[EL] ELB News and Commentary 6/7/17

Tue Jun 6 20:51:46 PDT 2017

“Twitter Users Blocked by Trump Seek Reprieve, Citing First Amendment”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92989>
Posted on June 6, 2017 8:46 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92989> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Charlie Savage<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/us/politics/trump-twitter-first-amendment.html?ref=politics> reports for the NY Times.
I’ve been debating this issue with others on my Twitter account<https://twitter.com/rickhasen>.
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Posted in social media and social protests<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=58>

“Democrats pressed GOP to raise alarm on Russian 2016 infiltration”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92987>
Posted on June 6, 2017 4:54 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92987> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
McClatchy:<http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article154727849.html>
It wasn’t just the National Security Agency that knew about Russian attempts to infiltrate U.S. voting systems.
In the weeks leading to the 2016 presidential election, the then-leader of the Democratic National Committee warned the Department of Homeland Security that voter registration and absentee voting lists might have been sabotaged.
Donna Brazile, who was serving as the party’s acting chairwoman, said she also urged Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus to learn more about the possible problems and to sign a joint statement with her, raising these concerns to DHS.
Priebus declined, Brazile told McClatchy on Tuesday.
“There is fear that the goal of a hacker attack on the voter list is to delete or alter names or other information and cause incidents at the polling stations,” Brazile wrote in an Oct. 18 letter to Priebus, now President Donald Trump’s chief of staff.
DHS officials assured her that investigators would contact election officials in all 50 states as part of its investigation into Russia’s attempted hacking into election machinery, which according to a new report<https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/top-secret-nsa-report-details-russian-hacking-effort-days-before-2016-election/>, was broader than previously known.
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

Revised Version of My Race or Party Paper Now Posted<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92982>
Posted on June 6, 2017 4:18 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92982> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
I have now posted a revised version of “Essay: Race or Party, Race as Party, or Party All the Time: Three Uneasy Approaches to Conjoined Polarization in Redistricting and Voting Cases<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2912403>” (forthcoming William and Mary Law Review symposium issue on redistricting).
This new version includes a new Part IV on the Supreme Court’s recent gerrymandering decision in Cooper v. Harris, and includes a response to critiques of my blog post <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92675> on the “Holy cow” nature of the case by Rick Pildes<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92706> and Justin Levitt<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92700>.
I’ve also got another paper on Cooper in the works that I’ll be posting soon.
(Note that the title of this draft article has changed slightly.)
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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>, Voting Rights Act<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>

Do We Not Have Enough Legislators Representing Us?<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92980>
Posted on June 6, 2017 4:12 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92980> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Steven Greenhut oped:<http://www.ocregister.com/2017/06/04/huntington-beach-tries-to-squelch-democratic-reform/>
After giving a speech a few years ago, I was approached by an activist who wanted to tell me aout what he believes is California’s most significant political problem. I’m usually leery of enthusiastic people touting political solutions and toting stacks of papers, but Michael Warnken made a great elevator pitch that has forever changed my thinking.
California, the Santa Barbara resident told me, has the worst political representation in the country. We have the most people represented by the fewest politicians. I’ve used his number before, but it’s worth repeating: Each California Assembly member represents 483,000 people, whereas each lower house member in New Hampshire represents around 3,290 people.
As a result, few voters here can speak to — let alone influence — their elected state officials. Those “representatives” don’t need to worry about what voters think given that there are so many of them. They do, however, need to worry about the demands of special-interest groups, given how much money it takes to win in such highly-populated districts. As Warnken emphasized, California suffers from a severe “representation” problem.
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Posted in legislation and legislatures<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>

Bloomingburg: “BREAKING: Jewish Developer Of Ultra-Orthodox Village Pleads Guilty To Voter Fraud”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92978>
Posted on June 6, 2017 11:21 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92978> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
The latest<http://forward.com/fast-forward/373928/breaking-jewish-developer-of-ultra-orthodox-village-pleads-guilty-to-voter/> from the Forward on the Bloomingburg saga<http://electionlawblog.org/?s=bloomingburg&x=18&y=10>:
Shalom Lamm, the developer behind the controversial effort<http://forward.com/news/357030/how-the-hasids-won-the-battle-of-bloomingburg-and-everyone-else-lost/> to build hundreds of homes for Hasidic families in the upstate New York village of Bloomingburg, pled guilty Tuesday to federal charges<http://forward.com/news/357189/breaking-shalom-lamm-charged-in-bloomingburg-cash-for-voters-scam/> in a cash-for-votes scam.
One of the attorneys representing Lamm, Gordon Mehler, confirmed the plea to the Forward.
Lamm faced a single count of conspiracy to corrupt the electoral process in connection with his efforts to fix village elections in Bloomingburg in 2014. According to prosecutors, Lamm and his co-defendants concocted their scheme after village officials blocked Lamm’s development efforts in 2013. In an effort to elect friendly officials to the village board, Lamm offered rent-free apartments in return for registering to vote, then created fake leases to make it appear that residents had lived in the village long enough to be eligible.

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Posted in chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“Sen. Mark Warner: More state election systems were targeted by Russians”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92976>
Posted on June 6, 2017 10:22 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92976> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
USA Today:<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/06/06/mark-warner-more-state-election-systems-targeted-by-russians-nsa-senate-intelligence/102549928/>
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee told USA TODAY on Tuesday that Russian attacks on election systems were broader and targeted more states than those detailed in an explosive intelligence report leaked to the website The Intercept<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/06/06/accused-nsa-leaker-reality-leigh-winner-left-easily-followed-trail-fbi-says/102542686/>.
“I don’t believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in an interview. “But the extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far.” He said he was pushing intelligence agencies to declassify the names of those states hit to help put electoral systems on notice before the midterm voting in 2018.
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Posted in chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>

Brad Smith Calls on FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub to Step Down after “Jump[ing] the Shark”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92974>
Posted on June 6, 2017 7:41 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92974> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
The remarks are here<http://www.campaignfreedom.org/2017/06/05/time-for-discredited-weintraub-to-step-down/>, and they are as unconvincing as they are mean-spirited.
The attacks on Democratic Federal Election Commissioner Weintraub and (former) Commissioner Ravel have been relentless. Ravel couldn’t take it anymore, and now the heat gets turned up on Weintraub. It is a way to hobble the FEC even more than it has been today, knowing that President Trump is unlikely to follow the bipartisan presidential custom of letting the other party have de facto naming power for any replacement FEC commissioners from the same party.
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Posted in federal election commission<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>

Josh Chafetz: “The Real ‘Resistance’ to Trump? The GOP Congress.”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92972>
Posted on June 6, 2017 7:33 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92972> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Josh Chafetz<http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/06/the-real-resistance-to-trump-the-gop-congress-215230> for Politico:
Many are asking aloud questions that in recent times had only been whispered: Do the Constitution’s checks and balances still work? Is James Madison’s eighteenth-century notion that “ambition” could be trusted to “counteract ambition” applicable to an era of partisanship so intense that it’s warping people’s very conceptions of reality? Can the other constitutional branches—and especially Congress—check President Trump?
As it turns out, the answer thus far is—more or less—yes: Congress is providing a check on President Trump’s powers. It may not be happening as swiftly or as comprehensively as some Democrats might like, but the legislative branch is making its weight felt in the Trump era in a manner that, if it continues, bids fair to leave Trump with a reputation as an extraordinarily weak modern president.
The piece is drawn from Josh’s new book, Congress’s Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers<https://www.amazon.com/Congresss-Constitution-Legislative-Authority-Separation/dp/0300197101/>.  I’ll have more on that in coming weeks.
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Posted in legislation and legislatures<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>

“White House Counsel Don McGahn Finds Himself At Center Of Controversy”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92970>
Posted on June 6, 2017 7:30 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=92970> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Must-listen Nina Totenberg <http://www.npr.org/2017/06/05/531629190/white-house-counsel-don-mcgahn-finds-himself-at-center-of-controversy> at NPR.
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Posted in election law biz<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=51>

--
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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