[EL] ELB News and Commentary 10/17/18

Tue Oct 16 20:00:35 PDT 2018

“Small Donors Fuel a Big Democratic Lead in 2018 Fund-Raising”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101564>
Posted on October 16, 2018 7:49 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101564> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/16/us/politics/campaign-finance-small-donors.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpolitics&action=click&contentCollection=politics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront>

An army of Democrats giving money over the internet has lifted the party’s House candidates to a strong financial advantage over Republicans in the final weeks of the 2018 midterm election, with Democrats in the most competitive House races outraising their Republican rivals by more than $78 million.

Democratic challengers have outpaced Republican incumbents<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/15/us/campaign-finance.html> in large part by drawing in millions of dollars from many thousands of supporters online — a strategy wielded by Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders in presidential elections but never replicated on a massive scale in House races, until now.

Across the 69 most competitive House races<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/us/elections/house-race-ratings.html>, Democrats have raised a total of $46 million from small donors during the 2018 election, compared with just $15 million for their Republican opponents, according to campaign finance data released this week.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“The legislature made unconstitutional changes to the NC elections board, judges rule”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101562>
Posted on October 16, 2018 4:18 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101562> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

News and Observer:<https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article220125290.html>

The government board that oversees elections in North Carolina is unconstitutional, a panel of judges ruled on Tuesday — just weeks before Election Day in the 2018 midterms, and only a day before the start of early voting throughout the state.

However, the judges recognized the timing and ruled that the N.C. Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement can continue operating as-is, until after the elections are over and the votes are counted.

The laws struck down as unconstitutional were put in place by the Republican-led General Assembly in 2017 and 2018 and limited the authority of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. The laws were passed to replace previous legislation passed in December 2016, a month after Cooper won the election, that was also struck down as unconstitutional.
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>

“Donors to dark-money groups mostly hidden despite court ruling”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101560>
Posted on October 16, 2018 11:12 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101560> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Politico:<https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/16/donors-to-dark-money-groups-still-mostly-hidden-despite-court-ruling-905894>

A series of court orders in September appeared poised to force so-called dark-money groups — which raise and spend unlimited sums from anonymous donors — to reveal some of their funders for the first time.

But a month later, those donors are mostly still out of sight, and they could remain hidden as the dispute awaits a possible hearing at the Supreme Court.

A major disclosure deadline passed Monday with few political nonprofits unveiling any donors, even after a court threw out a years-old regulation that let the groups keep their funding sources private — and after the Federal Election Commission told the organizations to reveal anyone who gave money after the ruling for political spending at the end of September.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101234>
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“How the Gutting of the Voting Rights Act Led to Hundreds of Closed Polls”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101558>
Posted on October 16, 2018 10:26 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101558> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

VICE reports.<https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/kz58qx/how-the-gutting-of-the-voting-rights-act-led-to-closed-polls>
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15>

“This Statewide Elected Office Has Drawn Unusual Interest From Democrats”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101556>
Posted on October 16, 2018 10:06 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101556> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

TIME<http://time.com/5424984/secretary-state-elections-2018/> on Secretary of State races.
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, The Voting Wars<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>

True the Vote Complains About Too Many Voter Registrations Flooding Texas Election Offices<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101553>
Posted on October 16, 2018 9:51 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101553> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Can’t make this up (from a True the Vote fundraising letter):

[https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2018-10-16-at-9.49.23-AM.png]<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2018-10-16-at-9.49.23-AM.png>

Maybe if Texas adopted online voter registration like many other Republican and Democratic states, it wouldn’t have this problem.
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Posted in fraudulent fraud squad<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=8>

Virginia Remedies<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101546>
Posted on October 15, 2018 8:22 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101546> by Nicholas Stephanopoulos<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=12>

Over the summer, on remand from the Supreme Court, a district court in Virginia struck down<http://redistricting.lls.edu/files/VA%20bethune%2020180626%20opinion.pdf> eleven House of Delegates districts on racial gerrymandering grounds. The court also gave the Virginia General Assembly until October 30 to pass a remedial map. Over the last few weeks, the House Democrats offered a remedy (HB 7001), which was rejected in committee. The House Republicans also put forward a pair of proposals (HB 7002 and HB 7003), one of which (HB 7003) was passed by the Committee on Privileges and Elections.

To allow these and other Virginia House plans to be evaluated, PlanScore<https://planscore.org/> recently added Virginia to the list<https://planscore.org/upload.html> of states for which district maps can be uploaded and scored. Here’s a quick summary of both the existing plan (the one partly invalidated by the court) and the Democratic and Republican proposals.

First, the existing plan<https://planscore.org/plan.html?20181013T231353.690915974Z> is significantly skewed in a Republican direction. Using a model based on the 2016 election, it has a pro-Republican efficiency gap of 6.5%, a pro-Republican partisan bias of 3.7%, and a pro-Republican mean-median difference of 3.0%.

[https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/VA1.png]

Second, the Democratic proposal<https://planscore.org/plan.html?20181015T223649.897887587Z> is highly symmetric. Using the same model, it has a pro-Republican efficiency gap of 1.8%, a pro-Republican partisan bias of 0.2%, and a pro-Republican mean-median difference of 0.4%.

[https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/VA2.png]

And third, both Republican<https://planscore.org/plan.html?20181015T235709.889794909Z> proposals<https://planscore.org/plan.html?20181015T235709.953402092Z> are almost exactly as asymmetric as the existing plan. The map passed by the committee, for example, has a pro-Republican efficiency gap of 6.6%, a pro-Republican partisan bias of 3.6%, and a pro-Republican mean-median difference of 3.3%.

[https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/VA3.png]

Of course, the partisan implications of these proposals are not directly relevant to whether they cure the racial gerrymandering violations found by the court. These implications are of great political interest, though, and they highlight one of the important truths of redistricting: that, frequently, plans with very different partisan effects are quite similar in their nonpartisan characteristics. Maps’ nonpartisan features (like their avoidance of racial gerrymandering) are thus often a poor guide to their partisan performance.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

Speaking Oct. 22 at USC at ACS Event with Ann Ravel, Abby Wood, and Derek Muller on Money in Politics [Corrected Date]<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101533>
Posted on October 15, 2018 6:38 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=101533> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Looking forward to this:<https://www.acslaw.org/?post_type=event&p=56084>

The USC Student Chapter of ACS will be hosting a panel to discuss the current state of money in politics, campaign finance law, and their implications on the 2018 midterm elections. We will explore how SuperPACS and dark money groups are influencing our politics, the Federal Election Commission’s role as the regulator, the intrusion of foreign nationals into the electoral process, and opportunities for reform. The panel includes Former Federal Election Commissioner Ann Ravel, Professor Richard Hasen, Professor Abby Wood, and Professor Derek Muller.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://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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