| Subject: Electionlawblog news and commentary 1/27/06 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 1/27/2006, 8:30 AM |
| To: election-law |
AEI and Brookings have teamed for a new election reform
project. Among the project's goals are to:
Ensure that research and policy recommendations are fed into the policy process in a timely and productive fashion
Assemble a working group of experts to think through the substance and politics of a practical policy agenda
Develop a bipartisan, practical national policy agenda for election reform and monitor the implementation of HAVA and its proposed amendments
See also this press release.
The Center has set up what looks to be a very useful website. The kickoff event (details here) will feature a keynote address by Senator Barack Obama, and two panels (I'll be on the second panel).
This project should be very useful in bringing together academics
and policymakers who are serious about real election reform.
The Lonely Centrist has this
provocative post responding to the
latest Washington Post article on politics in the voting
rights section of the Justice Department. After discussing the careers
of many of the former DOJ lawyers who have left and now criticized the
department, the Lonely Centrist concludes: "None of this is to say that
these folks are wrong on the merits in the current dispute. But let's
not have a bunch of dewey-eyed odes to the impartial civil servants of
the Voting Rights Section." It would be nice to be able to look at the
career path of the Lonely Centrist as well to ferret out any potential
bias. But we can't, because he or she chooses to blog anonymously. To
paraphrase Justice Scalia from his dissent in McIntyre, "I can
imagine no reason why an anonymous [blog post] is any more honorable,
as a general matter, than an anonymous phone call or an anonymous
letter. It facilitates wrong by eliminating accountability, which is
ordinarily the very purpose of the anonymity."
Mike Alvarez, Caltech professor and contributor to the Election
Updates blog, has this column
in the Pasadena Star News.
Dan Walters writes this
Sacramento Bee column. [Disclosure: I have been working as a
consultant for the California Nurses Association in relation to the
proposed initiative discussed in this column.]
The Wall Street Journal offers this
front page report. Thanks to Steven Sholk for the pointer. The
article includes a very interesting graphic on campaign contributions
given by lobbyists to lawmakers, based on data from the Center for
Responsive Politics. See also this
Washington Post report and this Bob
Bauer commentary.
This
event will be held at the University of Southern California on
February 4. See also this
agenda.
The Salt Lake City Tribune offers this editorial.
The Arizona Republic offers this
report, which begins: "State Rep. David Burnell Smith's tumultuous
year in the Legislature came to an abrupt end Thursday when the Arizona
Supreme Court upheld his removal from office for violating spending
limits in his publicly funded election campaign. The high court's
action leaves Smith, R-Carefree, as the first lawmaker in the nation
removed from office for violating a public campaign funding system. He
also becomes the first state lawmaker in the nation to be tossed out
through a procedure other than recall, impeachment or a criminal
conviction."
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution offers this
report. Expect a motion to dismiss the pending voter id case in the
federal courts on mootness gounds soon. Voter i.d. laws are also now on
the agenda in Minnesota.
-- Rick Hasen William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law 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