| Subject: news of the day 7/14/04 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 7/14/2004, 7:18 AM |
| To: election-law |
See here.
Don't
think that Florida 2000 is completely behind us. Ohio is a battleground
state where the vote could be close, and a number of Ohio counties will
be voting with punch card machines. See this
USA Today story, this
A.P. story and this
post by Dan Tokaji entitled "Ohio: An Election-Day Disaster in the
Making?"
Roll Call offers this report
(paid subscription required), which begins: "Fueled by massive
donations from three wealthy Republicans, the leading GOP “527”
organization plans to spend millions of additional dollars on
television ads in battleground states this summer to help re-elect
President Bush this fall."
Following up on this post
linking to Bob Bauer's testimony today, you can find here
links to testimony of Trevor Potter, Ben Ginsberg, Brad Smith, and
Ellen Weintraub. The same link features Bauer's commentary on Potter's
testimony.
Gerald Seib's "Capital Journal" column states: "Here's what appears to be happening, according to people with access to the intelligence on which terror warnings are based. There doesn't seem to be evidence of any specific al Qaeda plan to disrupt the election itself. Instead, what exists is evidence of a debate under way among al Qaeda operatives about whether to stage terrorist attacks to coincide with the election season, the goal of which wouldn't be to disrupt the actual voting process but rather to affect its outcome." (Thanks to Steven Sholk for that link.)
DeForest Soaries, head of the Election Assistance Commission is
quoted in today's BNA Money and Politics Report here
(paid subscription required): "'I cannot conceive of any circumstance
... in which a presidential election would be postponed or cancelled,'
Soaries told reporters after an EAC public meeting. Instead, he said,
discussions are focusing on how to handle a disruption that might
affect a particular city or state. Soaries and his fellow EAC
commissioners suggested they have discussed the question of whether a
state affected by a catastrophe could postpone voting but still
participate in the national elections." Reuters offers a similar report
here.
Roll Call's story is here
(paid subscription required).
I recorded a commentary on this topic for NPR's Day-to-Day
that should air today (subject to breaking news).
The New York Times offers this report, which begins: "Gov. James E. McGreevey's top contributor was charged on Tuesday in a bizarre scheme to enlist prostitutes in an effort to silence potential witnesses in a federal investigation of possible illegal campaign contributions."
-- 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