[EL] ELB News and Commentary 9/2/20

Tue Sep 1 20:34:45 PDT 2020

“As states make voting easier during the pandemic, Tennessee is moving in the other direction”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114680>
Posted on September 1, 2020 8:24 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114680> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

CNN:<https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/30/politics/tennessee-voting-coronavirus-pandemic/index.html>

While several other states are expanding mail-in voting, several moves in Tennessee are actually restricting the right to vote in the Volunteer State.

A recent Tennessee Supreme Court decision<https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/06/politics/tennessee-vote-absentee/index.html> ruled that the state does not need to further expand access to mail-in voting, overturning a lower court ruling that would have allowed all eligible voters to vote via absentee ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In the same month, Tennessee passed a law that would charge protesters camping on state property with a felony<https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/22/politics/tennessee-felony-camping-law-right-to-vote/index.html>, which would cause those convicted of the felony to lose their right to vote.
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Posted in election administration<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>

“How the Trump Campaign Pushes Voting by Mail on Facebook”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114678>
Posted on September 1, 2020 8:20 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114678> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT reports.<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/us/politics/trump-facebook-ads-absentee-ballots.html>
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

Ned Foley: “A November Nightmare Part II: What If Mailed Ballots Never Are Counted?”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114675>
Posted on September 1, 2020 8:13 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114675> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Harvard Law Review blog post from Ned:<https://blog.harvardlawreview.org/a-november-nightmare-part-ii-what-if-mailed-ballots-never-are-counted/>

The point of this analysis is not to be overly alarmist. The risk of mailed ballots being destroyed so that they cannot be counted is, presumably, extremely low. Nevertheless, the point is to observe the vulnerability that exists in the system of counting Electoral College votes if this unlikely scenario did materialize. It would be necessary to rely upon a normative commitment to small-d democracy on the part of Senators to guide the nation through the crisis. One could not rely on the existing rules and procedures of law to be adequate to the task.

The lesson is that, to assure a presidential election’s conformity to the basic democratic value that a state’s electoral votes reflect the will of the popular vote in the state — a democratic value resoundingly reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the “faithless elector” case<https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-465_i425.pdf> — it is essential that partisan politicians abide by this basic norm. The entire problem of a single submission of electoral votes deviating from the will of the popular vote could be averted if the state’s legislature committed not to act, based on partisan allegiance, contrary to the popular vote. The state legislature — even if dominated by members of the opposite party — could appoint electors in accordance with this clear understanding of what the popular vote would have shown.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

New York: “Federal Court Upholds Higher Ballot Threshold for Parties”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114673>
Posted on September 1, 2020 8:11 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114673> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

State of Politics<https://nystateofpolitics.com/state-of-politics/new-york/ny-state-of-politics/2020/09/01/federal-court-upholds-higher-ballot-threshold-for-parties->:

A federal judge on Tuesday upheld stricter ballot standards for political parties, dealing a blow to the Working Families Party and the SAM Party’s efforts to challenge the measure.

The new law, which had been paired with the creation of a system of publicly financed campaigns in the state, requires parties to receive at least 130,000 votes at the top of its ticket or 2% of all votes cast. The previous threshold was 50,000 votes for gubernatorial candidates.

The provision is expected to make it harder for smaller ballot lines like the WFP and SAM to maintain its ballot status in subsequent election cycles.

U.S. District Court Judge John Koeltl in the ruling found the WFP’s challenge “failed to demonstrate the likelihood of success on the merits of their claims that the New York Election Law provisions at issue are unconstitutional as applied to them, the WFP plaintiffs have failed to make the much higher showing required to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits of their facial challenge.”
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Posted in ballot access<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=46>, third parties<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=47>

“PA Supreme Court To Tackle Ballot Dropboxes And Other Vote-By-Mail Disputes”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114671>
Posted on September 1, 2020 6:28 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114671> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Tierney Sneed:<https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pennsylvania-supreme-court-democratic-lawsuit-taken-up-trump-campaign>

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Tuesday that it will hear a lawsuit brought by Democrats seeking to head-off a dispute Republicans have raised about the use of dropboxes for mail ballots and other aspects of how absentee voting works in the state.

The high court had previously agreed to hear a similar case looking to extend Pennsylvania’s deadline for receiving mail ballots, so that absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day but arriving within a few days later will be counted.

The latest case was brought by the state Democratic Party after Republicans, with the Trump campaign, sued in federal court<https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-campaign-rnc-drop-boxes-pennsylvania> to stop election officials from using dropboxes and to also narrow the rules around absentee voting.

Republicans had also threatened, but ultimately did not carry out, a lawsuit challenging emergency move by Gov. Tom Wolf ahead of June’s primary to let certain counties accept ballots that arrived after the June 3 election, as long as they were postmarked in time.

In addition to asking the court to settle that issue, the Democratic lawsuit wants the court to solidify the state’s residency requirement for poll watchers — something Republicans are trying to loosen — while clarifying that election officials can accept mail ballots missing their secrecy envelopes.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

Suit Seeking to Kick Kanye West Off Virginia Ballot Alleges That *At Least* Three People Listed as West Electors Had Their Signatures Obtained via Fraud<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114668>
Posted on September 1, 2020 6:19 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114668> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

You can find the complaint at this link.<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/Wilson-v-VSBOE-Complaint-FINAL.pdf> As Ben Jacobs noted<https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1299822229774045187> the other day, this may be the first time a candidate for President has been sued by one of the candidate’s purported presidential electors.
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Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, electoral college<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=44>

“Russian internet trolls hired U.S. journalists to push their news website, Facebook says”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114666>
Posted on September 1, 2020 5:31 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114666> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NBC News:<https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/russian-internet-trolls-hired-u-s-journalists-push-their-news-n1239000>

Peace Data aimed to court left-leaning voters, said Ben Nimmo, whose company, Graphika, released a report on the site.

“This looks like an attempt to target left-wing audiences on a range of issues, but the operation got taken down in its early stages and didn’t score measurable impact,” Nimmo said. “The election wasn’t the only focus, but to the extent that it was, it looks like the operation wanted to divide Democratic voters, the same way the IRA tried in 2016,” he said, referring to the Internet Research Agency.

An American journalist who wrote several articles for the site said he was unaware that the website was backed by Russians and that it was hard to turn down paid writing work in an era when many journalists have trouble finding it.

“They DM’d me on Twitter and said hey do you wanna write for us, we’ll give you $200 an article,” said the journalist, who asked to not be named so as not to draw undue attention to having worked for a misleading news operation. “I lost my job during COVID and was pretty desperate to earn money just to pay rent.”

The page appears to have gotten very little attention on social media, but it wasn’t entirely for the lack of trying. One of Peace Data’s “editors” was a fictional persona called Alex Lacusta who tried to share the site’s stories to dozens of left-leaning Facebook groups, though those posts got fewer than 200 shares in total.
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Posted in cheap speech<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=130>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“Instagram Posts Make False Claim California Voters Will Be ‘Turned Away’ From Polls Due To Mail-In Voting”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114664>
Posted on September 1, 2020 5:24 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114664> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Cap Radio reports.<https://www.capradio.org/155763>
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Posted in cheap speech<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=130>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“Deciphering the ‘red mirage,’ the ‘blue shift,’ and the uncertainty surrounding election results this November”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114662>
Posted on September 1, 2020 4:41 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114662> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Marshall Cohen<https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/01/politics/2020-election-count-red-mirage-blue-shift/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_allpolitics+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Politics%29> for CNN.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Postal Service Watchdog Outlines ‘Concerns’ Surrounding Election Readiness”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114660>
Posted on September 1, 2020 4:41 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114660> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NPR:<https://www.npr.org/2020/09/01/908395806/postal-service-watchdog-outlines-concerns-surrounding-election-readiness>

The U.S. Postal Service’s inspector general has outlined a number of ongoing concerns about the agency’s ability to manage the influx of mailed ballots for the 2020 election — separate from the recent controversial actions by the postmaster general.

The internal watchdog said in a report that it found several potential problems in the way mail was being processed, including ballots mailed without bar code mail-tracking technology and out-of-date voter addresses.

“While the Postal Service has made progress in preparing for the 2020 general election, there are concerns surrounding integrating stakeholder processes with Postal Service processes to help ensure the timely delivery of election and political mail,” the report said.

Continued the inspector general report: “Resolving these issues will require higher-level partnerships and cooperation between the Postal Service and various state officials, including secretaries of state and state election boards. Timely delivery of election and political mail is necessary to ensure the integrity of the U.S. election process.”

The postal inspector general’s audit took place during the May and June special and primary elections and did not include a review of controversial cost-cutting measures<https://www.npr.org/2020/07/29/894799516/pending-postal-service-changes-could-delay-mail-and-deliveries-advocates-warn> later implemented by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump ally and Republican megadonor.
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Posted in absentee ballots<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53>

Major Republican firm Holtzman Vogel is Representing Kanye West in His Attempt to Get on the Wisconsin Ballot [UPDATE: Apparently This Was a Clerical Error and Firm Not Representing West]<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114630>
Posted on September 1, 2020 2:40 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114630> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

In case <https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1299756113265655809?s=20> anyone still had doubts about what this was all about.

UPDATE <http://mklaw.com/kanye-west-2020-clarification/> from the firm that did the court filing:

Kanye West 2020 Clarification

In the Kanye West 2020 filing in Wisconsin, our firm made a clerical error and transposed the plaintiff’s address in this matter with another client address. We regret the confusion that this has caused and we are working to correct the error.
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Posted in ballot access<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=46>

“Prepare for the weirdest election ‘night’ ever”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114657>
Posted on September 1, 2020 2:39 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114657> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Politifact<https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/2020ElectionReport.pdf>:

To minimize the risk of coronavirus spreading, many states (though not all) have eased the process of mail voting, often by eliminating the need for an “excuse” to vote by mail. A few states are going so far as to send ballots to every active registered voter in 2020 — California, Nevada, New Jersey, Vermont, and the District of Columbia. They join five states that were already effectively vote-by-mail states: Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and Utah.

Experts say that these decisions about how to run state-by-state elections are just one element of a toxic brew that poses a risk to the proper functioning of democracy. The other elements include concern about the pandemic, heightened political polarization, and a deluge of misinformation on social media.

“Americans can no longer take for granted that election losers will concede a closely fought election after election authorities or courts have declared a winner,” wrote a panel of election experts<https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/2020ElectionReport.pdf> on ensuring public confidence in the 2020 elections. “Current American politics feature severe hyperpolarization and an increasingly partisan media and social media environment. Mistrust is high. It is harder for voters to get reliable political information. Incendiary rhetoric about rigged or stolen elections is on the rise, and unsubstantiated claims of rigged elections find a receptive audience especially among those who are on the losing end of the election.”

Here are some of the specific challenges facing the elections process…
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“New U.S. Citizens Were One Of The Fastest-Growing Voting Blocs. But Not This Year.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114655>
Posted on September 1, 2020 1:30 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114655> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

538:<https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/new-u-s-citizens-were-one-of-the-fastest-growing-voting-blocs-but-not-this-year/>

But even before COVID-19, the wait time<https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/historic-pt> for citizenship applications had hit new highs under the Trump administration. According to USCIS numbers<https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/historic-pt>, the naturalization process averaged 8.8 months in 2020, compared with 5.6 months in 2016 and a peak of 10.3 months in 2018,2<https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/new-u-s-citizens-were-one-of-the-fastest-growing-voting-blocs-but-not-this-year/#fn-2> though in some cases, it could take up to three years<https://www.usccr.gov/files/2020-07-22-CO-SAC-Statement-on-Naturalization-Backlog-and-COVID.pdf>.

COVID-19 exacerbated this delay. On March 18, USCIS temporarily shut down all public-facing activities, including interviews for visas, asylum and naturalization as well as oath ceremonies. The agency did not make plans for virtual alternatives, bringing much of U.S. immigration to a halt.

For each day that USCIS remained closed, 2,100 potential new voters would be disenfranchised, according to a frequently cited report by Boundless<https://www.boundless.com/blog/coronavirus-shutdowns-delay-naturalization/>, an immigration-services company co-founded by an Obama administration official.

USCIS field offices reopened on June 4 and prioritized in-person oath-swearing ceremonies. Some field offices held drive-through ceremonies, while others held more frequent, but smaller, indoor or outdoor ceremonies. By the end of July, the agency says that it has cleared the backlog of 110,000 oath ceremonies delayed by its closures, as well as an additional 7,905 oath ceremonies not scheduled before the pandemic.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Barr tightens rules on surveillance of political candidates and advisers”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114653>
Posted on September 1, 2020 12:08 pm<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114653> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WaPo<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/william-barr-surveillance-trump-campaign/2020/09/01/eacbe088-ec57-11ea-99a1-71343d03bc29_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_fisa-155pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans>:

Attorney General William P. Barr imposed new rules Tuesday tightening the use of government surveillance on political candidates or their staffers — a move likely to cheer conservatives who have long criticized how the FBI investigated the Trump campaign in 2016.

In a pair of memos, the attorney general said that before the FBI and Justice Department seek a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to secretly monitor the communications of an elected official, a declared political candidate, or any of their staff, official advisers or informal advisers, officials must first consider warning that person that foreign governments may be targeting them, and if they choose not to give such a warning, the FBI director must spell out in writing the reasons for not doing so.

Barr’s memos speak directly to one of the biggest complaints about the FBI made by President Trump and his supporters — that agents wrongly surveilled former campaign aide Carter Page in 2016.
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Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>

“Republicans are flooding the internet with deceptive videos and Big Tech isn’t keeping up”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114651>
Posted on September 1, 2020 11:19 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114651> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

CNN<https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/01/tech/trump-facebook-twitter-fact-check/index.html>:

A series of deceptively edited and misleading videos shared by prominent Republicans have run up millions of views across Facebook and Twitter in just the past few days. And while both companies have pledged to combat misinformation, their responses to these videos followed a familiar pattern: often they act too late, do too little, or don’t do anything at all.Between Sunday and Monday, high-profile Republicans, including President Donald Trump, shared at least four misleading videos online.

One that circulated widely was a false video about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden posted to the Twitter account of House Minority Whip Steve Scalise. After an outcry, including from a person in the video who had words put in his mouth in order to distort what Biden was saying, Twitter took the action it takes in such instances, labeling the video as “manipulated media.

“The manipulated media label is just that, however — a label appearing below the video when people look at the specific tweet to which it has been applied. It’s small and potentially missed by users, and though it may potentially make some users pause before sharing a given video, it does not actually stop them if they decide to go ahead anyway.
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Posted in cheap speech<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=130>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“As election looms, Russian trolls are targeting Americans again, Facebook says”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114649>
Posted on September 1, 2020 11:14 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114649> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

CNN<https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/01/tech/russian-troll-group-facebook-campaign/index.html>:

People associated with the infamous St. Petersburg troll group that was part of Russia’s attempt to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election are trying to target Americans again, Facebook (FB<https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=FB&source=story_quote_link>) announced Tuesday after receiving a tip from the FBI.

The disrupted operation used fake personas including realistic-looking computer-generated photos of people, a network of Facebook accounts and pages that had only a small amount of engagement and influence at the time it was taken down, and a website that was set up to look and operate like a left-wing news outlet.

This is the first publicly available evidence that people connected to the Russian troll group, which is known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA), are using unwitting Americans in an attempt to meddle with the 2020 election and stir discord.The operation seems to have been shut down before it could get much traction on Facebook or the rest of the internet. That mirrors what happened around the 2018 midterm elections, when — as far as is publicly known — the Russian trolls’ online efforts were halting and small. The trolls had far more luck gaining followers and engagement in 2016, though it is not known how much of an impact, if any, their work had on the election.

Facebook said it relied on technical indicators to make the link between this operation and the IRA. The company does not typically share those indicators publicly, as it has said in the past doing so could tip off bad actors to how it finds them, but they could include unique information tied to specific accounts or devices. Facebook said it shared information with the FBI.”This looks like an early-stage attempt to target left-wing audiences on a range of issues,” Ben Nimmo, head of investigations at Graphika, a social media analytics company commissioned by Facebook to study the influence operation, told CNN Business Tuesday.
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Posted in cheap speech<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=130>

“The election security hole everyone ignores; Increasing numbers of polling places use electronic devices to check in voters and verify their eligibility. But the devices often create chaos and introduce new vulnerabilities to elections.”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114647>
Posted on September 1, 2020 7:36 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114647> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Kim Zetter<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/31/election-security-hole-406471> for Politico:

Growing numbers of elections offices across the U.S. are using electronic devices to sign voters in at the polls — a shift that has occurred with little scrutiny despite a host of security questions and a history of balloting meltdowns.

Problems with the devices, known as electronic pollbooks, caused long lines during this year’s presidential primary in Los Angeles County and contributed to chaos and hours-long waits during Georgia’s primary in June. They led to past years’ snafus in places such as Philadelphia, North Carolina, Indiana and South Dakota.

While tampering with e-pollbooks wouldn’t directly change anyone’s vote, malfunctions or cyberattacks against the devices could sway the outcome in other ways — for instance by causing delays that prevent people from voting.

Pollbooks, unlike voting machines, do not undergo federal testing and certification and have no uniform standards governing their design or security. There is also no oversight of the handful of vendors who dominate the industry to ensure they keep their own networks secure. Kremlin-linked hackers attempted to breach the network of at least one U.S. e-pollbook provider in 2016, according to a leaked NSA document..

Federal lawmakers such as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have questioned electronic pollbook makers<https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/13/ron-wyden-florida-election-hacking-1427761> about the security of their products and networks. E-pollbooks and the companies that make them have gone too long without oversight, Wyden told POLITICO in an email…

“Anecdotally, when you dig into problems that happen at polling places, more often than not it’s the electronic pollbooks rather than the voting machines” that cause issues, said Larry Norden, director of the center’s Election Reform Program. “I’ve spoken with a lot of election officials who are frustrated that there are no [national] standards for pollbooks and no testing.”

Election Systems & Software, one of the top providers of e-pollbooks, told POLITICO it would support a change to this state of affairs.

“[W]e believe Congress should establish standards for mandatory testing for both voter registration and pollbooks for all U.S. election providers,” ES&S spokesperson Katina Granger said in an email.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D114647&title=%E2%80%9CThe%20election%20security%20hole%20everyone%20ignores%3B%20Increasing%20numbers%20of%20polling%20places%20use%20electronic%20devices%20to%20check%20in%20voters%20and%20verify%20their%20eligibility.%20But%20the%20devices%20often%20create%20chaos%20and%20introduce%20new%20vulnerabilities%20to%20elections.%E2%80%9D>
Posted in voting technology<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=40>

“Assessing Group Incentives, Independent Spending, and Campaign Finance Law by Comparing the States”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114645>
Posted on September 1, 2020 7:27 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114645> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

CFI release:

The surge in independent spending (IEs) in state elections between 2006 and 2018 cannot adequately be explained by the Supreme Court’s decisions that seemed to liberate IEs a decade ago. Moreover, the spending by ideological and issue groups would not be reversed by such simple legal expedients as removing all contribution limits for candidates and political parties.

These were only two of the policy conclusions in an article based on data supplied by the National Institute on Money in Politics (NIMP) that was just published by the peer-reviewed Election Law Journal (ELJ).

The article, entitled “Assessing Group Incentives, Independent Spending, and Campaign Finance Law,” was co-authored by Charles R. Hunt (Boise State University), Jaclyn J. Kettler (Boise State University), Michael J. Malbin (University at Albany, SUNY and CFI/NIMP), Brendan Glavin (CFI/NIMP) and Keith E. Hamm (Rice University).

It is available on an “open access” basis directly from the Election Law Journal<https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/elj.2019.0570>.

The article shows how important it is to get away from sweeping generalizations about independent spenders. The authors created a database categorizing 97% of the IEs in the states with usable data. This showed that the actions and considerations of IE groups are much more nuanced than previously assumed. Different spenders (and different types of spenders) place their priorities on different goals, some of which are better realized through IEs than contributions. The behavior of ideological and issue groups differs from that of parties and party-affiliated groups, which in turn differs from business and labor. If the recent increase in IEs is a normative problem, the solution will be more elusive than previously thought.

The following is the article’s full Abstract, as it appears in the journal:

Abstract

Independent expenditures (IEs) in elections have increased substantially at nearly all levels of government over the past decade. Judicial decisions are only a partial explanation. The growth has been uneven across jurisdictions and types of spenders. Some past research has sought to identify what has caused the differential increase.

We examine two prominent theories using original state-level data with detailed classifications of spenders, together with data from the National Institute on Money in Politics, the Campaign Finance Institute’s historical database of state campaign finance laws, and other sources. First, we examine different types of partisan electoral competition, on the theory that independent spenders are increasingly aligning with one party or the other. We find, using multi-variate analysis, that increased partisan competition (at both the candidate level and chamber level) is in most cases a significant driver of IEs.

Second, we assess the theory that campaign finance contribution limits incentivize independent spending, weakening the parties and candidates. We find that limits on contributions to candidates is associated with greater IEs as a whole, but this association only held for some types of spenders. Importantly, we also find that limits only on contributions to and from the parties have little relationship with IEs beyond those of the formal parties and their closest affiliates.

State-by-state ideological and issue-driven spending appears to have weak or no association with contribution limits. Therefore, if the recent increase in IEs is in fact a normative problem, the solution may be more elusive than previously thought. While campaign finance laws can be changed (with difficulty), partisan competition is even more difficult to contain.
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Posted in campaign finance<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

Are You a Local Election Office Needing Money for a Safe Election in November? “CTCL Receives $250M Contribution to Support Critical Work of Election Officials”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114643>
Posted on September 1, 2020 7:25 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=114643> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Release<https://www.techandciviclife.org/open-call/>:

If 2020 had been a typical election year, a County Clerk would have asked a team of CTCL staff to huddle up in a rural county courthouse to help the Clerk build a new election website. A state association of election officials would have invited us to their annual summer conference to lead a session on a topic like poll worker management or election cybersecurity best practices. If we were lucky, there would have been a lip sync contest.

But this hasn’t been a typical election year for us, or for election officials.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact every aspect of American civic life, especially the administration of safe elections. While experts estimate it will take ~$4 billion in funding to successfully administer 2020 elections<https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/estimated-costs-covid-19-election-resiliency-measures>, Congress has allocated $400 million to date. Sadly, election officials are not only facing unprecedented operational and budget challenges in 2020, but they are also dealing with unprecedented personal attacks and death threats that are prompting some election officials to step down<https://www.propublica.org/article/for-election-administrators-death-threats-have-become-part-of-the-job>.

Election officials make democracy happen. Through our work at the Center for Tech and Civic Life, we are grateful to witness the incredible public service of our country’s election official’s year round.

And this year we’ve seen election offices already move mountains to provide a safe, secure, and inclusive process for voters. They are offering drive-up voting, applying the latest public health guidelines to provide safe in-person voting options, and partnering with libraries to repurpose book drops into ballot dropboxes. Election officials are rising to the occasion<https://www.techandciviclife.org/covid-19-responses/>, and now it’s our turn.

Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg have committed $250M to CTCL<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7070695-CTCL-CEIR-Press-Release-9-1-20-FINAL.html>, which we will regrant to local election jurisdictions across the country to help ensure that they have the staffing, training, and equipment necessary so that this November every eligible voter can participate in a safe and timely way and have their vote counted.

We all depend on election officials to provide safe and secure voting options to the public. The expansion of our COVID-19 Response Grant program provides our country’s election officials and poll workers with the critical resources they need to safely serve every voter.

This is an open call to every local election office in the country. If you are interested in receiving grant funds, learn more and request your grant application<https://www.techandciviclife.org/grants>.
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Posted in Uncategorized<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

--
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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