[EL] Voter purge rates remain high

Fri Aug 2 06:22:17 PDT 2019

I’m not sure why Section 5’s demise has anything to do with the purge rates, since the procedures for purging voters all were precleared.  Have there been statutory changes in purge procedures in the Section 5 states?

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> On Aug 2, 2019, at 12:50 AM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:
> 
> TX-23, Rare Competitive Congressional District in Texas, Becomes More Competitive as Will Hurd Announces Retirement
> Posted on August 1, 2019 9:47 pm by Rick Hasen
> Texas Tribune:
> Nationally, Hurd’s retirement is a massive blow to the morale of Republicans who care about winning back the U.S. House.
> Since the last redistricting process, several congressional seats have become competitive amid changing demographics and backlash against Trump. But the 23rd District was the only seat in the current congressional map that was actually configured to be competitive.
> 
> 
> That distinction came only after it was modified by federal judges who found that the Republican-held Texas Legislature intentionally discriminated against Latino voters when they originally drew up the district in 2011.
> 
> 
> The 23rd district had been considered a district where Latino voters could overcome racially polarized voting to elect their preferred candidate. But seeing trouble ahead, Republicans in 2011 worked to manipulate Latinos’ political clout to keep the district in their column, the court found.
> 
> State lawmakers eventually adopted modifications ordered by the court. Pointing to Hurd’s consecutive wins in recent years, some have argued those changes did not go far enough in restoring the 23rd district as an “opportunity district” for Latinos.
> 
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> Posted in Uncategorized
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> “Schumer predicts McConnell will take up election security”
> Posted on August 1, 2019 9:42 pm by Rick Hasen
> Politico reports.
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> Posted in Uncategorized
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> Q & A with Me at Law.Com’s Law and Tech Column on Preventing Foreign Interference in the 2020 Elections
> Posted on August 1, 2019 9:37 pm by Rick Hasen
> Here.
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> Posted in chicanery
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>  
> “Manhattan D.A. Subpoenas Trump Organization Over Stormy Daniels Hush Money”
> Posted on August 1, 2019 9:33 pm by Rick Hasen
> NYT:
> State prosecutors in Manhattan subpoenaed President Trump’s family business on Thursday, reviving an investigation into the company’s role in hush-money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to people briefed on the matter.
> 
> 
> The subpoena, issued by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, demanded the Trump Organization provide documents related to money that had been used to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.
> 
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> The inquiry from the district attorney’s office, which is in early stages, is examining whether any senior executives at the company filed false business records about the hush money, which would be a state crime, the people said….
> 
> Even if the new investigation ultimately leads to charges, state law would limit the severity of the punishment. A charge of filing false business records could amount to a misdemeanor. It becomes a felony only if prosecutors can prove that the filing was done to commit or conceal another crime.
> 
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> It is unclear whether, under the law, the state prosecutors can cite the federal campaign finance violations as the other crime.
> 
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> Posted in campaign finance
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>  
> “Kris Kobach Uses Border Wall Group to Fund Senate Bid, Likely Illegally”
> Posted on August 1, 2019 6:37 pm by Rick Hasen
> Daily Beast:
> Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is using a nonprofit group he advises to raise money for his U.S. Senate campaign, and legal experts say one recent fundraising push likely ran afoul of federal campaign finance laws.
> 
> 
> On Thursday, Kobach sent a fundraising appeal to an email list maintained by We Build The Wall, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group currently attempting to build a wall on the southern border using private funds. Kobach is on the group’s advisory board and serves as its general counsel.
> 
> “As a donor to WeBuildTheWall, I humbly ask you to support my run for the Senate,” Kobach’s email pleaded. The email provided links to the campaign’s official fundraising page and asked for “a financial contribution of $50, $100, $250, $500, or any amount up to the maximum of $2,800 per individual.”
> 
> 
> The solicitation likely violated federal campaign finance laws, according to Paul S. Ryan, the vice president for policy and litigation at the group Common Cause. 
> 
> 
> “At a minimum, this Kobach for Senate fundraising solicitation email appears to violate the ‘paid for by’ disclaimer requirement” for official campaign communications, Ryan said in an email, referencing the requirement that campaigns clearly disclose the financial sponsors–generally the campaigns themselves–behind official political communications….
> 
> “If the Kobach committee did not pay fair market value for the cost of disseminating this email,” Ryan explained, “then the Kobach committee has arguably committed the more serious campaign finance law violation of receiving a corporate contribution in the form of a coordinated expenditure.”
> 
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> Posted in campaign finance
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> Fifth Circuit, on 2-1 Vote, Affirms District Court Finding of Voting Rights Violation by Mississippi; Opinions to Follow
> Posted on August 1, 2019 2:15 pm by Rick Hasen
> Brief order:
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> Kristen Clarke
> ✔@KristenClarkeJD
>  
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> 
> BREAKING: We secured a major
> #votingrights
>  victory for Black voters in Mississippi. 
> 
> 
> 
> The 5th Circuit agrees with us—> It’s time to put in place a fair map for the MS State Legislature that will provide Black voters an equal opportunity to participate in the process.
> @LawyersComm
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> 1,198
> 1:50 PM - Aug 1, 2019
> Twitter Ads info and privacy
> 508 people are talking about this
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> Posted in Voting Rights Act
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> Steve Mazie on Michigan Redistricting Case
> Posted on August 1, 2019 10:04 am by Rick Hasen
> Mazie in the Economist:
> A closer look at the lawsuit suggests the plaintiffs may face an uphill battle. The main Supreme Court case the challengers cite in their favour—a 1990 decision called Rutan v Republican Party of Illinois—doesn’t quite match up. The question in Rutan was whether the state government in Illinois could base its hiring and promotion decisions on baldly partisan considerations: how much applicants had contributed to the Republican Party, for example, or whether local party officials supported them. By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court said this kind of official discrimination against individuals based on political party was a violation of the First Amendment. Patronage systems in which hiring and promotion decisions are a function of “political affiliation or support” are “an impermissible infringement on the First Amendment rights of public employees”.
> 
> But here is the problem with relying on Rutan to strike down Michigan’s independent redistricting effort: the eligibility rules for commissioners under attack in Daunt v Benson are not based on viewpoint. They are based on activity: recent Democratic candidates and party insiders are barred from participation just as their Republican counterparts are. The disqualification is even-handed and not based on a failure to swear loyalty to any particular political party. The rules are based on the rather reasonable idea that party insiders are probably not the most impartial people to draw fair electoral lines.
> 
> Rick Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California-Irvine, says “it would take a big change in First Amendment doctrine” for the plaintiffs in Daunt to succeed. Mr Hasen says an individual judge might buy the argument, but he is “sceptical the position will ultimately prevail”. One strong piece of evidence for this view comes in section 5 of Rucho v Common Cause, the recent decision in which the Supreme Court said federal judges are unsuited to police partisan gerrymandering.
> Don’t despair, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, as “the states…are actively addressing the issue on a number of fronts”, and “in November 2018, voters in Colorado and Michigan approved constitutional amendments creating multimember commissions that will be responsible in whole or in part for creating and approving district maps for congressional and state legislative districts.
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> Posted in Uncategorized
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> Now Available: Revised Draft of My Paper, Deep Fakes, Bots, and Siloed Justices: American Election Law in a Post-Truth World
> Posted on August 1, 2019 9:24 am by Rick Hasen
> This new draft has a much more extensive discussion of First Amendment issues related to the regulation of deep fakes:
> Deep Fakes, Bots, and Siloed Justices: American Election Law in a Post-Truth World
> This Essay forms the basis for the 2019 Richard J. Childress Memorial Lecture, to be delivered at St. Louis University in October 2019.
> 
> About a decade or so ago, the major questions in the field of election law were familiar to scholars and centered on the Supreme Court, including the constitutionality of corporate spending limits in candidate campaigns, the constitutionality of the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act, and the constitutionality of strict state voter identification laws. While issues related to these cases continue to churn in the courts and remain of vital importance to American democracy, some of today’s most urgent election law questions seem fundamentally different and less Court-centric than those of the past, thanks to rapid technological change during a period of hyperpolarization that has called into question the ability of people to separate truth from falsity.
> 
> These questions include: What can be done consistent with the First Amendment and without raising the risk of censorship to ensure that voters can make informed election decisions despite a flood of virally-spread false and misleading speech, audio, and images? How can the United States minimize foreign disinformation campaigns aimed at American elections and attempts to sow social discord via bot armies? How can voters obtain accurate information about who is trying to influence them via social media and other new forms of technology? How can we expect judges to evaluate contested voting rights claims when they, like others, may live in information cocoons in which the one-sided media they consume affects their factual priors? Will voters on the losing end of a close election trust vote totals and election results announced by election officials when voters are bombarded with conspiracy theories about the reliability of voting technology and when foreign adversaries target voting systems to undermine confidence?
> 
> This Essay considers election law in the post-truth era, one in which it has become increasingly difficult for voters to separate true from false information relevant to election campaigns. Rapid technological change and the rise of social media have upended the traditional media’s business model and radically changed how people communicate, educate, and persuade. The decline of the traditional media as information intermediaries has transformed—and coarsened—social and political communication, making it easier for misinformation and vitriol to spread. The result? Political campaigns that increasingly take place under conditions of voter mistrust and groupthink, with the potential for foreign interference and domestic political manipulation via new and increasingly sophisticated technological tools. Such dramatic changes raise deep questions about the conditions of electoral legitimacy and threaten to shake the foundation of democratic governance.
> 
> Part II of this Essay briefly describes what I mean by the “post-truth” era in politics. Part III examines the effects of the post-truth era on campaign law, arguing for a new law requiring social media to label as “altered” synthetic media, including so-called “deep fakes.” I defend such a law as necessary to support the government’s compelling interest in assuring voters have access to truthful political information. Part IV considers campaign finance law, arguing for campaign disclosure laws requiring those who use online and social media to influence voters, including those using bots and other new technology, to disclose their true identities and the sources and amounts of their spending. Part V considers the difficulty of using courts to adjudicate voting rights claims when there is fundamental disagreement about the basic facts related to issues such as voter fraud in our hyperpolarized, cocooned political environment. The Essay concludes with some thoughts on whether election law is up to the task of dealing with technological change and polarization which threaten some of the key suppositions of how democracy is intended to function, including as an aid to the peaceful transition of power.
> 
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> Posted in social media and social protests, The Voting Wars
>  
>  
> “Voter Purge Rates Remain High, Analysis Finds”
> Posted on August 1, 2019 8:41 am by Rick Hasen
> Brennan Center:
> Using data released by the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in June, a new Brennan Center analysis has found that between 2016 and 2018, counties with a history of voter discrimination have continued purging people from the rolls at much higher rates than other counties.
> This phenomenon began after the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, a decision that severely weakened the protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Brennan Center first identified this troubling voter purge trend in a major report released in July 2018.
> Before the Shelby County decision, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to submit proposed changes in voting procedures to the Department of Justice or a federal court for approval, a process known as “preclearance.”
> 
> After analyzing the 2019 EAC data, we found:
> 
> 
> At least 17 million voters were purged nationwide between 2016 and 2018, similar to the number we saw between 2014 and 2016, but considerably higher than we saw between 2006 and 2008;
> 
> 
> The median purge rate over the 2016–2018 period in jurisdictions previously subject to preclearance was 40 percent higher than the purge rate in jurisdictions that were not covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act;
> 
> 
> If purge rates in the counties that were covered by Section 5 were the same as the rates in non-Section 5 counties, as many as 1.1 million fewer individuals would have been removed from voter rolls between 2016 and 2018…
> 
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> Posted in Uncategorized
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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
> http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
> http://electionlawblog.org
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