[EL] ELB News and Commentary 3/11/20

[Rick Hasen]

“Ballot machines clog due to increased use of hand sanitizer”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109947>
Posted on March 11, 2020 8:57 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109947> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

When election technology and COVID-19 mitigation efforts clash<https://www.eagletribune.com/news/new_hampshire/ballot-machines-clog-due-to-increased-use-of-hand-sanitizer/article_8ba25415-b8d9-562b-814e-4a109c36eba0.html>.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Senate clashes over fate of embattled election watchdog”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109944>
Posted on March 11, 2020 8:52 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109944> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Politico<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/10/senate-clashes-federal-election-watchdog-125094>:

The Federal Election Commission — which is charged with policing federal campaign finance law — has been sidelined for months leading up to the presidential election because it lost its quorum. But a hearing Tuesday to fill a seat on the FEC with a new appointee from President Donald Trump sparked fierce pushback from Democrats upset with Trump’s handling of the vacancies and the nominee’s views on election law.

Senate Democrats not only disapprove of Texas election lawyer Trey Trainor’s public history of supporting lax campaign finance regulations, they are furious with a break in tradition by the White House and Senate Republicans, which typically sees a bipartisan pair of nominees advanced together instead of just one nominee. The fight drew both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to the hearing room of the Senate Rules Committee for an unusual battle of words off the Senate floor.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, federal election commission<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>


“Symposium on Richard L. Hasen, Election Meltdown: Collected Posts”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109942>
Posted on March 11, 2020 8:45 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109942> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

[cross-posted from Balkinization<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/03/symposium-on-richard-l-hasen-election.html>]

Symposium on Richard L. Hasen, Election Meltdown: Collected Posts

JB
[cid:image002.jpg at 01D5F783.9A008740]<https://www.amazon.com/Election-Meltdown-Distrust-American-Democracy/dp/0300248199>

Here are the collected posts for our Balkinization  symposium on Rick Hasen’s new book, Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy<https://www.amazon.com/Election-Meltdown-Distrust-American-Democracy/dp/0300248199> (Yale University Press, 2020).

1. Jack Balkin Introduction to the Symposium on Rick Hasen, Election Meltdown<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/02/balkinization-symposium-on-richard.html>

2. Joseph Fishkin, Arguing with Nihilists as the House Burns<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/02/arguing-with-nihilists-as-house-burns.html>

3. Ciara C Torres-Spelliscy, The Easy and Not So Easy Fixes to an Election Meltdown<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-easy-and-not-so-easy-fixes-to.html>

4. Dan Tokaji, The Centrifugal Forces of Democracy<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-centrifugal-forces-of-democracy.html>

5. Stephen Griffin, Hasen’s Timely Warning<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/02/hasens-timely-warning.html>

6. Franita Tolson, The Default of American Politics: The Perpetual and Never-ending Prospect of an Election Meltdown<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-default-of-american-politics.html>

7. Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Too Little Hope, Not Enough Gloom<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/03/too-little-hope-not-enough-gloom.html>

8. Nate Persily, The Paradox of Political Problem Perception (or if you will, Persily’s Paradox)<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-paradox-of-political-problem.html>

9. Guy Charles, Meltdown? On Rhetoric and Causation<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/03/meltdown-on-rhetoric-and-causation.html>

10. Rick Hasen, The Election Meltdown Paradox, and Broader Questions About the Health, Stability, and Future of American Elections and Democracy<http://balkin.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-election-meltdown-paradox-and.html>
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>


“Sotomayor recuses from one of two Supreme Court cases with consequences for electoral college”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109940>
Posted on March 11, 2020 8:43 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109940> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/sotomayor-recuse-supreme-court-electoral-college/2020/03/10/145a0b1c-6307-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html>:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor will not participate in one of the two cases the Supreme Court will hear in April to decide whether the Constitution forbids states from dictating how members of the electoral college<https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/how-the-electoral-college-works/?tid=lk_inline_manual_1&itid=lk_inline_manual_1> cast their votes for president.

The clerk of the court informed lawyers in the case<https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-465/137675/20200310141041502_19-518%20SS%20recusal%20letter.pdf> Tuesday that Sotomayor realized she is friends with one of the parties in one of the cases, from Colorado. Sotomayor will still participate in the other case, from the state of Washington.

“The justice believes that her impartiality might reasonably be questioned due to her friendship with respondent Polly Baca,” Supreme Court Clerk Scott S. Harris wrote. “The initial conflict check conducted in Justice Sotomayor’s Chambers did not identify this potential conflict.”
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Posted in electoral college<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=44>


“Wyden Introduces Bill to Protect Voters and Elections Against COVID-19 Risks by Mandating Emergency Vote-By-Mail”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109938>
Posted on March 11, 2020 8:38 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109938> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Press release by email:

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today introduced a bill to address the risks to American voters and elections posed by the coronavirus (COVID-19), and other outbreaks of infectious diseases or natural disasters.

If 25 percent of states declare a state of emergency related to COVID-19, another infectious disease or natural disaster, the Resilient Elections During Quarantines and Natural Disasters Act of 2020 would require all states to offer an option for voters to mail in or drop-off a hand-marked, paper ballot….

Currently 34 states and the District of Columbia offer “no excuse” absentee voting by mail. Even if the 25 percent threshold is not met, governors have the discretion to trigger provisions of the bill within their state by declaring a state of emergency. The bill also requires states to offer postage prepaid self-sealing envelopes to voters. The Resilient Elections Act provides $500 million to fund emergency state vote-by-mail efforts….

A one-page summary of the bill is available here<https://www.wyden.senate.gov/download/resilient-elections-during-quarantines-and-natural-disasters-act-of-2020-one-pager>.
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>


“An ‘Election Meltdown’ in Texas; How voter suppression, poor planning, incendiary rhetoric, and fear of coronavirus could erode public confidence in elections.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109936>
Posted on March 11, 2020 8:35 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109936> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

I spoke to Mike Barajas<https://www.texasobserver.org/an-election-meltdown-in-texas/> of the Texas Observer about my book Election Meltdown, long lines in Texas, and what the coronavirus might mean for our elections.
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Posted in Election Meltdown<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=127>


“The Framers’ Inadvertent Gift: The Electoral College and the Constitutional Infirmities of the National Popular Vote Compact”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109933>
Posted on March 11, 2020 8:31 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109933> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Michael Morley has posted this draft<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3546546> on SSRN (forthcoming, Harvard Law and Policy Review). Here is the abstract:

The National Popular Vote Compact requires member states to appoint presidential electors based on the outcome of the national popular vote in presidential elections. It enters into force when states holding a total of 270 votes in the Electoral College adopt it. The Compact has already progressed more than 2/3 of the way toward that goal. If it enters into force, the Compact will fundamentally change the nature of presidential elections without a constitutional amendment.

The Compact suffers from numerous constitutional flaws that have not been addressed in the literature. It violates the right to vote of member states’ citizens, by requiring those states to appoint presidential electors based on national vote tallies in which the votes of a member state’s eligible voters are diluted or even overwhelmed by votes of other states’ citizens who are ineligible to vote there. The Compact also violates the Equal Protection Clause as applied in Bush v. Gore because it requires all votes cast throughout the nation to be tallied together, even though they were cast under fifty-one different electoral systems, with materially differing voter qualification standards, voter registration and identification requirements, rules for counting and recounting ballots, and even policies on whether ranked-choice voting is permitted. The Compact also violates the Constitution’s implicit structural protections by undermining the special protection that the Electoral College affords smaller states and allowing a cabal of states to decide among themselves who the President will be, rendering other states’ electoral votes irrelevant. Finally, the Compact violates the Presidential Electors Clause by purporting to limit the inalienable plenary authority that the U.S. Constitution confers directly on state legislatures to determine the manner in which the state will choose its electors.

Even if the Compact were constitutionally valid, prudential and practical constraints counsel strongly against it. The Electoral College allows a presidential election to be resolved as a series of fifty-one discrete, parallel contests, rather than a single national election involving over 136,000,000 votes cast at thousands of locations. The Electoral College’s compartmentalization makes the system manageable, confines the scope of recounts or post-election litigation, and limits the consequences of any natural disasters, mistakes, or even fraud that may occur. Due to the geographical breadth of our modern nation and size of our population, the ability to elect a national leader through dozens of smaller, limited elections has become a largely inadvertent gift from the Framers that we should not squander.
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Posted in electoral college<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=44>


“Kansas City mayor turned away from polling place” (Poll worker erred in entering last name for first name)<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109931>
Posted on March 10, 2020 1:00 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109931> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

KMBC<https://www.kmbc.com/article/kansas-city-mayor-turned-away-from-polling-place/31339671>:

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas returned to his polling place of 11 years Tuesday morning to cast his vote in the Missouri presidential primary only to be turned away.

Lucas made a video for his social media accounts promoting the importance of voting on primary day, only to find himself unable to vote….

ucas followed up to his original tweet saying he spoke to the election director Tuesday morning and will be following up further. Authorities told Lucas that a poll worker inadvertently entered his name into the system incorrectly.

Kansas City Election Board Democratic Board Director Lauri Ealom said the issue boils down to human error.

“When I saw the Twitter fed, I immediately went and looked him up,” Ealom said. “I called the poll. I asked for the gentleman who waited on the mayor.”

Ealom said the poll worker transposed the mayor’s name, and entered Lucas’ last name as his first name, and his first name as his last name.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“The Technology 202: Social networks haven’t done enough to prevent voter manipulation, tech leaders say”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109929>
Posted on March 10, 2020 12:52 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109929> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo reports.<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-technology-202/2020/03/10/the-technology-202-social-networks-haven-t-done-enough-to-prevent-voter-manipulation-tech-leaders-say/5e667771602ff10d49ac68f4/>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Power Up: States plan for worst-case scenario as coronavirus raises concerns about voter turnout”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109927>
Posted on March 10, 2020 12:50 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=109927> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo reports.<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/powerup/2020/03/10/powerup-states-plan-for-worst-case-scenario-as-coronavirus-raises-concerns-about-voter-turnout/5e66936e602ff10d49ac69ae/>
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>


--
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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