| Subject: news of the day 10/8/04 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 10/8/2004, 7:38 AM |
| To: election-law |
The New York Sun offers this report.
Josh Spivak offers this Roll
Call oped
(paid subscription required). A snippet: "If this system is instituted
on the national level, because of third-party candidates such as Ross
Perot or Ralph Nader, elections would not be decided by the Electoral
College but could instead be thrown into the House of Representatives."
See here
and here.
For those who might find there to be too much pre-election litigation,
ask yourself whether such litigation is better disposed of before the
election or after the election, when everyone knows the partisan
consequences of a judicial decision.
The ACS Los Angeles Lawyer Chapter presents:
"Election 2004: Can We Avoid Déjà Vu All Over Again?"
Tuesday, October 19, 2004 from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
L.A. County Bar Association
Lexis-Nexis Conference Center
Co-sponsored with the Los Angeles County Bar Individual Rights Section
Featuring:
Deborah Goldberg,
Director, Democracy Program, Brennan Center of Justice;
Richard Hasen,
Professor of Law and William M. Rains Fellow, Loyola Law School;
Steve Kaufman,
Partner, Smith Kaufman LLP, Former Chief Counsel to the U.S. House of
Representatives Democratic Caucus Special Committee on Election Reform.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004 from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
L.A. County Bar Association,
Lexis-Nexis Conference Center
281 South Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, California 90012
A reception will follow the event.
To RSVP, e-mail LosAngeles@acslaw.org by October 18, 2004.
See this
New York Times report. Thanks to Doug Greene for the pointer.
See this
press release.
Don't miss this
important article in the Wall Street Journal. Thanks to
Steven Sholk for the link.
See this article in Slate. I've written a fair bit about this topic, most extensively in my article, Vote Buying, 88 California Law Review 1323 (2000), and the Slate piece has it about right. The only thing I would add is that it is not clear that giving away Ramen and underwear in exchange for a promise to vote later really is paying for turnout rather than just an unenforceable promise and publicity stunt.
The more typical payment for turnout arrangements (as in California, where it is legal when there are no federal candidates on the ballot) require that the voter show a voting stub and then gets something---a free car wash, a chicken dinner, etc. Democrats have targeted these in Democratic areas as a way to get out the vote. (All of this is detailed in my article.) The Moore situation looks different, and I think would hardly be grounds for a prosecution.
I recall that during the 2000 election, my local car wash (which has
a civic-minded owner) offered free car washes to those who showed a
voting stub. I called the car wash to give the owner a heads-up. The
manager thought I was threatening to turn him in for breaking the law
and hung up on me, proving that no good deed goes unpunished.
See here.
There is no notation yet that the Ninth Circuit's felon
disenfranchisement case has been relisted.
-- 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