"Nonpartisan in New York: Plan
emerges" The New York Times offers this report.
Thanks to Luke McLoughlin for the pointer.
New article on voting rights
for people with disabilities Professor Michael Waterstone of the University
of Mississippi law school has just published "Constitutional and Statutory
Voting Rights for People with Disabilities," 14 Stanford Law and Policy
Review 353 (2003). This is a very interesting paper that provides a
good overview of the complex statutory and constitutional landscape for evaluating
the intersection of election law and disability law.
My oped on five ways to fix
the recall process next time The Daily Journal has published my
oped on this topic (giving it a terrible title). You can access a copy of
it here.
Hearing on ACLU TRO request at 1:30 today
before Judge Wilson More details as they become available.
George Skelton column See
here
from today's Los Angeles Times.
"Where Parties Select Judges,
Donor List Is a Court Roll Call" See this
New York Times article.
Ted Costa's papers in the ACLU suit
I have now received a pdf file of recall proponent Ted Costa's amicus brief
in the ACLU case. Unlike the state's brief, the Costa brief does
take the ACLU on on the merits. I've also seen the ACLU's reply that is
being filed today. I think the ACLU has the stronger of the arguments on
the merits of the equal protection and punch card claims, for reasons I've
set forth earlier.
There was one tidbit in the Costa brief introduction that really caught my
eye:
[Plaintiffs'] evidence does not establish any constitutional or statutory
violation arising from punch-card voting, let alone the compelling showing
required for an injunction. Punch-card voting systems are not the pariah
that plaintiffs make them out to be. We are not in Florida. California election
administrators—none of whom has lent support to plaintiffs’ delaying tactic—have
successfully and reliably deployed punch-card systems for over forty years.
Despite plaintiffs’ statistical lightshow—remarkable only for its skillful
demonstration of how numbers can be manipulated—punch-card systems, properly
maintained and deployed, as they are in California, record voter preferences
as accurately as other approved devices. More significantly, postponing the
recall vote until next March will not improve the accuracy of the count;
it may well diminish it. That is because to comply with the Common
Cause consent decree, Los Angeles County will be forced to roll out an untested,
never-before-used, barebones optical scan system that will lack all the attributes
that plaintiffs’ experts say make optical scanning so desirable. The situation
will be worse in other, less populous counties that are committed to deploying
systems next March that use ballots which do not have space for 135 candidates
who seek the same office.
Suppose the district court accepts both the ACLU's argument and Costa's
point. Does this not mean that the election should be postponed beyond
March, until the voting technology is substantially of equal validity across
California jurisdictions?
--
Professor Rick Hasen
Loyola Law School
919 South Albany Street
Los Angeles, CA 90015-0019
(213)736-1466 - voice
(213)380-3769 - fax
rick.hasen@lls.edu
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html
http://electionlaw.blogspot.com