| Subject: news of the day 9/30/04 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 9/30/2004, 10:01 AM |
| To: election-law |
As the Supreme Court's docket entry shows, this case was set for discussion at the Justices' conference on Monday. When orders were released on Tuesday, nothing about the Texas case. Does that mean that the Justices will summarily affirm the result?
Although I have indicated here
that I think a summary affirmance is the most likely result in this
case, silence this past Tuesday does not mean much. There will be more
orders early next week. My guess is that even if a majority of Justices
vote for a summary affirmance, there will be a dissent in the Texas
case by at least some of the Vieth dissenters. It will take
time for such a dissent to be written. On the other hand, if the case
is to be set for oral argument, I would expect that to happen pretty
soon.
With the October 5 release of Michael Moore's film on DVD (see here for other election-related films and books being released), I happened to see a commerical touting the DVD. It showed Michael Moore and images from the film. What was missing? Any reference or picture of President Bush, something that would seem odd to an outsider given that he's the subject of the film.
The reason is BCRA. Moore's film is being advertised by its distributor, which is a corporation, and corporations cannot pay for an "electioneering communication" without getting an exemption from the FEC. An electioneering communication features a candidate for federal office, is broadcast on T.V., radio, cable or satellite, and is targeted at the relevant electorate.
Fortunately for Moore, most people already know the subject of his
film.
The New York Times offers this
report.
See this
report in the Athens News. Chris Geidner weighs in here.
Bryan Mercurio (UNSW) has posted this
article on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The article then evaluates the promise of Internet voting as a solution to these faults while also reviewing and substantially discrediting the perceived problems with implementing Internet voting. The article concludes by putting forward several proposals leading to the gradual introduction of Internet voting into the electoral landscape.
-- 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