[EL] ELB News and Commentary 1/19/18

Fri Jan 19 07:51:19 PST 2018

Corrected link to Bloomberg Businessweek piece: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-19/the-supreme-court-is-finally-tackling-gerrymandering

From: Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu>
Date: Friday, January 19, 2018 at 7:47 AM
To: Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: ELB News and Commentary 1/19/18

“Why Asking About Citizenship Could Make the Census Less Accurate”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97006>
Posted on January 19, 2018 7:45 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97006> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Lynn Vavreck<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/upshot/census-citizenship-hispanics-immigrants-mistrust.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpolitics&action=click&contentCollection=politics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront> for NYT’s The Upshot:
The government dedicates tremendous resources to reminding people to return their census form and even sends people to the doors of households from which no form has been filed. Mostly, it gets results. But if the reason for not filling it out is distrust of government, additional efforts at compliance by government might fall flat.
For the 2010 census, the Spanish-language television network Telemundo sought to improve census participation by writing a story line into one of its most popular telenovelas, “Más Sabe el Diablo.” In it, the character Perla meets a Latino census worker at her father’s empanada stand and is encouraged to apply for a job with the census. The plot shows Perla being trained and learning about why the census asks the questions it does and how it safeguards confidentiality. The idea was that a popular character on a TV show could do more to assuage the fears of a community than the government could.
Matthew Trujillo, currently at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Elizabeth Paluck, a Princeton University psychologist and recent MacArthur Award winner, studied the network’s efforts. Mr. Trujillo and Ms. Paluckasked 121 Spanish-speaking Latino adults across three states to watch either a four-minute clip from “Más Sabe” that showed Perla talking about the importance of completing the census or one that included Perla talking only about family. One of the states was Arizona, which had just passed a law requiring police officers, in the course of an unrelated investigation, to investigate a “reasonable suspicion” that a person was in the country illegally.
Subjects in the experiment completed a survey before and after watching one of the clips. (Which one they watched was determined at random.) Upon leaving the lab, they were able to take a flier about the census and choose either a generic “Latino Pride” or census-specific “Be Counted” sticker.
The results of the test<https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5186d08fe4b065e39b45b91e/t/51e2ba7ce4b0c79282d9b22a/1373813372502/Trujillo_Paluck+2011.pdf> showed that people who saw the census story line were more likely to have positive attitudes toward the government generally — unless they lived in Arizona.Latino residents there, under threat from the newly passed law, were not moved by Perla’s story line….
The results suggest that if Latinos in the United States feel generally threatened by the Trump administration, it may be hard to persuade them to overcome their negative views of government and return the 2020 census.
[are]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D97006&title=%E2%80%9CWhy%20Asking%20About%20Citizenship%20Could%20Make%20the%20Census%20Less%20Accurate%E2%80%9D>
Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>

Bob Bauer: “The Trump Campaign-Russia Alliance and Campaign Finance; A Response to Skeptics and a Statement of the Case”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97004>
Posted on January 19, 2018 7:41 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97004> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Bob Bauer deep dive.<https://www.justsecurity.org/51216/trump-campaign-russia-alliance-campaign-finance/>
I was surprised the First Amendment got only a brief mention in this piece.
[are]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D97004&title=Bob%20Bauer%3A%20%E2%80%9CThe%20Trump%20Campaign-Russia%20Alliance%20and%20Campaign%20Finance%3B%20A%20Response%20to%20Skeptics%20and%20a%20Statement%20of%20the%20Case%E2%80%9D>
Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

“The Supreme Court Is Finally Tackling Gerrymandering”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97000>
Posted on January 19, 2018 7:35 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97000> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.<http://the%20supreme%20court%20is%20finally%20tackling%20gerrymandering/>, with the subhead: “Academics give SCOTUS cover to rule on extreme cases of redistricting.”
[are]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D97000&title=%E2%80%9CThe%20Supreme%20Court%20Is%20Finally%20Tackling%20Gerrymandering%E2%80%9D>
Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>

“A record $107 million was raised for Trump’s inauguration. So where did it all go? No one will say.”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96998>
Posted on January 19, 2018 7:26 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96998> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Fredreka Schouten<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/01/18/one-year-after-trumps-inauguration-no-one-say-how-they-spent-extra-money/1043804001/> for USA Today:
Nearly a year after President Trump’s inauguration, the committee that raised a record $106.7 million for the event has not disclosed how much surplus money it still has or provided a final accounting of its finances.
“We must decline comment at this time,” Kristin Celauro, a spokeswoman for the inaugural committee’s chairman, Thomas Barrack, said this week in response to  a USA TODAY inquiry about the committee’s finances.
Barrack, a California investment manager and longtime Trump friend, has said consistently that remaining funds would go charity. He announced plans in September<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/us/politics/trump-inaugural-committee-donations-hurricanes.html>to give $3 million to three non-profit groups —The American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and Samaritan’s Purse — to help with hurricane relief efforts and said the committee planned more contributions “that serve America’s agenda.”
[are]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96998&title=%E2%80%9CA%20record%20%24107%20million%20was%20raised%20for%20Trump%E2%80%99s%20inauguration.%20So%20where%20did%20it%20all%20go%3F%20No%20one%20will%20say.%E2%80%9D>
Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

From New Bauer, Ginsberg, Persily Report: “Fewer than 16,000 donors accounted for half the federal campaign contributions in 2016”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96996>
Posted on January 19, 2018 7:24 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96996> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
WaPo<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/less-than-16000-donors-accounted-for-half-the-federal-campaign-contributions-in-2016/2018/01/18/07a88420-fc61-11e7-8f66-2df0b94bb98a_story.html?utm_term=.11d9cef3937e> on the new Bauer, Ginsberg, Persily report<https://bipartisanpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/BPC-Democracy-Campaign-Finance-in-the-United-States.pdf>, with a troubling trend I wrote about in my 2016 book, Plutocrats United:<https://www.amazon.com/Plutocrats-United-Campaign-Distortion-Elections/dp/0300223544/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8>
More than 3.2 million Americans contributed to federal candidates in the 2016 elections, but fewer than 16,000 of them provided half the donations— a sign of the increasing concentration of donor activity in the United States, according to a new report.
The analysis released Friday by the Bipartisan Policy Center mapped the growing influence of rich political contributors and independent political groups in the seven years since federal court decisions unleashed a new era of big-money spending.
Super PACs spent $1.1 billion in the 2016 elections, nearly 17 times more than such independent political committees put into federal races in 2010, the first year they came into existence, the report found.
“The system has completely transformed,” said Robert Bauer, a Democratic election law attorney who authored the report with GOP campaign-finance lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg and Stanford Law School professor Nathaniel Persily.
Together, they outlined the findings of a panel of 16 political scientists on the legal, political and technological shifts in the role of money on federal campaigns in the past 15 years. The research was primarily funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Democracy Fund.
[are]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96996&title=From%20New%20Bauer%2C%20Ginsberg%2C%20Persily%20Report%3A%20%E2%80%9CFewer%20than%2016%2C000%20donors%20accounted%20for%20half%20the%20federal%20campaign%20contributions%20in%202016%E2%80%9D>
Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

As Government May Shut Down, President to Headline $100,000-Per-Couple Fundraiser ($250K if you want to be at roundtable) at Mar-a-Lago Resort He Owns, Profiting from the Event Personally<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96994>
Posted on January 19, 2018 7:19 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96994> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Bloomberg:<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-19/trump-marks-one-year-anniversary-with-gala-benefit-at-mar-a-lago>
President Donald Trump will mark the first anniversary of his inauguration on Saturday with a celebration at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, with tickets starting at $100,000 a pair.
That amount, according to the invitation, will pay for dinner and a photograph with the president. For $250,000, a couple can also take part in a roundtable.
 Trump told reporters in November that he had thought about having a celebration that month, a year after his victory over Hillary Clinton, but he was touring Asia at the time.
 The event, hosted by Ronna Romney McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, and the casino mogul Steve Wynn, will benefit the Trump presidential campaign and the RNC.
[are]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96994&title=As%20Government%20May%20Shut%20Down%2C%20President%20to%20Headline%20%24100%2C000-Per-Couple%20Fundraiser%20(%24250K%20if%20you%20want%20to%20be%20at%20roundtable)%20at%20Mar-a-Lago%20Resort%20He%2>
Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“An insidious foreign dark money threat: New reports about Russian money going to the NRA could prove watchdogs’ fears correct”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96992>
Posted on January 19, 2018 7:16 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96992> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy<http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/insidious-foreign-dark-money-threat-article-1.3765048> NYDN oped.
[are]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96992&title=%E2%80%9CAn%20insidious%20foreign%20dark%20money%20threat%3A%20New%20reports%20about%20Russian%20money%20going%20to%20the%20NRA%20could%20prove%20watchdogs%E2%80%99%20fears%20correct%E2%80%9D>
Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

“Actions, not words, tell Trump’s political money story”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96990>
Posted on January 19, 2018 7:14 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96990> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
CPI report,<https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/01/19/21480/actions-not-words-tell-trumps-political-money-story> with the subhead, “Rhetorically, he talked a liberal’s game. In reality, he’s like most conservatives.”
[are]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D96990&title=%E2%80%9CActions%2C%20not%20words%2C%20tell%20Trump%E2%80%99s%20political%20money%20story%E2%80%9D>
Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

--
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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