"BCRA Costs Run in Millions"

Roll Call offers this report (paid registration required), looking at legal costs incurred in litigating the BCRA (McCain-Feingold litigation). The newspaper gives a figure of $5 to $10 million. Perhaps most interesting is the report that Ken Starr and Kirkland and Ellis billed the Southeastern Legal Foundation over $400,000 from a July 2001 to July 2002 period, "but SLF representatives told Roll Call that the group’s total legal tab — which includes the fees of both in-house lawyers and fees from Kirkland & Ellis — is closer to the $2 million mark."

"Harsh campaign penalties scare lawmakers into action"

The Hill offers this report, which begins: "House Republicans led by Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Administration Committee, are contemplating action against harsh new sentencing guidelines that will take effect at the end of the month for violators of campaign finance law."

New election law scholarship

Jim Gardner has published Forcing States to Be Free: The Emerging Constitutional Guarantee of Radical Democracy, 35 Connecticut Law Review 1467 (2003). The article is followed by commentaries by Nate Persily, Burt Neuborne, Rick Pildes, and Jeremy Paul. I have not yet read the exchange, but it promises to be important and interesting.

Peter Francia and Paul S. Herrnson have published The Impact of Public Finance Laws on Fundraising in State Legislative Elections, 31 American Politics Research 520 (2003). According to the abstract, the authors find that "candidates who accepted full public financing spent less time raising money than other candidates, including those who accept partial public financing."

More on FEC "We Lead" Decision

Responding to this A.P. report linked in this earlier post, a reader sends along the following via e-mail:

I'm not picking on the reporter (I totally respect any reporter who can cover campaign finance) but I think that whoever fed her this story was deluding her.
Another lesson that you can't always go by press accounts alone when dealing with campaign finance. I went to the back-end of the FEC's website to read the actual Draft Advisory Opinion to see how they possibly could've ruled in "WE LEAD's" favor.

I thought this was a weird ruling by the FEC (as it violated all rationale in regards to current regulations) and, as it turns out, the FEC did not stray from current regulations or past precedent.

Yes, the FEC said the group could transmit money that donors had earmarked for "the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee" to the actual nominee.

HOWEVER, this was the easy part since the FEC has previously ruled that such language like "the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee" does refer to a "clearly identified candidate." To understand that this Advisory Opinion was actually not favorable to "WE LEAD", one has to look at what the committee actually had requested in their Advisory Opinion Request -- this is why I was shocked upon seeing the AP press story titled "FEC Backs Group's Campaign Money Plan."

"WE LEADs" plan was to begin collecting contributions immediately earmarked for "the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee" and forward them to this candidate as soon as it became apparent that he/she had accumulated enough delegates to ensure his/her nomination. The appeal to donors, I assume, would be that Democratic donors could make a financial contribution to the eventual nominee now and "WE LEAD" would be able to say "we have $xxx,xxxx to give to the nominee as soon as he/she is known."

Problem: This would totally go against the current FEC regulations that stipulate all earmarked contributions must be transmitted to the candidate's committee within 10 days (30 days if under $50) of the receipt of the earmarked contribution.

How the FEC (predictably) ruled: That "WE LEAD" could only forward those earmarked contributions to the candidate "WE LEAD" had received within the previous 10 days. Considering a nominee will most likely not receive enough delegates to constitute a majority until the late spring of 2004 at the earliest, and the likelihood that at that point most donors would soon give directly to the candidate instead of via a conduit, "WE LEAD's" plan is ultimately squashed.

The committee (which has not yet raised any money) will most likely close.

Thanks for writing.

Judicial elections in Pennsylvania

See this A.P. report. Link via How Appealing

The controversy over the security of touch screen voting continues

See this report in the British newspaper, The Independent. Thanks to David Ettinger for the pointer.
Update: The newspaper appears to have taken the article down, which had an October 14 publication date. But you can still find the article here.

-- 
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://electionlawblog.org