[EL] ELB News and Commentary 1/24/18

Wed Jan 24 08:08:10 PST 2018

“Potential citizenship question in 2020 Census could shift power to rural America”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97085>
Posted on January 24, 2018 8:00 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97085> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo:<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/potential-citizenship-question-in-2020-census-could-shift-power-to-rural-america/2018/01/23/c4e6d2c6-f57c-11e7-beb6-c8d48830c54d_story.html?utm_term=.1380b340ef7c>

A request by the Justice Department to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census could shift the nation’s balance of political power from cities to more rural communities over the next decade and give Republicans a new advantage drawing electoral boundaries.

Population numbers produced by the census are used in many ways, notably to draw political districts and distribute government funds across the country. Adding questions to the decennial survey is usually a controversial and difficult process because of the potential to affect both of those functions — either by suppressing census participation or by creating new ways to define populations.

All of it has prompted advocates for Hispanic communities to accuse the Justice Department of wanting to produce a less accurate count in 2020.

“I think the main motivation is to secure an undercount,” said Tom Saenz, the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “Texas is a very red state. They know that is not going to be the case for very much longer.”

The citizenship question is a particularly fraught one because noncitizens, who may not vote, nonetheless are counted for the purposes of distributing federal funding, apportioning congressional seats and drawing district maps for state and local elections.
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>

“Common Cause Urges SCOTUS to Expedite Review of North Carolina’s Partisan Gerrymander to Protect Voters”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97083>
Posted on January 24, 2018 7:55 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97083> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Release:<http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/common-cause-urges-scotus-to-expedite-review-of-north-carolinas-partisan-gerrymander-to-protect-voters.html>

Today, Common Cause filed a motion<http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/rucho-v-common-cause-scotus-motion-for-expedited-review.pdf> in the U.S. Supreme Court in Common Cause v. Rucho urging the court to expedite its review of the case in order to provide relief to North Carolina voters in time for 2018 congressional elections. Last week the Supreme Court granted a stay in the case after a unanimous decision from a three-judge federal court had ruled North Carolina’s congressional districts unconstitutional and ordered them redrawn by January 24, 2018. In today’s brief the successful plaintiffs argue that hearing the North Carolina General Assembly’s appeal on a slower standard schedule will unfairly result in North Carolinians voting this November in congressional districts ruled to be an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. This would be a fourth congressional election cycle using an unconstitutional map.
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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>

“Connections are the Currency of Washington Lobbyists”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97081>
Posted on January 24, 2018 7:52 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97081> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Legbranch.com reports.<http://www.legbranch.com/theblog/2018/1/18/connections-are-the-currency-of-washington-lobbyists>
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Posted in lobbying<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=28>

“The Courts Take Aim at Partisan Gerrymandering”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97079>
Posted on January 24, 2018 7:44 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97079> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Jeff Toobin<https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-courts-take-aim-at-partisan-gerrymandering> in the New Yorker.
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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>

IRS Enters Consent Decree with, Apologizes to, True the Vote for Lois Lerner Controversy<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97077>
Posted on January 24, 2018 7:40 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97077> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

I wonder if the Obama-led IRS would have agreed to this.<https://www.scribd.com/document/369806983/True-the-Vote-v-IRS-Consent-Order-Jan-21-2018>
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Posted in tax law and election law<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=22>

SEC Staff Helping Businesses Fight Shareholder Resolutions to Mandate Disclosure of Political Spending<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97075>
Posted on January 23, 2018 1:35 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97075> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Paul Hodgson column<http://files.politicalaccountability.net/news/in-the-news/staff-legal-bulletin-no-141-strikes-again/CPA_-_Investor_Relations_-_Staff_Legal_Bulletin_No._141_Strikes_Again_-_Paul_Hodgson_column_-_01-22-18.pdf> in Investor Relations.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

“What’s the best way to fix our broken democracy? Lean on state courts and constitutions”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97073>
Posted on January 23, 2018 1:30 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97073> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Josh Douglas LAT oped. <http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-douglas-pennsylvania-redistricting-20180123-story.html>

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Posted in redistricting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>

Wisconsin: “Senate votes to force out state Ethics and Elections leaders”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97071>
Posted on January 23, 2018 1:14 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97071> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Bad news<http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/senate-votes-to-force-out-state-ethics-and-elections-leaders/article_5c786ee8-ff53-5dce-ab1a-db7900c7f950.html?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=madison.com> for fair and impartial elections, but entirely expected:

State Senate Republicans have voted on party lines to reject confirmation of the state’s top ethics and elections officials — which Republicans said will effectively fire them, and Democrats decried as political score-settling that will hamper oversight of elections and public officials.

The move defies the bipartisan commissions that hired Ethics Commission Administrator Brian Bell and Elections Commission Administrator Mike Haas in 2016 and has supported them since.

Senators voted 18-13, with all Republicans supporting and all Democrats opposed, to reject Bell’s confirmation Tuesday. The vote to reject Haas’ confirmation was 18-12, also on party lines.

It also raises the possibility of a court battle over their administrators’ futures. Civic groups including Common Cause of Wisconsin and ACLU of Wisconsin have said they may challenge lawmakers’ authority to oust the administrators in defiance of the commissions.
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Posted in election administration<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The Voting Wars<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

“’Civil Right No. 1:’ Dr. King’s Unfinished Voting Rights Revolution”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97069>
Posted on January 23, 2018 7:45 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=97069> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

I have posted this draft<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3107752> on SSRN, which is forthcoming in a special symposium issue of the University of Memphis Law Review commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.  (More about that symposium here<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=96177>.)  Here is the abstract:

On March 14, 1965, one week after “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama and one day before President Lyndon Johnson delivered a now-famous speech to Congress calling for passage of the Voting Rights Act, Dr. Martin Luther King published an article in the New York Times Magazine entitled Civil Right No. 1: The Right to Vote. Dr. King not only described the severe barriers to enfranchisement that African-Americans faced in the American South and elsewhere; he also offered a vision of what full enfranchisement would mean for African-Americans. Declaring that “[v]oting is the foundation stone for political action,” Dr. King saw the vote not as an end within itself but as the means to a better life for African-Americans and other Americans. He predicted that that “[o]ur vote would place in Congress true representatives of the people who would legislate for the Medicare, housing, schools and jobs required by all men of any color.” This was consistent with Dr. King’s belief that the vote would help African-Americans, many mired in poverty after two centuries of slavery and government and private discrimination, achieve greater economic success, peace, and prosperity.

Fifty-three years after Dr. King wrote Civil Right No. 1, African-Americans’ access to the franchise, economic security, and government responsiveness have improved markedly but not nearly enough. Gone are the literacy tests, poll taxes, violence, and intimidation which stymied African-American efforts to register and to vote, especially in the American South. Thanks to the Voting Rights Act, many more African-Americans and African-American-preferred candidates serve in Congress, in state legislatures, and on local elected bodies. African-Americans have nonetheless failed to fully achieve the voting rights, economic parity, and political responsiveness that Dr. King envisioned in his 1965 article.

The three primary reasons for the unfinished revolution are: the endurance of private discrimination, which first the Democrats and now the Republican Party have used for political ends; a conservative Supreme Court’s narrow reading of voting rights laws and chary interpretation of the Constitution’s protections for voting rights, which have allowed discrimination and a new wave of voter suppression laws to flourish; and the continued state-by-state battle to fully end post-sentence felon disenfranchisement laws which help perpetuate a cycle of poverty and political powerlessness. These three reasons for the lack of full progress reinforce one another in important ways.

The Essay, prepared for a symposium at the University of Memphis commemorating the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, first sets out in more detail Dr. King’s vision of what securing the vote would mean for African-American voters beyond the important symbolic value of treating all voters with equal rights and dignity. It then briefly catalogs the great success achieved in the five decades since Dr. King and others helped bring about the voting rights revolution, but also shows that Dr. King’s vision remains partially unfulfilled. It then turns to the three principal reasons for the unfulfilled vision and asks what it would take to more fully achieve his vision over the next fifty years. Even if “the arc of the moral universe” eventually “bends toward justice,” vigilance and activism remain necessary, as courts retreat from protecting minority voting rights, private racism remains an enduring problem, and the achieving equal political and economic rights requires a state-by-state slog.
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Posted in felon voting<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=66>, political polarization<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=68>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>, Voting Rights Act<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>

--
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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