended to roll their eyes at Democratic complaints about redistricting, given how aggressively some in Mr. Obama’s party drew maps in their favor when Democrats had more state-level power.
Mr. Holder said he viewed Republican gerrymandering as more extreme than anything Democrats had engineered for their own benefit in blue states. But he declined to say that Democrats should eschew gerrymandering of their own.
Yet in a sign of tensions that might later emerge, Mr. Holder suggested that some Democratic incumbents might have to be willing to run in more competitive districts, to avoid clustering core Democratic constituencies in a tiny number of districts. Some senior black lawmakers have resisted efforts to overhaul the map in ways that would make their districts even modestly whiter and more competitive.
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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>

Two Views on President Elect Trump and the Emoluments Clause<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90432>
Posted on January 11, 2017 4:30 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90432> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
White Paper <https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3280261/MLB-White-Paper-1-10-Pm.pdf> from his lawyers at Morgan Lewis
Scholars talking<http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/will-trump-avoid-a-constitutional-crisis?mbid=nl_January%209th%202017%20(5)&CNDID=24399013&spMailingID=10210367&spUserID=MTMzMTgyMzY0NTk1S0&spJobID=1080908457&spReportId=MTA4MDkwODQ1NwS2> to Ryan Lizza

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Posted in conflict of interest laws<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=20>

“Justice Department Files Voting Rights Suit Against City of Eastpointe, Michigan”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90430>
Posted on January 11, 2017 9:57 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=90430> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Release:<https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-voting-rights-suit-against-city-eastpointe-michigan>
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit late yesterday to challenge the at-large method of electing the city council of Eastpointe, Michigan.  The complaint alleges that the election system in Eastpointe violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by denying black citizens in the city the equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.
A rare Obama administration DOJ Section 2 action, and filed just days before the end of the President’s term.
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Posted in Department of Justice<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=26>, 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
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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