| Subject: news of the day 4/21/04 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 4/21/2004, 7:25 AM |
| To: election-law |
See this
Los Angeles Times report.
The San Francisco Chronicle offers this
report. See also here.
A
web page for "Competition, Partisanship, and Congressional
Redistricting," the conference held at Brookings last Friday, is now
available. A webcast and four of the five papers presented at the
conference are available here.
Alan Murphy of Brookings writes: "A full-length transcript should be
posted by the end of this week. In the coming days, we also plan to
upload Kim Brace's paper on redistricting technology and a webcast of
the fifth panel. Please note that the papers posted on our site are
drafts and are not for citation or publication. Authors will make
extensive revisions before the papers are brought together to form an
edited volume on congressional redistricting."
See this
news out of Indiana. Thanks to Rick Dietz for the pointer.
A
few weeks ago I participated in a symposium for journalists held at
USC-UC Berkeley's Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism. A
number of other campaign finance specialists participated as well. You
can find general information here
and some Powerpoint presentations here.
See here,
where Bob writes that "there is no basis for the belief that in the
current circumstances, or any time soon, a workable political majority
for public financing will develop." I agree that this is true on the
federal level. But states and localities continue to implement public
financing programs (The California Legislature is considering a "Clean
Money" option to go to the voters: B 2949 (Hancock), The Clean Money
and Fair Elections Law. The supporters of the measure have set up this website.)
I hope that one of the measures on the state or local level will try
public financing using a voucher system, rather than a threshold system
that gives all candidates who cross the threshold (usually by
collecting a number of signatures and token donations) equal public
financing.
Chicago has hired Adam Cox and USD has hired David Law. (See here,
Larry Solum's list in construction of entry level hires.) Both Cox and
Law are very promising election law scholars. If you have more
information on other election law hires, pass it along.
The Federal Election Commission posted this press
release.
>From the press release: " According to the conciliation agreement, Bush
– Cheney 2000 held a bank account designated “Bush-Cheney 2000, Inc. –
Media.” After the November 7, 2000 presidential election, the Committee
redesignated this bank account “Bush-Cheney 2000, Inc. – Recount Fund”
and used the account to raise funds and pay costs associated with the
recount. However, the Committee failed to include that activity in
disclosure reports filed with the Commission. " Thanks to Alfredo
Garcia for the pointer.
See here
(docket entry for 4/7/04). This is an important case on the
constitutionality of campaign finance disclosure laws post-McConnell.
The original Seventh Circuit opinion is here.
I do not know if the plaintiffs will file a petition for certiorari
with the Supreme Court.
-- 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