[EL] ELB News and Commentary 1/21/19

[Rick Hasen]

“The Decade of Citizens United”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109087>
Posted on January 21, 2020 9:12 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109087> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Reupping this Slate piece <https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/citizens-united-devastating-impact-american-politics.html> of mine that ran in December, on what the opinion has meant in the last decade:

In 2010, the largest reported individual contributors to federal campaigns in American politics were Robert and Doylene Perry, owners of Perry Homes, who donated about $7.5 million to support Republican and conservative candidates. In 2018, the largest reported contributors were casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who contributed about $122 million in outside money to support such candidates, representing a 16-fold increase over the Perrys’ 2010 contributions, according to data<https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topindivs.php?cycle=2018&view=fc> collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. What explains this dramatic shift in American elections, where the wealthiest Americans get to have even greater influence over who is elected and what policies elected officials pursue? The Supreme Court’s 2010 opinion, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

In 2010, Citizens United held that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend sums independently to support or oppose candidates for office. Looking at the amount of direct corporate spending in elections over the past decade, one might think that Citizens United was a bust. Few for-profit corporations spend money<https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/680077> in their own names boosting or dissing candidates. But this case helped to usher in a sea change in American elections, and its influence on the decade that followed is hard to overstate. We’ve seen an explosion of outside, often-undisclosed money in elections, candidates skirting campaign finance rules by having shadow “super PACs,” and dangerous foreign interference in our elections. And that pivotal opinion contains all the tools the Supreme Court needs to get rid of remaining campaign contribution limits.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


“Citizens United at 10: Why fighting corruption is a racial justice issue”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109085>
Posted on January 21, 2020 8:52 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109085> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Chris Kromm<https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/01/citizens-united-10-why-fighting-corruption-racial-justice-issue> for Facing South.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Celebrate the Citizens United Decade; The ruling has empowered small-dollar donors and political outsiders, not corporations.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109083>
Posted on January 21, 2020 8:14 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109083> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Brad Smith WSJ oped.<https://www.wsj.com/articles/celebrate-the-citizens-united-decade-11579553962?shareToken=stca29a9035c4b487bb9aaf32a49e0f1a9>
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


Criticisms of New Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) Hits New Los Angeles County Voting System<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109081>
Posted on January 21, 2020 8:11 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109081> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

So far, most of the coverage of BMDs (voting machines in which voters cast their votes on a touchscreen, the machine spits out a ballot listing the voter’s choices and produces a bar code/QR code for a ballot reading machine to tally the devices) have been of machines produced by for-profit companies in Georgia and North Carolina.

But Los Angeles County, the country’s largest electoral jurisdiction, is about to roll out the use of BMD machines in the upcoming elections, machines which the county designed rather than buying through a vendor. (Disclosure: for a brief period when Justin Levitt was serving at DOJ, I took his place on an advisory committee about the new ballot machines, but because of scheduling conflicts I never attended a meeting or gave an input on the design).

Now it is time for the state of California to consider certification of the new LA BMDs, and some computer scientists/election integrity advocates are arguing that the machines are not secure enough to be certified. For example, see this letter from UC Berkeley Professor Philip Stark<https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/Preprints/vsap-sos-20.pdf>. (More coverage at the Brad Blog.<https://bradblog.com/?p=13264>)

Keep your eye on this issue in 2020.
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>, voting technology<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=40>


New NPR Polling Shows Americans Worried About Fairness of Upcoming Election, Election Interference from the President<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109079>
Posted on January 21, 2020 7:59 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109079> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

New polling<https://www.npr.org/2020/01/21/797101409/npr-poll-majority-of-americans-believe-trump-encourages-election-interference> from NPR/News Hour/Marist shows increasing distrust in fairness of the electoral process, and worries about the President encouraging election interference (themes of my upcoming Election Meltdown <https://www.amazon.com/Election-Meltdown-Distrust-American-Democracy/dp/0300248199/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=hasen+election+meltdown&qid=1565015345&s=digital-text&sr=1-1-catcorr> book).:

Weeks before the first votes of the 2020 presidential election, Americans report a high level of concern about how secure that election will be and worry about the perils of disinformation, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll<http://maristpoll.marist.edu/?page_id=44730>.

Forty-one percent of those surveyed said they believed the U.S. is not very prepared or not prepared at all to keep November’s election safe and secure….

Driven by Democrats and independents, 56% of those surveyed think Trump has not done very much or has done nothing at all to make sure there will be no future election interference — although 75% of Republicans think he has done enough….

Remarks like those may have been on the mind of the 51% of the Americans surveyed who said Trump had encouraged election interference. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats and 51% of independents backed that assertion…

Although there is no evidence that any votes were changed by a foreign power in 2016 or 2018, almost 4 in 10 Americans surveyed said they believe it is likely another country will tamper with the votes cast in 2020 in order to change the result.

The poll’s results also paint a picture of a polarized electorate wary about what it reads and not fully convinced that elections are fair.

In a reflection of how divided the country is, only 62% of Americans said U.S. elections are fair.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>


“When New Jersey Next Redistricts, It Will Count Incarcerated People Where They Lived”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109077>
Posted on January 21, 2020 7:50 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109077> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Daniel Nichanian<https://theappeal.org/politicalreport/when-new-jersey-next-redistricts-it-will-count-incarcerated-people-where-they-lived/> for The Appeal.
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Posted in felon voting<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=66>, redistricting<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>


“Citizens United at 10”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109075>
Posted on January 21, 2020 7:48 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109075> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Covered<https://andrewkjennings.com/2020/01/21/citizens-united-at-10/> on the Business Scholarship Podcast.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


“Revisiting Campaign Finance Regulation 10 Years After Citizens United”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109073>
Posted on January 21, 2020 7:46 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109073> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Video<https://www.acslaw.org/video/revisiting-campaign-finance-regulation-10-years-after-citizens-united/>:

ACS held a panel discussion on the state of campaign finance on January 16, 2020.  Titled “Revisiting Campaign Finance Regulation 10 Years After Citizens United,” the event featured Jason Abel, Lee Goodman, Chisun Lee, and Ciara Torres-Spelliscy and was moderated by Michael Tomasky. 

A decade after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, super PACS and independent expenditures now dominate the political landscape. The FEC, tasked with monitoring these expenditures and enforcing campaign finance laws, lacks a quorum. What is the current state of play and what changes can and/or should be made to the way our elections are regulated?
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


“The Administration of Federal Campaign Finance Laws”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109071>
Posted on January 20, 2020 3:51 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109071> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Listen <https://ricochet.com/podcast/arbitrary-capricious/the-administration-of-federal-campaign-finance-laws/> on Ricochet:

On October 4, 2019, the Gray Center co-hosted “The Administration of Democracy⏤The George Mason Law Review’s Second Annual Symposium on Administrative Law.” For the second annual symposium, scholars wrote papers on such fundamental questions as: Is nonpartisan campaign-finance regulation possible? Who should draw electoral maps—and how? How can we best protect voting rights? How should the census be administered? How do we preserve the regulatory process’s democratic legitimacy? And, are members of Congress entitled to see the President’s tax returns? These papers are forthcoming in the George Mason Law Review. In addition, the event featured a Keynote Conversation with two former public servants with deep expertise in both governance and campaigns: Robert Bauer, former White House Counsel to President Obama, and Donald McGahn, former White House Counsel to President Trump.

The first panel focused on the administration of federal campaign finance laws. We discussed two new papers: Capital University Law School Professor Bradley Smith’s paper, “Feckless: A Critique of Criticism of the Federal Election Commission Structure, and Possible Lessons for the Administration of Campaign Finance and Election Law,” and George Washington University Law Professor Richard Pierce’s paper, “A Realistic Version of Campaign Finance Reform and Two Essential Steps Toward a Return to Effective Governance.” Pierce is affiliated with the Gray Center as a member of our Advisory Council. The discussion was moderated by the Gray Center’s Executive Director, Adam White, and also features a welcome from George Mason Law Review Editor-In-Chief, Conor Woodfin. The video is available at http://administrativestate.gmu.edu/events/the-administration-of-democracy-the-george-mason-law-reviews-second-annual-symposium-on-administrative-law/.

Featuring Bradley A. Smith, Richard J. Pierce, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Trevor Potter, Conor Woodfin, and Adam White.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>


“NAACP Suit Says Rigged Voting System Favors Orthodox Jews in East Ramapo”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109069>
Posted on January 20, 2020 1:52 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109069> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

New York Jewish Week <https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/rigged-system-favors-e-ramapos-orthodox-jews-suit-alleges/> reports.
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Posted in Voting Rights Act<https://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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