| Subject: news of the day 2/14/05 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 2/14/2005, 8:03 AM |
| To: election-law |
See this
editorial, originally appearing in the Orange County Register.
Meanwhile, George Skelton reports
that Gov. Schwarzenegger "dumped cold water on the idea" of making the
California Secretary of State's office a nonpartisan elected one.
Roll Call offers this
report
(paid subscription required), which begins: "The Federal Election
Commission next month will begin looking at tightening restrictions on
political activities in cyberspace, a controversial move that makes
some FEC officials uneasy."
The New York Times has editorialized about election administration issues for two days in a row. On Sunday, the newspaper featured When Elections Go Bad, on voting issues in New York and North Carolina. (No credit given to the Issacharoff, Karlan, and Pildes book of the same name.) On Monday, the newspaper offered Umpires Still Taking Sides, that begins "The scandal of state election officials who are also political partisans has reached a new low."
See also Fix
Voting Laws from the Charlotte Observer on the recent
provisional voting dispute there.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer offers this
report on the continuing dispute over Washington's gubernatorial
race.
Sen. John Mcain offers these comments
at Newsweek on the 527 issue. Never one to mince words, the
Senator writes:
The Los Angeles Times offers this
report,
with the subhead: "The governor's plan to take redistricting from
lawmakers could make more political races competitive. It's unclear
which party would gain."
See this link for the following articles from Vol. 6, Issue 3 (Dec. 2004):
* Campaign Contributions and Congressional Voting on Tobacco Policy,
2980-2000, John Wright
* The (Sometimes Surprising) Consequences of Societally
Unrepresentative Contributors on Legislative Responsiveness, Michael
Bailey
* Firms’ Choice of Regulatory Instruments to Reduce Pollution: A
Transaction Cost Approach, Magali Delmas and Alfred Marcus
* China Standard Time: A Study in Strategic Industrial Policy, Greg
Linden
I have revised my forthcoming Southern California Law Review article, "Rethinking the Unconstitutionality of Contribution and Expenditure Limits in Ballot Measure Campaigns," to include newer campaign finance informaton on Gov. Schwarzenegger's political committees. The latest draft is here, and the updated data appear in the text accompanying footnotes 68-73.
One of the issues raised in this article is the constitutionality of
limits, like California's recently adopted limit, on contributions to
committees "controlled" by candidates and elected officials. A
committee supporting Governor Schwarzenegger's ballot measure agenda
filed suit last week (see this
complaint,
filed in state court) raising constitutional and other issues against
the California limits. The committee has requested a preliminary
injunction, so we should get our first sense on how courts address this
question soon. I expect that it will be the California Supreme Court
(or U.S. Supreme Court) that ultimately resolves the constitutional
question, given that it turns on the vitality of a 1981 U.S. Supreme
Court case barring contribution limits to ballot measure committees. As
I argue in the article, that case may not control the outcome here,
given the evidence of candidate control of such committees now in
California.
Following up on this post, here
is a link to the opinion of the Supreme Court of North Carolina in a
provisional ballot "wrong precinct" case. Thanks to a reader for
passing the link along.
-- Professor Rick Hasen Loyola Law School 919 Albany Street Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211 (213)736-1466 - voice (213)380-3769 - fax rick.hasen@lls.edu http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html http://electionlawblog.org