Westar Campaign Contributions and Alleged Favorable Treatment on Energy Bill See this Washington Post article (following up on this earlier article). The controversy stems from "the disclosure of e-mails by Westar executives discussing their belief that $56,500 in donations to campaign groups affiliated with [Rep. Billy] Tauzin and three other GOP lawmakers would get Westar a 'seat at the table' during crucial negotiations over the energy bill." "All four lawmakers named in the Westar e-mails say they never suggested the company would receive any special treatment in return for political donations."

You can get details on the e-mails in this earlier Washington Post article. The story was broken by the Kansas City Star, but those articles are no longer available for free on their web page.

"Move to Recall Governor Spins California Into Political Turmoil " The Washington Post offers this report.

The report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the presidential vote in Florida during the 2000 general election presents two types of empirical evidence that African Americans were systematically denied the right to vote. To reach their conclusion that discrimination had occurred, the commission examined the impact of race on spoiled (or nonvoted) ballot rates as well as the impact of race on the exclusion of voters from eligibility lists because of past felony criminal records. Using extremely detailed cross-sectional data collected by USA Today and less detailed panel data, I find that to the extent that these types of regressions measure discrimination, it is African-American Republicans who were harmed. Indeed, the nonvoted ballot rate for white Republicans is higher than for white or African-American Democrats. The data also indicate that nonvoted ballot rates are highest in those counties where Democrats are the election supervisors.

New evidence from thousands of voting precincts confirms the finding of my report to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that in Florida’s 2000 presidential election, ballots cast by blacks were far more likely than ballots cast by whites to be rejected as invalid. If rejection rates had been equal for blacks and whites, blacks would have cast more than 50,000 additional votes. Racial differences in rejection rates cannot be explained by such factors as education or income, first-time voting, ballot design, voting technology, or the race and party of election supervisors. John Lott’s attempt to refute these findings contradicts his earlier study and the report of two dissenting civil rights commissioners that relied on his work. His latest findings result from a flawed research design and are incredible on their face. Additional on-the-ground investigation in Florida is needed to test hypotheses about the reasons for the wide racial disparities in ballot rejection rates.

-- 
Rick Hasen
Professor of Law and William M. Rains Fellow
Loyola Law School
919 South Albany Street
Los Angeles, CA  90015-1211
(213)736-1466
(213)380-3769 - fax
rick.hasen@lls.edu
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html
http://electionlaw.blogspot.com