[EL] Quote of the Day

Mon Sep 9 13:20:26 PDT 2019

... with apologies to Judge Aleta Trauger:

“[Presuming a personal use of campaign funds] in order to try to preserve [federal] election commission resources is like poisoning the soil in order to have an easier harvest.”

*

It’s possible only our friend Trevor will recall the import of this wrinkle in the Explanation(s) and Justification(s).

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 9, 2019, at 11:29 AM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:
> 
>  
> “Michigan has a smart idea for fixing gerrymandering. Conservatives want to crush it.”
> Posted on September 9, 2019 8:24 am by Rick Hasen
> I have written this piece for Vox. It begins:
> Reformers hoping to rein in partisan gerrymandering have a big idea that’s caught on in several states: handing the redistricting power over to an independent commission, rather than politicians in the legislature, as Michigan’s electorate voted to do last year.
> 
> But now, Michigan Republicans have filed a lawsuit to try and strike that commission down. And they’re using a longshot legal argument that could put similar bodies in other states at risk, too, with serious implications for the next round of state and congressional redistricting after the 2020 Census….
> 
> It concludes:
> 
> So why have Michigan Republicans raised two potentially weak arguments when there is a stronger one waiting in the wings? At this point, I have two tentative theories.
> 
> 
> The Republicans are clearly hoping their Hail Mary strategy will kill commissions across the country. If the new First Amendment theory works in Michigan, it would be a way to bring down similar commissions elsewhere, including in Arizona and California, and for all redistricting (not just congressional redistricting). The Supreme Court has expanded the First Amendment in various ways to hurt progressive causes in recent years, and Michigan Republicans might be trying to go for broke.
> But Republicans might also be looking for a way to win without putting Chief Justice Roberts in a tough spot. Roberts has desperately been trying to prove that all the justices do is call balls and strikes, and as part of that effort he’s going to be loath to overturn precedent.
> 
> When NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg asked Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recentlywhy Roberts referred to commissions as a possible solution to partisan gerrymandering in Rucho given his Arizona dissent, Ginsburg answered: “As one lives, one learns. … So I think the Chief learned that he was wrong in Arizona.” Whether or not that’s true, asking Roberts to overturn precedent in a highly partisan case seems like risky business. After all, Roberts sided against Republicans and his fellow conservatives in the recent case about whether to add a citizenship question to the US census.
> 
> Whatever the reason for the unusual strategy, if these latest efforts fail, someone can still raise an Arizona argument against the Michigan commission before the next round of redistricting begins.
> In the meantime, Michigan Republicans have gone big, trying to establish not only that partisan gerrymandering is permissible but that it is unconstitutional to keep partisan officials outside the redistricting process. It is a bold, daring argument that shows just how far the courts may go to protect partisan election processes and the Republican Party itself.
> <image001.png>
> Posted in redistricting
>  
>  
> Quote of the Day
> Posted on September 9, 2019 8:20 am by Rick Hasen
> “Restricting voter registration drives in order to try to preserve election commission resources is like poisoning the soil in order to have an easier harvest.”
> 
> —Federal district court judge Aleta Trauger, in order denying Tennessee’s motion to dismiss lawsuit over its new voter registration restrictions. (H/t Sam Levine)
> <image001.png>
> Posted in The Voting Wars
>  
>  
> “How Elizabeth Warren Raised Big Money Before She Denounced Big Money”
> Posted on September 9, 2019 8:14 am by Rick Hasen
> NYT reports.
> <image001.png>
> Posted in campaign finance, campaigns
>  
>  
> “The Cybersecurity 202: Here’s why Mitch McConnell is blocking election security bills”
> Posted on September 9, 2019 8:13 am by Rick Hasen
> WaPo:
> As Congress returns this week, Mitch McConnell remains the one-man roadblock for Democrats’ election security bills. He’s still refusing to allow a vote, even as Democrats deride him as “Moscow Mitch” and accuse him of inviting Russia to interfere on Republicans’ behalf in the 2020 election. 
> 
> But why is McConnell so staunchly opposed? 
> Republicans and Democrats offer a fairly straightforward theory: McConnell is wary of drawing the ire of President Trump, who has repeatedly wavered on whether Russia interfered in the presidential contest — and seems to view traditionally bipartisan discussions about election security as delegitimizing his unexpected 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton.
> 
> “This is a narrative that the White House doesn’t want to approach,” David Jolly, a former Republican House member from Florida and an outspoken Trump critic, told me. “The president’s not comfortable talking about it. He’s someone with a fragile ego. And McConnell is happy to coordinate with this White House. That’s the only thing that explains it.”
> <image001.png>
> Posted in Uncategorized
>  
>  
> “Israel election: Netanyahu fails to pass ‘racist’ bill allowing cameras at polling stations”
> Posted on September 9, 2019 8:07 am by Rick Hasen
> The Independent:
> Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed in a bid to allow cameras at polling stations during national elections, a move critics suggested was aimed at lowering Arab turnout. 
> 
> The legislation, put forward by Netanyahu’s Likud party just over a week before election day, would have allowed representatives of political parties to film voters at polling stations.
> 
> The plan was foiled when a parliamentary committee voted down the bill on Monday. 
> Mr Netanyahu has frequently raised the threat of voter fraud on the part of Israeli Arabs as a campaign tactic to mobilise his right-wing base, despite there being little evidence to support his claims. The strategy has drawn comparisons to president Donald Trump, who has made similar unsubstantiated claims about minority communities in the US. 
> 
> “We know that large-scale fraud exists, and it must be prevented. Allowing party-affiliated observers to film the voting process is the only way to prevent election theft,” the prime minister said on Sunday.
> <image001.png>
> Posted in chicanery, fraudulent fraud squad
>  
>  
> “Russia Accuses Facebook And Google Of Illegal Election Interference”
> Posted on September 9, 2019 7:46 am by Rick Hasen
> Forbes:
> The irony will not be lost on anyone—Russia has just accused both Facebook and Google of “illegal” and “unacceptable” election interference during a poll in the country. And, no, you didn’t read that wrong.
> 
> 
> The “facts,” the country’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor says in its statement, point to “the distribution of political advertising on Google and Facebook at a time prohibited by Russian election law.”
> <image001.png>
> Posted in campaigns, chicanery
>  
>  
> “Minority Success in Non-Majority Minority Districts: Finding the ‘Sweet Spot'”
> Posted on September 9, 2019 7:42 am by Rick Hasen
> David Lublin, Lisa Handley, Tom Brunell, and Bernie Grofman have written this article for the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. Here is the abstract:
> Though African-American and Latino electoral success in state legislative and congressional elections continues to occur almost entirely in majority-minority districts, minorities now have new opportunities in districts that are only 40–50% minority. This success can primarily be explained in terms of a curvilinear model that generates a “sweet spot” of maximum likelihood of minority candidate electoral success as a function of minority population share of the district and the proportion of the district that votes Republican. Past racial redistricting legal challenges often focused on cracking concentrated racial minorities to prevent the creation of majority-minority districts. Future lawsuits may also follow in the steps of recent successful court challenges against racially motivated packing that resulted in the reduction of minority population percentage in a previously majority-minority district in order to enhance minority opportunity in an adjacent non-majority-minority district.
> 
> <image001.png>
> Posted in redistricting
>  
>  
> Lots of Election Law/Non-Profit Tax Law Issues Raised in Major Jerry Falwell Jr. Expose in Politico
> Posted on September 9, 2019 7:37 am by Rick Hasen
> Quite a read.
> In January, the Wall Street Journal reported that in 2014 and 2015, Michael Cohen hired Gauger’s side business, RedFinch LLC, to rig online polls in Donald Trump’s favor while he considered a run for the presidency. Gauger’s work consisted of writing a computer script to repeatedly vote for Trump in two online polls; his company would get paid $50,000 in return. Instead, Gauger told the Journal that after a meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Cohen paid Gauger roughly one-fourth of that amount—between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash—and gave him a boxing glove worn by a mixed martial arts fighter.
> Through his lawyer, Cohen, who is serving a three-year prison sentence for tax fraud, making false statements to Congress and violating campaign finance laws, declined a request to comment for this article.
> 
> Previously unreported about this incident is that Trey joined Gauger on the January 2015 trip to New York, and posted a photo to Instagramshowing a large amount of cash spread atop a bed in a hotel room. Liberty officials who saw the since-deleted post and described its contents said it raised questions about Trey’s involvement in the pro-Trump poll-rigging effort.
> 
> “The idiot posted [a picture of] money on a bed?!” one current senior Liberty official said. “Why do that if you’re not involved with it?”
> 
> Liberty officials also pointed to a tweet sent out by the university’s Twitter account on January 23, 2014, linking to one of the polls that the Wall Street Journal reported Gauger had rigged. The poll was conducted by CNBC and asked readers to vote for the top American business leaders.
> <image002.jpg>On Jan. 23, 2014, Liberty University’s official Twitter account asked its followers to vote for Donald Trump in an online poll hosted by CNBC. The online poll was among those Michael Cohen, Trump’s attorney, paid John Gauger, a Liberty employee and owner of RedFinch Solutions LLC, to manipulate. | Twitter
> As a nonprofit, Liberty University is legally prohibited from engaging in “political campaign activity,” to use the IRS’ phrase, at the risk of losing its nonprofit status.
> 
> When asked about the tweet, Falwell told me he authorized the university’s marketing department to send it as way of thanking Trump for speaking at Liberty. “A representative of the Trump business organization asked for Liberty University to use Twitter to encourage followers to vote for Donald Trump in the annual CNBC poll. We often get requests from Convocation speakers to promote their books, movies, music and other projects. And we do it all the time,” Falwell said. “After speaking for free at [a 2012 Liberty] Convocation and being so complimentary to our University in his remarks, I considered Donald Trump to be a friend of Liberty University and was happy to publicize the poll in hopes that Liberty followers would be willing to vote for  him on the heels of his very positive recent campus appearance.”
> <image001.png>
> Posted in campaign finance, campaigns, tax law and election law
>  
>  
> “Racial Disparities in Voting Wait Times: Evidence from Smartphone Data”
> Posted on September 8, 2019 5:00 pm by Rick Hasen
> M. Keith Chen, Kareem Haggag, Devin G. Pope, and Ryne Rohla have posted this draft. Here is the abstract:
> Equal access to voting is a core feature of democratic government. Using data from millions of smartphone users, we quantify a racial disparity in voting wait times across a nationwide sample of polling places during the 2016 US presidential election. Relative to entirely-white neighborhoods, residents of entirely-black neighborhoods waited 29% longer to vote and were 74% more likely to spend more than 30 minutes at their polling place. This disparity holds when comparing predominantly white and black polling places within the same states and counties, and survives numerous robustness and placebo tests. Our results document large racial differences in voting wait times and demonstrates that geospatial data can be an effective tool to both measure and monitor these disparities.
> 
> <image001.png>
> Posted in election administration
>  
>  
> Richard Briffault Talked to The Takeaway About the North Carolina Partisan Gerrymandering Ruling
> Posted on September 8, 2019 4:49 pm by Rick Hasen
> Listen here.
> <image001.png>
> Posted in redistricting
>  
>  
> “Maine will use ranked-choice voting in next year’s presidential election — but not the 2020 primaries”
> Posted on September 6, 2019 6:40 pm by Rick Hasen
> See here.
> <image001.png>
> Posted in alternative voting systems, primaries
>  
>  
> Must Read: Hofeller Files, Leaked to David Daley in New Yorker, Show Use of Race in Gerrymandering and Considering Impact of Voter ID
> Posted on September 6, 2019 2:09 pm by Rick Hasen
> Blockbuster:
> Hofeller did not follow his own advice. Before his death, in August, 2018, he saved at least seventy thousand files and several years of e-mails. A review of those records and e-mails—which were recently obtained first by The New Yorker—raises new questions about whether Hofeller unconstitutionally used race data to draw North Carolina’s congressional districts, in 2016. They also suggest that Hofeller was deeply involved in G.O.P. mapmaking nationwide, and include new trails for more potential lawsuits challenging Hofeller’s work, similar to the one on Wednesday which led to the overturning of his state legislative maps in North Carolina.
> 
> Hofeller’s files include dozens of intensely detailed studies of North Carolina college students, broken down by race and cross-referenced against the state driver’s-license files to determine whether these students likely possessed the proper I.D. to vote. The studies are dated 2014 and 2015, the years before Hofeller helped Republicans in the state redraw its congressional districts in ways that voting-rights groups said discriminated on the basis of race. North Carolina Republicans said that the maps discriminated based on partisanship but not race. Hofeller’s hard drive also retained a map of North Carolina’s 2017 state judicial gerrymander, with an overlay of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that these maps—which are currently at the center of a protracted legal battle—might also be a racial gerrymander.
> 
> 
> Other files provide new details about Hofeller’s work for Republicans across the country. Hofeller collected data on the citizen voting-age population in North Carolina, Texas, and Arizona, among other states, as far back as 2011. Hofeller was part of a Republican effort to add a citizenship question to the census, which would have allowed political parties to obtain more precise citizenship data ahead of the 2020 redistricting cycle. State legislative lines could then have been drawn based on the number of citizen voters, which Hofeller believed would make it easier to pack Democrats and minorities into fewer districts, giving an advantage to Republicans.
> 
> <image001.png>
> Posted in redistricting
>  
>  
> “The Cybersecurity 202: Ransomware attack against the 2020 election could disrupt statewide voting databases”
> Posted on September 6, 2019 7:48 am by Rick Hasen
> WaPo reports.
> <image001.png>
> Posted in election administration
>  
>  
> “Congressional Standoff May Delay Federal Election Oversight”
> Posted on September 6, 2019 7:42 am by Rick Hasen
> Ken Doyle:
> The Federal Election Commission’s paralysis on key campaign-finance matters could be extended indefinitely as leaders in Congress skirmish over how to appoint new commissioners.
> 
> 
> Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), want to install six new commissioners. The move would fill vacancies and replace current commissioners, including Ellen Weintraub, the FEC’s Democratic chairwoman, who has frequently criticized President Donald Trump. A clean slate of members will go a long way toward fixing some of the perceived dysfunction at the commission, said a Senate Republican aide, who asked not to be named.
> 
> Democrats, meanwhile, say the Senate should move quickly to fill existing vacancies, restoring a quorum and allowing the commission to function fully. Democrats aren’t calling for immediate replacement of the current commissioners.
> 
> 
> The standoff could delay for weeks or months restoring the FEC’s ability to enforce campaign-finance laws as the 2020 election approaches. Federal campaign spending is projected to approach $8 billion to $10 billion. The departure of Republican commissioner Matthew Petersen on Aug. 31 reduced the FEC to three commissioners with three seats vacant. At least four are needed to approve regulations, advisory opinions and enforcement actions.
> 
> <image001.png>
> Posted in federal election commission
>  
>  
> Ex-FEC Commissioner Petersen Left FEC Without a Quorum In Order to Work at Holtzman Vogel
> Posted on September 5, 2019 10:51 pm by Rick Hasen
> Anna Massoglia:
> <image003.jpg>
> Anna Massoglia
> ✔@annalecta
>  
>  
> 
> Ex- at FEC
>  vice chair Matthew Petersen—whose departure effectively thwarts any FEC enforcement action going into 2020 elections—is joining Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky, a political law firm known for creative legal maneuvers hiding "dark money" donors
> 
> https://politi.co/2ZMAQM4 
> <image004.png>
> 455
> 8:21 AM - Sep 5, 2019
> Twitter Ads info and privacy
> 540 people are talking about this
>  
> <image001.png>
> Posted in federal election commission
>  
> -- 
> 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
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> https://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20190909/bb29fb72/attachment.html>