"Governor Refuses to Cance-l Nov. 8 Special Election; Panel temporarily stays a court ruling striking from the ballot a redistricting measure."

The Los Angeles Times offers this report. Regarding the stay of the trial court order ordering the redistricting measure off the ballot, I don't read anything on the merits into the granting of the stay. Failure to grant the stay would have been like a final decision on the merits (think the Supreme Court stay in Bush v. Gore). Had the trial court order remained in place, it would have been impossible for the 20-day public inspection period to go forward as planned.

As far as the merits, I am going to predict that the appellate court (which may turn out not to be the 3rd appellate district---they have recused in the past when their former colleague, Daniel Kolkey was involved in litigation) is going to affirm the trial court, and the California Supreme Court is going to deny review. I say this with about 80% confidence.

"Goodbye Mr. Smith, and Welcome Back to Ohio"

This unsigned commentary appears at the OSU election law website.

We Should Soon See Judge Roberts' Memos on the 1982 Voting Rights Act Amendments

The New York Times reports that papers from Judge Roberts' time in the Reagan Administration will be released. These include important papers on the 1982 Voting Rights Act. I believe the papers will be coming from the Reagan Library, so there may be a delay in processing them. Some papers coming from the National Archive will be released Tuesday. Once other Roberts papers from the Reagan era had been released, I predicted these would be released as well. I look forward to reviewing them.

"Balancing Access and Integrity: The Report of The Century Foundation Working Group on State Implementation of Election Reform"

You can find the entire report here. The press release and report highlights show that the working group made recommendations in the areas of voter registration, provisional ballots, statewide voter registration databases, felon purges, voter identification, and the testing and certification of voting systems.

Carney on the FEC after the Shays v. FEC Ruling

Eliza Newlin Carney's latest "Rules of the Game" column is here.

-- 
Rick Hasen
William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law
Loyola Law School
919 South Albany Street
Los Angeles, CA  90015-0019
(213)736-1466 - voice
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rick.hasen@lls.edu
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html
http://electionlawblog.org