"Elections chief tries to allay fears; State official
in D.C. to give account of federal voting funds"
The SF Chronicle offers this
report.
Alleged Lying About Residency by Candidate Leads to
Election Fraud Charges
See this
news from Virginia.
"The Left Catches On"
Ryan Sager offers this Tech Central
Station
column, which begins: "Something remarkable is happening as a
Republican Congress and president move to crackdown on 527 groups like
the MoveOn.org Voter Fund and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: Liberals
are realizing that something's fishy. Three years after the passage of
McCain-Feingold (a.k.a. the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002,
a.k.a. the End of Free Speech As We Know It), a smattering of Democrats
and liberal activists are slowly coming to the conclusion that maybe it
wasn't such a good idea to let the government decide who can and cannot
engage in political speech."
No Limits on Contributions to Candidate-Controlled
Ballot Measure Committees in California Pending Appeal
So ruled a California appellate court yesterday. See here.
This is not a ruling on the merits of the appeal, but the status quo
during the appellate process. Thanks to Fred Woocher for the pointer.
McLoughlin on Gingles and Coalitional
Districts
Luke
McLouglin, a graduating law student that I knew from his days before
law school at the Brennan Center, has published a student note, "Gingles
in Limbo: Coalitional Districts, Party Primaries, and Manageable Vote
Dilution Claims," 80 NYU L. Rev. 312 (2005). Here is the abstract:
In the past two decades, minority plaintiffs claiming unlawful
vote dilution under section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act have been
required to pass the three-pronged test elaborated by the Supreme Court
in Thornburg v. Gingles. In light of a recent Supreme Court case
extolling coalitional districts, the future of the first prong
requiring the minority bloc to demonstrate it is sufficiently large and
compact to comprise a majority of a single-member district is
uncertain. These districts, eluding easy classification but understood
to possess significant minority voting power without the minority bloc
comprising a majority of the district, have been identified as shields
against section 2 and section 5 suits challenging redistricting maps
that reduced the number of majority-minority districts. In this Note,
Luke McLoughlin addresses how courts should approach section 2 claims
by minority blocs claiming dilution of a coalitional district itself.
Arguing that Gingles's framework of bright lines must be respected in
any reconsideration of the first prong, McLoughlin identifies the
ability of the minority bloc to comprise a numerical majority of a
party primary as a potential criterion for defining coalitional
districts and a potential benchmark for considering section 2 claims.
As McLoughlin shows, however, such a criterion would be difficult to
apply in practice, as internal party rules and state ballot access laws
may thwart the creation of a viable coalition. Accuracy requires a
fact-based inquiry into the coalition, while Gingles urges a
bright-line approach. Eschewing a wholesale renovation of the Gingles
framework, McLoughlin concludes that the two countervailing concerns
are best reconciled by relying on Gingles's latter two prongs and
examining population within the primary, while remaining skeptical at
the totality-of-the-circumstances stage of whether a true coalition has
been formed. If courts alter the first Gingles prong to permit claims
by minority blocs unable to comprise a majority in a district,
McLoughlin concludes that courts must retain a corresponding alertness
to the interstitial role of parties, which are capable of both
facilitating and obstructing coalition politics.
I read this piece in draft and thought it was very interesting.