[EL] ELB News and Commentary 11/21/17

Tue Nov 21 07:32:27 PST 2017

Rep. John Conyers, Ranking Member of House Judiciary Committee, Accused of Sexual Harassment<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96085>
Posted on November 21, 2017 7:21 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96085> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Buzzfeed reports<https://www.buzzfeed.com/paulmcleod/she-complained-that-a-powerful-congressman-harassed-her?utm_term=.dgeDDL7Xm#.blARRV23E>.
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96085&title=Rep.%20John%20Conyers%2C%20Ranking%20Member%20of%20House%20Judiciary%20Committee%2C%20Accused%20of%20Sexual%20Harassment>
Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Leading Trump Census pick causes alarm”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96082>
Posted on November 21, 2017 7:15 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96082> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Politico:<https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/21/trump-census-pick-causes-alarm-252571>
The Trump administration is leaning toward naming Thomas Brunell, a Texas professor with no government experience, to the top operational job at the U.S. Census Bureau, according to two people who have been briefed on the Bureau’s plans.
Brunell, a political science professor, has testified more than half a dozen times on behalf of Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts, and is the author of a 2008 book titled “Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America.”
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96082&title=%E2%80%9CLeading%20Trump%20Census%20pick%20causes%20alarm%E2%80%9D>
Posted in election law biz<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=51>

von Spakovsky and Adams Say Only Plausible Reason People Question Pence-Kobach Fraud Commission is Because They Want Voter Fraud and Mistakes to Happen<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96080>
Posted on November 20, 2017 8:07 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96080> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Washington Examiner:<http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/one-democrat-on-trumps-electoral-integrity-commission-is-misleading-the-public-with-complaints-about-its-work/article/2641268>
A wide range of interest groups – from academics, to faux-media outlets, to partisans, to foundations and the activist groups they fund – appear intent on trying to sabotage the work of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The only plausible reason for this is that they don’t want the public to learn more about vulnerabilities in our elections that allow election fraud and other administrative errors and mistakes to occur.
Another plausible reason: the record<https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/29/the-voter-fraud-myth> of those working<http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/j-christian-adams-trump-elections-commission-2> on the commission.
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96080&title=von%20Spakovsky%20and%20Adams%20Say%20Only%20Plausible%20Reason%20People%20Question%20Pence-Kobach%20Fraud%20Commission%20is%20Because%20They%20Want%20Voter%20Fraud%20and%20Mistakes%20to%20Happen>
Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>

“Judge: Trump voter fraud commission on ice till next year”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96078>
Posted on November 20, 2017 7:44 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96078> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Josh Gerstein<https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/20/trump-voter-fraud-commission-judge-252132>:
A commission that President Donald Trump tasked with investigating his own unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud won’t meet again this year, according to court records, fueling more questions about the panel’s future and its viability.
In an order Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said a Justice Department attorney told the court Friday that the President’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity “will not meet in December.”…
The official would neither confirm nor deny reports that the panel might close up shop without further meeting….
The administration official who spoke to POLITICO on Monday said that despite the lack of a planned meeting, panel staff were hard at work.
“Commission staff are still working through materials obtained in the previous meeting,” the official said. “We made members aware of this. Some members have gone ahead and said there should be a meeting scheduled, but there’s still a lot of information we’re going through.”
It’s that last part that’s worrying.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>

Plaintiffs in Texas Congressional Redistricting Case File Brief Opposing Supreme Court Review<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96074>
Posted on November 20, 2017 3:02 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96074> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Read it here<http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/17-586MotionToDismissOrAffirm.pdf>.
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96074&title=Plaintiffs%20in%20Texas%20Congressional%20Redistricting%20Case%20File%20Brief%20Opposing%20Supreme%20Court%20Review>
Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>

“Peer Review for Candidates”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96070>
Posted on November 20, 2017 12:11 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96070> by Richard Pildes<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=7>
A few weeks back, the Washington Post ran 38 short ideas<https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/magazine/how-to-fix-american-democracy/?utm_term=.0a8e3cdd5e6e> from various commentators on fixing American democracy.  I wanted to flag Elaine Kamrack’s contribution, with the title above, which focused on changing the presidential nomination process.  It resonates with the views I’ve been expressing in more academic writing (eg, here<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=95884>).
Among her many accomplishments, Elaine has worked on four presidential campaigns and participated in ten nominating conventions.  Here’s her contribution:
In 2016, the Republicans nominated the least experienced and most temperamentally unsuited person to ever win the presidency. The leadership of the Republican Party sat powerless as an unknown and untested leader won primary after primary. In the end, the party did the only thing it could do in the modern nomination system: unite behind Donald Trump rather than risk alienating voters.
And now, nine months into the reign of President Chaos, all the fears about him are real. It wasn’t an act. The president is as inexperienced and as mercurial as he appeared in the campaign, and many are wondering how we got here.
For most of American history, the candidates who ran for president were chosen in a process that was almost entirely closed to the public. The selection was left to political parties or to what we now disparagingly call “superdelegates.” Ordinary citizens did not participate in the process of nominating presidential candidates, nor did they expect to. The process subjected candidates to an element of peer review. People with political and governmental experience evaluated nominees before the voters did.
It took only 40 years for the American nomination system to flip entirely. By 2008, the views of primary voters were considered the only legitimate views, while the views of party leaders were considered illegitimate at best and downright corrupt at worst. And thus in 2016 the system served up a man who could not have won the nomination had it been controlled by other political leaders.
So here’s an idea: Inject an element of peer review back into the nomination process. Require each party’s leaders, its members of Congress and its governors to pass formal judgment on presidential wannabes, and make them do it before the primaries. The voters might still reject the preferences of the party leaders — but at least they would have been warned.
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96070&title=%E2%80%9CPeer%20Review%20for%20Candidates%E2%80%9D>
Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

Columbus, OH: “NAACP LDF Critiques City’s At-Large Electoral Process for Having Racially Discriminatory Results”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96068>
Posted on November 20, 2017 10:49 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96068> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Columbus Underground:<http://www.columbusunderground.com/naacpldf-critiques-citys-at-large-electoral-process-for-having-racially-discriminatory-results-ls1>
At the urging of local ballot issue committee Everyday People for Positive Change (EDP), the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) issued a letter<http://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/ldf-sends-letter-columbus-city-council-over-large-electoral-method?utm_source=columbus_underground&utm_medium=article> to the City of Columbus asserting that its at-large method of electing city council members has weakened the voting strength of Columbus’ black community and violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 2 prohibits voting standards, practices or procedures, including at-large electoral methods, that either have racially discriminatory intent or results. The letter calls for the immediate assessment and adjustment to Columbus’ electoral process, suggesting the use of single-member districts as one potential solution.
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>

“After the INDY’s Report About Judicial Nominee Thomas Farr Misleading a Senate Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein Wants Answers”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96066>
Posted on November 20, 2017 8:35 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96066> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
INDY Week:<https://www.indyweek.com/news/archives/2017/11/17/after-the-indys-report-about-judicial-candidate-thomas-farr-misleading-a-senate-committee-senator-dianne-feinstein-wants-answers>
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Friday she’s “disturbed greatly” by the INDY’s report that Raleigh lawyer Thomas Farr<https://www.indyweek.com/news/archives/2017/11/15/did-former-helms-lawyer-thomas-farr-lie-to-the-senate-judiciary-committee-it-sure-looks-that-way> wasn’t truthful with her in committee hearings on the federal judgeship for which he was nominated by President Trump….
Farr, sixty-three, was picked by Trump to become a federal district judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina this year. In Farr’s response to questions from Feinstein, he said he had didn’t learn in advance of the more than one hundred thousand postcards the late Senator Jesse Helms’s U.S. Senate campaign sent to primarily to African-American voters in 1990, insinuating that they would be arrested if they voted. In his role as campaign counsel, Farr said, his first knowledge came in a complaint about the cards from the federal Department of Justice.
The Judiciary Committee voted along partisan lines in October to send Farr’s nomination to the full Senate, but no time has been set for a vote.
The Helms campaign was working feverishly in October 1990 to defeat former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, an African American. (This was the campaign that produced the notoriously racist “Hands” ad<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIyewCdXMzk>.)  Farr has long said he had no role in sending the postcards. But a former Department of Justice prosecutor repeated to the INDY this week what he had told this reporter in 2009—that Farr knew about the postcards well in advance of the mailing, which implies that he misled the Senate committee about his involvement.
[hare]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96066&title=%E2%80%9CAfter%20the%20INDY%E2%80%99s%20Report%20About%20Judicial%20Nominee%20Thomas%20Farr%20Misleading%20a%20Senate%20Committee%2C%20Senator%20Dianne%20Feinstein%20Wants%20Answers%E2%80%9D>
Posted in Uncategorized<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
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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