Subject: news of the day 5/28/04
From: Rick Hasen
Date: 5/28/2004, 2:13 PM
To: election-law

A judicially manageable standard for Texas redistricting?

Mitchell Berman offers an oped in today's Los Angeles Times, Putting Fairness on the Map. A snippet: "This difference between the Texas and Pennsylvania gerrymanders serves up precisely what the Vieth case didn't: a judicially manageable standard. The court should declare that mid-decade redistricting is unconstitutional when adopted by a single-party-dominated legislature, unless narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling interest."

For reasons I gave yesterday, I don't expect Justice Kennedy to bite.


Penalty for Private Spending by Presidential Candidates During General Election

Following up on this post and particularly on Trevor Potter's reply, a blog reader writes:



Will Kerry Ask FEC for an Exception to the Rules on Fundraising?

See this Boston Globe report, which states: "One idea under consideration within the Kerry campaign is petitioning the FEC for permission to continue raising and spending private funds until Bush receives his federal allotment in early September, according to campaign spokesman Michael Meehan. The FEC has not indicated how it would rule on Kerry's campaign spending options. But Republicans are almost certain to oppose a rules change in the midst of a campaign." I'll be interested to hear what the statutory basis would be for such an exception to the rule that prevents party nominees accepting public financing in the general election from soliciting or spending private funds for their own campaigns.

The Next Partisan Gerrymandering Cases Before the Supreme Court

UPDATE: I have also been reminded that the Georgia one person, one vote case Larios v. Cox will be considered at the Supreme Court's June 10 conference. See here.

UPDATE 2: Over on the election law listserv, Rick Pildes notes that it takes only four justices to vote probable jurisdiction to get the Texas case heard, and that this would prevent a summary affirmance by a 5-4 vote. Interesting procedural point. If at the conference it is clear that Justice Kennedy will vote with the Vieth plurality to affirm, would it make any sense for the four Vieth dissenters to nonetheless set the case for argument? They may get an even worse result in a full hearing (i.e., Kennedy explicitly agreeing that the Texas facts are not sufficiently egregious to constitute an unconstitutional partian gerrymander).

UPDATE 3: More thoughtful posts on whether four justices may dissent from a summary affirmance by J.J. Gass and Pam Karlan. And Jeff Wice notes that another redistricting case is working its way onto the Supreme Court's plate, Rodriguez v. Pataki out of New York (notice of appeal filed May 14, 2004).


"New Questions Arise About Touch-Screen Voting Machines"

Law.com offers this report, with the following subhead: "In audit of iVotronic's performance in a Florida city, 162 ballots failed to appear, flaw was slow to surface." Link via How Appealing. 
-- 
Rick Hasen
Professor of Law and William M. Rains Fellow
Loyola Law School
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