[EL] ELB News and Commentary 9/29/17

Fri Sep 29 08:15:33 PDT 2017

“Why Retirements May Hold the Key in Whether Republicans Can Keep the House”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95094>
Posted on September 29, 2017 8:11 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95094> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Nate Cohn<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/upshot/dont-forget-the-republicans-incumbency-advantage-in-2018.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpolitics&action=click&contentCollection=politics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront> for NYT’s The Upshot:
Democrats often lament that the House electoral playing field is stacked against them, but that’s not their only problem.
The Republican structural edge in the House is fully realized only with the added advantage of incumbency. The Democrats would be overwhelming favorites to retake the House in this political environment if no incumbents chose to run for re-election, even with all of the burdens of gerrymandering and geography.
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Posted in campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“Menendez’s Actions on a Donor’s Behalf Were ‘Unusual,’ Witnesses Say”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95092>
Posted on September 29, 2017 8:09 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95092> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/nyregion/menendez-corruption-trial-senate-committees.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpolitics&action=click&contentCollection=politics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0>
In one instance, Mr. Menendez, according to testimony, met with two former high-ranking Democratic senators — Tom Harkin of Iowa and Harry Reid of Nevada — to discuss a Medicare billing dispute that would have cost Dr. Melgen millions of dollars. In a second, prosecution witnesses said he pressured the State Department and Customs and Border Protection officials to help Dr. Melgen, who owned a cargo-scanning equipment company, maintain his business’s presence at ports in the Dominican Republic.
In particular, prosecutors said, Mr. Menendez urged Customs and Border Protection to stop a donation of cargo-scanning equipment from the United States government that would have cut into Dr. Melgen’s profits.
“It’s somewhat unusual to have a senator or a member of Congress to ask us to stop — in a way, stop doing our law enforcement mission,” Stephanie Talton, a former congressional liaison for Customs and Border Protection, testified. Ms. Talton had received an email from an aide to Mr. Menendez asking her to “please consider holding off on the delivery of any such equipment until you can discuss this matter with us.”
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Posted in bribery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=54>, chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“The Few Democrats on Trump’s Voter Fraud Panel Push Back”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95090>
Posted on September 29, 2017 8:02 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95090> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Bloomberg Businessweek reports.<https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/09/28/21195/fec-fines-contractor-gave-pro-clinton-super-pacs-illegal-cash>

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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“FEC fines contractor that gave pro-Clinton super PACs illegal cash”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95088>
Posted on September 29, 2017 7:49 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95088> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
CPI:<https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/09/28/21195/fec-fines-contractor-gave-pro-clinton-super-pacs-illegal-cash>
The Federal Election Commission has fined Boston-based Suffolk Construction Co., a federal government contractor, for making illegal contributions to a pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC, according to a letter<http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/9-25-17%20conciliation%20agreement.pdf> from the agency.
The $34,000 settlement<http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/9-25-17%20conciliation%20agreement.pdf> between the FEC and Suffolk appears to mark the FEC’s first penalty against a government contractor for illegally contributing money to a super PAC — a kind of political group that may raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations and unions.
The Center for Public Integrity first reported in April 2016<https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/04/07/19521/how-citizens-united-helping-hillary-clinton-win-white-house> that Suffolk Construction had made a pair of $100,000 contributions to Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC supporting Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign. Campaign finance reform groups Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center filed a joint complaint with the FEC in July 2016, based in part on the Center for Public Integrity’s previous reporting.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, federal election commission<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>

The Connection Between Voting Rights and Sports Betting?<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95086>
Posted on September 29, 2017 7:21 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95086> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Ryan Rodenberg and John Holden have posted this draft<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3036672> on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:
We find PASPA’s partial and non-uniform ban on state-sponsored sports wagering to run afoul of the equal sovereignty doctrine’s general constraints as set forth in Shelby County and Northwest Austin. PASPA also fails equal sovereignty scrutiny for two other narrower reasons. First, for a law motivated to address a “national problem” with no geographic borders, PASPA’s various carve-outs for no fewer than nine states are irrational. Not only does the discrimination manifest itself between grandfathered states and non-grandfathered states, but there is also an unconstitutional differentiation between Nevada and the other exempt states. Second, PASPA’s grandfathered exceptions are perpetual in nature, making them more suspect than the temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Shelby County. If the equal sovereignty question is presented to the Supreme Court in the current Christie II litigation or a later sports gambling-specific dispute, the appropriate remedy would be to sever out § 3704’s differential grandfather clause, not eviscerate § 3702’s blanket ban. Such a remedy would be an unwelcome result for New Jersey and Nevada, but a correct application of the equal sovereignty doctrine vis-à-vis PASPA.
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>

“Exclusive: Fake black activist accounts linked to Russian government”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95084>
Posted on September 28, 2017 9:07 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95084> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
CNN:<http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/28/media/blacktivist-russia-facebook-twitter/index.html>
A social media campaign calling itself “Blacktivist” and linked to the Russian government used both Facebook and Twitter in an apparent attempt to amplify racial tensions during the U.S. presidential election, two sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN. The Twitter account has been handed over to Congress; the Facebook account is expected to be handed over in the coming days.
Both Blacktivist accounts, each of which used the handle Blacktivists, regularly shared content intended to stoke outrage. “Black people should wake up as soon as possible,” one post on the Twitter account read. “Black families are divided and destroyed by mass incarceration and death of black men,” another read. The accounts also posted videos of police violence against African Americans.
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

The New Wave of Gerrymandering Scholarship — Part IV<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95078>
Posted on September 28, 2017 6:33 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95078> by Nicholas Stephanopoulos<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=12>
The final article<http://cwarshaw.scripts.mit.edu/papers/CTW_efficiency_gap_170515.pdf> I’d like to discuss is Partisan Gerrymandering and the Political Process, by Devin Caughey, Chris Tausanovitch, and Christopher Warshaw, forthcoming in the Election Law Journal. The authors first explore how state legislators’ voting records are related to their margins of victory in the previous election. As shown by the below chart, there is almost no connection at all. A Democrat (or a Republican) from a competitive district is nearly as liberal (or conservative) as one from a safe district. Party affiliation has an enormous effect on voting record, but district composition is just about irrelevant.
[http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/pic7-300x252.png]
This finding suggests that partisan gerrymandering should significantly distort the political process. Gerrymandering enables a party to elect more legislators without winning additional votes. Since these extra legislators are likely to be quite liberal or conservative, they should pull the legislature’s ideological midpoint in the gerrymandering party’s preferred direction. And since legislatures pass laws, the extra legislators should exert a similar influence on enacted policy.
The authors test, and confirm, both of these hypotheses. The below charts plot (1) the state legislature’s median ideal point, and (2) the conservatism of enacted state policy, against the efficiency gap of a district plan. Several variables are controlled for, including, critically, voters’ ideological preferences. In the first chart, a more pro-Democratic (or pro-Republican) efficiency gap leads to a more liberal (or conservative) legislative midpoint. In the second chart, a more pro-Democratic (or pro-Republican) efficiency gap yields more liberal (or conservative) policy outcomes. The effects are also quite large. A plan as pro-Republican as Wisconsin’s Act 43, for example, causes the legislature’s median ideal point to shift to the right by about 0.6 standard deviations.
[http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/pic8-300x300.png]
[http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/pic9-300x296.png]
These results show that the damage of gerrymandering is not limited to seats out of whack with votes. Rather, the harm extends to the entire democratic process. Through the clever design of district lines, a party may skew both legislative representation and enacted policy in its preferred direction. A party may thus push both representation and policy out of alignment with what voters actually want.
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Deep-pocketed Republican group ready to battle Obama and Holder over redistricting control”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95076>
Posted on September 28, 2017 3:04 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95076> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Washington Examiner:<http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/deep-pocketed-republican-group-ready-to-battle-obama-and-holder-over-redistricting-control/article/2635885>
A new Republican group launching Thursday has budgeted $35 million to strengthen the party’s influence over the next round of redistricting, the complicated process of drawing favorable political boundaries for state and federal legislative districts.
The National Republican Redistricting Trust, overseen by Guy Harrison and other senior party strategists, was formed as a counterweight to the new Democratic group backed by former President Barack Obama and led by former Attorney General Eric Holder. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Rep. Francis Rooney, R-Fla., are helping to raise money the NRRT.
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--
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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