"Line Drawing Issue Critical to Governor's Plans"

Dan Weintraub offers this Sacramento Bee column.

"Witness in Fund-Raising Case is Expected to Admit to Fraud"

The New York Times offers this report, which begins: "A potentially important witness in the criminal case against Hillary Rodham Clinton's former fund-raising director will plead guilty today in an unrelated stock fraud case, according to a lawyer involved with the case."

"McCain Allies Want Reform (and Money)"

The New York Times offers this must-read front page report.

527 Testimony

Today the Senate Rules Committee is holding a hearing on proposed 527 legislation. You can find Bob Bauer's testimony here and Michael Malbin's testimony here. I'll add more links when I have them.

Muttering the Election Administrator's Prayer

I just returned from casting my vote for mayor. We have a two-round election, with a runoff scheduled for May. The top two candidates go on to the runoff, but last week's Los Angeles Times poll showed a statistical dead heat among the top three candidates.

Let's hope this election is not close. I just voted using the "Inkavote" system, which was brought in as a "temporary" measure to replace the punch card system, now decertified for use in California. I was one of the first voters this morning, and the ink was very wet. I worried about smearing. Later in the day, as with prior elections, the concerns will be with ink that has run out. The system seems marginally better than punch cards, but not very good at accurately counting votes. See Henry Brady, Performance of Voting Systems on March 2, 2004 (Revised and Corrected May 10, 2004) (concluding that “the InkaVote system has a higher residual vote rate than the systems used by other large California counties.”). I don't think its uniform use in L.A. county raises the same kinds of equal protection questions as its use in only some parts of a state in a statewide election, but I am concerned about judging the intent of the voter in the case of a recount.

Radio Appearance

I was on KCRW's "Which Way, L.A." talking about Gov. Schwarzengger's fundraising, last night at 7 pm. You can to an archived broadcast here.

Non-Partisan Redistricting Proposal in Mississippi

See Chris Lawrence here.

"Battles are Not New"

Joshua Spivak has written this article for the National Law Journal on the judicial nominations issue (paid subscription required). A snippet:

While most of the current debates are focused on the lower courts, the Supreme Court is where much of the historical argument resides. The biggest myth in the discussion of judicial battles is that the judiciary was previously placed on a pedestal. The historical record for Supreme Court nominees belies this argument. In fact, since 1789, 33 of the 148 nominees for the highest court have either been rejected by a vote of the Senate, had the voting on their nomination repeatedly postponed or filibustered into nonexistence or eventually bowed out.

In the 19th century, more than a third of the nominees went down to defeat. What explains the widely held rose-colored view of a bipartisan, smooth-running judicial nominations process? Primarily, it is due to the more recent past. Between 1894 and 1968, only one Supreme Court nominee was rejected. But there was a good reason for the president's success in nominating candidates: This 74-year epoch was noteworthy for one-party domination of both the presidency and Congress. As divided government once again became the norm, so did battles over presidential nominees.

-- 
Rick Hasen
Professor of Law and William M. Rains Fellow
Loyola Law School
919 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