Cato-Brookings Conference on Electoral Competition
From Allison Hayward's description,
this
event sounded quite worthwhile. The good news is that a book should
emerge from the conference.
"Wrangling over Maryland's voting system continues;
Machine change before September could be 'catastrophic,' official says"
Electionline.org has posted this story
on controversies over voting machines in Maryland. It is part of a
wider controversy (John Fund's take is here) caused
by politicization of the election reform process in the state.
"Political Bloggers May Get Federal Protection"
C|NET News offers this
report on HR 1606. Meanwhile Bob Bauer weighs in
with a response to, among others, Joe Birkenstock.
More Voting Rights Questions in Mass.
Now Springfield is being investigated
for Voting Rights Act violations by DOJ.
Another view of HR 1606
Writing
on the election law listserv (in follow up to this
earlier post), Joe Birkenstock writes (republished with permission):
Well, after two days of deafening silence, I assume we can now consider
at least one part of the debate over HR 1606 to be resolved. It appears
that 1606 would indeed lay to rest the 441b corporate prohibition with
respect to the funding of any advertisement, no matter how expensive
and no matter how thoroughly coordinated with candidates or party
committees, as long as it (1) avoids express advocacy and (2) can be
said to have been communicated "via the Internet."
To be perfectly clear, there is a significant degree to which I have no
objection to that outcome. "Everything other than express advocacy" is
obviously an extremely large category of speech, and it
includes lots of very important grass-roots lobbying and true issue
advocacy which I agree should be (and are) off-limits to FECA's limits
and prohibitions. That said, I'm convinced there's also lots of purely
campaign-related activity included in that category as well - activity
to which I think it's perfectly appropriate to apply FECA's
requirements, especially the corporate prohibition. This highlights,
therefore, the issue that I'm afraid some of my colleagues and friends
who support this bill are failing to appreciate: deciding whether or
not to use express advocacy as the only dividing line between campaign
and issue speech. This is an enormous, first-order question of campaign
finance law.
Furthermore, consider the context in which this bill is now being
offered: the WRtL litigation may yet produce a new and workable
standard for defining grassroots lobbying, and the Fired Up! AO has now
provided other appropriately broad protections for even highly partisan
and opinionated internet media activity. This convinces me that 1606 is
not about protecting bloggers or making sure the law respects the
newness and uniqueness of this new, unique medium - it's about
legislating the express advocacy standard into place as broadly as
possible going forward.
To those 1606 supporters who hold less than an acidic level of
hostility to anything that can be labeled "campaign finance reform," I
repeat: this is a bill you will regret having helped pass.
"3rd worker indicted in probe of vote recount"
The Cleveland Plain Dealer offers this
report, which begins: "A third employee at the Cuyahoga County
Board of Elections has been indicted as part of an investigation into
the mishandling of ballots during the 2004 presidential recount."