[EL] ELB News and Commentary 3/24/20

[Rick Hasen]

“Democrats throw down the gauntlet on vote-by-mail”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110191>
Posted on March 23, 2020 7:45 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110191> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Greg Sargent<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/23/democrats-throw-down-gauntlet-vote-by-mail/?utm_campaign=wp_opinions&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter> WaPo column.

Here is a link<https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6817711/Updated-House-Bill.pdf> to the Democrats’ House bill, which includes voting provisions, beginning at page 856.
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Posted in absentee ballots<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53>, election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>


“Five GA Supreme Court justices remove themselves from election dispute”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110189>
Posted on March 23, 2020 7:36 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110189> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

AJC<https://www.ajc.com/news/local/five-supreme-court-justices-remove-themselves-from-election-dispute/LFAw0Gfn4W41SAuz2Hzr3L/>:

Five of the eight justices on the Georgia Supreme Court on Monday disqualified themselves from a case calling for an open election for Justice Keith Blackwell’s seat.

Justices Charles Bethel, Michael Boggs, John Ellington, Nels Peterson and Blackwell recused themselves from hearing appeals filed by former U.S. Rep. John Barrow and former state Rep. Beth Beskin. Both contend there should be an election that allows voters to choose a successor to Blackwell<https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/barrow-beskin-ask-judge-revive-election-for-georgia-supreme-court/dfSmnA53nfLt9eQqQ1uvOJ/>, who announced in February that he is resigning from the court in November.

Atlanta lawyer and former state legislator Beth Beskin, who has filed suit for an election to be held for a seat on the Georgia Supreme Court. (Alyssa Pointer/alyssa.pointer at ajc.com)Photo: Alyssa Pointer / AJC

Barrow and Beskin are appealing an order by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Emily Richardson<https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/judge-denies-legislators-request-open-supreme-court-election/UZs017FOo80oczV6LXuo5L/>, who ruled that Blackwell’s seat officially became vacant when Gov. Brian Kemp accepted Blackwell’s resignation. Per Richardson’s decision, an election is unnecessary because Kemp gets to appoint Blackwell’s successor.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Democratic Convention Planners Look at Contingency Options”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110187>
Posted on March 23, 2020 4:35 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110187> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/politics/democratic-convention-milwaukee-coronavirus.html>

Planners for the Democratic National Convention are looking at “contingency options” in case the mid-July gathering in Milwaukee can’t take place because of the coronavirus, officials said on Monday for the first time.

“As we navigate the unprecedented challenge of responding to the coronavirus, we’re exploring a range of contingency options to ensure we can deliver a successful convention without unnecessary risk to public health,” said Katie Peters, a convention spokeswoman. “This is a very fluid situation — and the convention is still more than three months away. We are committed to sharing updates with the public in the coming weeks and months as our plans continue to take shape.”

One person with knowledge of the discussions said Monday that “intensive scenario-planning” was taking place among officials from the Democratic National Committee, the convention committee and the Milwaukee host committee, who were all determining what to do about the convention, which is scheduled for July 13 to July 16 at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.

Among the complicating factors are the uncertain nature of the professional basketball season — the arena hosting the convention is home to the Milwaukee Bucks, a top N.B.A. team likely to play deep into the playoffs if the league’s season were to restart — and how the party’s delegates will be selected. Delegates in most states are elected to the national convention from state conventions, but many state conventions, scheduled for late spring and early summer, are also being postponed.
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Posted in political parties<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=25>


“The RNC Stopped Paying a Data Firm After A Serious Breach. Then It Paid A Mysterious LLC With the Same Address.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110185>
Posted on March 23, 2020 4:28 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110185> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

ProPublica reports.<https://www.propublica.org/article/the-rnc-stopped-paying-a-data-firm-after-a-serious-breach-then-it-paid-a-mysterious-llc-with-the-same-address>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“UCLA Voting Rights Project Urges Congress and States to Consider a Universal Vote By Mail Program Amid Coronavirus Pandemic”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110183>
Posted on March 23, 2020 3:47 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110183> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

New report here.<https://latino.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/VRP-VBM-red..pdf>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“The Cybersecurity 202: Democrats see coronavirus stimulus as last, best chance for vote-by-mail push”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110181>
Posted on March 23, 2020 9:21 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110181> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo reports.<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-cybersecurity-202/2020/03/23/the-cybersecurity-202-democrats-see-coronavirus-stimulus-as-last-best-chance-for-vote-by-mail-push/5e77a03988e0fa101a74f127/>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


“Ex-Field Organizer Sues Bloomberg Campaign, Alleging Breach of Contract”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110179>
Posted on March 23, 2020 8:59 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110179> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/politics/bloomberg-employee-lawsuit.html>

A former field organizer for Michael R. Bloomberg filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against his presidential campaign Monday, arguing that she and thousands of others laid off this month had been tricked into taking jobs<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/michael-bloomberg-dnc.html> they were told would last until November.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York City, argued that the campaign had breached its contract with the at-will employees, recruiting them to work on Mr. Bloomberg’s bid under false pretenses and failing to pay them necessary overtime.

In dismissing the workers eight months earlier than promised, the complaint said, the campaign had “deprived them of promised income and health care benefits, leaving them and their families potentially uninsured in the face of a global pandemic.”
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


Supreme Court, Without Noted Dissent, Denies Cert. in John Doe v. FEC Campaign Disclosure Case<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110177>
Posted on March 23, 2020 8:58 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110177> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Docket <https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/19-484.html> at SCOTUS, and here’s more from CREW<https://www.citizensforethics.org/lawsuit/john-doe-1-2-v-fec/> on the case.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, Supreme Court<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


“The Coronavirus Supercharges Vote-by-Mail Efforts, But Barriers Remain”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110175>
Posted on March 23, 2020 8:51 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110175> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Carrie Levine<https://publicintegrity.org/health/coronavirus-and-inequality/the-coronavirus-supercharges-vote-by-mail-efforts-but-barriers-remain/> for CPI:

In extraordinary circumstances and with enough money and resources, anything is possible, said Audrey Kline, national policy director of the National Vote at Home Institute<https://www.voteathome.org/about/>, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for vote-by-mail options.

“Based off what we are seeing right now, with a very popular election, a very in-tune electorate and a pandemic, we think that states are going to see a pretty massive shift toward mail balloting no matter what,” and they need to get ready, Kline said.

There are signs she’s right. Maryland, for example, declared<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/17/maryland-postpones-april-28-primary-election-over-coronavirus-133776> that a special election for a House seat would be conducted entirely by mail. In West Virginia<https://www.dominionpost.com/2020/03/18/secretary-of-state-opens-absentee-voting-to-virtually-all-voters-to-address-coronavirus-challenges/>, the secretary of state issued emergency rules that will provide virtually every voter access to an absentee ballot for its May 12 primary.

Phil Keisling<https://www.pdx.edu/cps/phil-keisling>, who was secretary of state in Oregon from 1991 to 1999 — when the state was transitioning<https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/statistics/vote-by-mail-timeline.pdf> to voting primarily by mail — said technology is better now than it was then. A vote-by-mail advocate who chairs<https://www.voteathome.org/about/> the board of the National Vote At Home Institute, Keisling said making changes for November “will take some ingenuity and some planning, but a lot of that is called for anyway in this crisis.”

In 2018, “31 states saw fewer than 15 percent of voters cast ballots by mail,” the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Matthew Weil wrote<https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/voting-by-mail-in-the-age-of-coronavirus-a-good-idea-but-not-a-total-solution/> recently. Some states still require voters to have an excuse to cast an absentee ballot. The five states that now vote nearly entirely by mail phased in the change over multiple elections, not all at once, investing in equipment and tweaking processes along the way.

States need specialized equipment and a lot of preparation to process mail ballots. Nothing is impossible, Kline said, given money and extraordinary circumstances, but she cautioned: “I do not have a situation in my mind that would get everyone a mail ballot in this country” for the November election.

Rick Hasen<https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/>, a professor of law and political science at the University of California at Irvine and the author of a new book, “Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy,” said it’s important to distinguish between all-mail elections and an expansion of mail ballots. “I think it would be extremely difficult to move to all-mail elections for November,” he said. “But every state has at least an excuse-based absentee balloting system that could be expanded.”
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Posted in absentee ballots<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53>, 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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