What is going on with Georgia v. Ashcroft and Baker v. Purdue? Georgia v. Ashcroft, a potentially very important redistricting case, is one of the last ten cases remaining on the Supreme Court's calendar for this term. (See this list at How Appealing.) As How Appealing notes, the case "could become moot at any second depending on how the Supreme Court of Georgia rules in a companion case," Baker v. Purdue. In that case, the Republican governor of Georgia is trying to get the Democratic attorney general of Georgia to withdraw the appeal.
Is the United States Supreme Court holding the opinion for the outcome in the Supreme Court of Georgia? Is the Georgia Supreme Court holding its opinion in the hopes it could duck the state law issue as moot? Oral argument was heard on an expedited basis in the Georgia court, but no word. Recall that in the New Jersey dispute over who got to run on the ballot as a Democrat in the Senate race last year, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a short order to resolve the election law dispute and then issued an opinion much later, after it had time to craft something more substantial. Why isn't that approach being used here?

"Excluded 2000 Candidates Ask FEC for Help" The A.P. offers this report, which begins, "Former third-party presidential candidates who were excluded from debates in 2000 asked election officials Tuesday to block the Commission on Presidential Debates from sponsoring next year's forums."

New law review articles Peyton McCrary has published "Bringing Equality to Power: How the Federal Courts Transformed the Electoral Structure of Southern Politics, 1960-1990," 5 U. Pa. J. Const. Law. 665 (2003). Richard K. Neumann, Jr. has published "Conflicts of Interest in Bush v. Gore: Did Some Justices Vote Illegally?," in the Spring 2003 issue of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics (I don't have the full cite yet). Thanks to Steven Sholk for the pointers.

Supreme Court declines to hear case involving Kentucky campaign finance criminal charges See newspaper articles here and here. Thanks to Ed Feingenbaum for the pointers.

Will the FEC improve its website and ability to get campaign finance information out to the public? Informed sources tell me that "there is growing sentiment on improving the Web site. As you may know, the FEC's info staff has committeed to posting public documents from closed enforcement matters, but other improvements e.g. in searching and indexing are in the works."

-- 
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