| Subject: Electionlawblog news and commentary 10/6/05 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 10/6/2005, 8:47 AM |
| To: election-law |
Capitol Weekly offers this
report. Link via Rough & Tumble.
The Sacramento Bee offers this
report, which begins: "Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said
Wednesday he will create a new office to test voting technology and
will require future machines to undergo an Election Day simulation
comparable to one failed by a leading manufacturer this summer."
The New York Times offers this
report. A snippet:
Within 48 hours after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Baton Rouge became Louisiana's largest city, doubling to about 800,000 residents. Local officials are now trying to get a population survey up and running to seek federal aid.
Mr. Koepp said this population shift could actually be the early stages of the deterioration of New Orleans' long-term hold over the State Legislature. "If this holds true, there will be a significant political change," he said.
There are now 21 seats in the House and Senate that encompass or touch on Orleans Parish, of 144 total seats statewide.
But if the population fails to return to the parish in coming years, New Orleans may be confined to just a few seats in each chamber through redistricting, Mr. Koepp added. That could change the state's racial and partisan balance.
If evacuees from the Ninth Ward in New Orleans - a reliable bloc of 30,000 black voters that is traditionally easy to mobilize - choose suburban or rural areas over their urban roots in coming years, it could be a political blow to Democrats, said Roy Fletcher, a political consultant from Shreveport who helped elect former Gov. Mike Foster, a Republican.
"It would give a whole lot of a stronger foothold to Republicans in the Legislature and statewide," Mr. Fletcher said. "Louisiana has always been a swing state, a purple state that's both blue and red. You take the Ninth Ward out of that equation and you get a real shot of Republicans winning statewide office."
See this
Arizona Republic report, which begins: "The Citizens Clean
Election Commission on Tuesday stood by its ruling that a freshman
lawmaker who overspent his publicly funded campaign budget to get
elected must step down and pay heavy fines."
NPR's Morning Edition offers this report. It is described on the website as follows: "has been growing between career lawyers and political appointees in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Now the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding confirmation hearings for a new leader of the politically sensitive group. Some career professionals who have left the division recently say they left because they were shut out of the decision making process in a way that did not occur under previous administrations. A spokesman for Justice says that there is no split between political appointees and career lawyers. He points to the division's recent accomplishments in disability rights and human trafficking prosecutions as proof of it's effectiveness." It includes some discussion of voting rights cases. Thanks to Mark Posner for the pointer.
-- 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