| Subject: Electionlawblog news and commentary 9/8/05 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 9/8/2005, 8:46 AM |
| To: election-law |
I'm off to the Ohio State
conference on nonpartisan election administration. Back on Monday.
The Seattle Times offers this
report about this
opinion issued by a Court of Appeals in Washington state. For those
who teach election law using Lowenstein & Hasen,
this case is a follow on to the "119 Vote No! Committee" case in the
campaigns chapter. In the new case, the court held that the false
campaign speech law violated the Constitution because it was not
limited to defamatory false campaign speech.
See this
news from Ohio. In somewhat related news, the Toledo Blade
offers Outsiders
largely financing election reform effort in Ohio.
A.P. offers this
report from Arizona.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer offers this
report, indicating that election officials have now made a sensible
decision.
See this
report in the San Francisco Chronicle. I generally agree
with Eugene Volokh's analysis
of the California Constitution that the legislature may not amend an
initiative directly (instead, it must put any ballot measure before the
people to accomplish that purpose). One wrinkle is the possibility that
Prop. 22, the earlier initiative is itself unconstitutional. To the
extent it is, it would not be a valid initiated statute, and therefore
there would be nothing to prevent the state legislature from passing
the new statute.
See here.
I have no idea if it is genuine, but you can "buy it now" for $1250.
See this
page on the ACLU website.
-- Rick Hasen William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law 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