| Subject: Electionlawblog news and commentary 3/23/06 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 3/23/2006, 10:27 AM |
| To: election-law |
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution offers this
report.
BNA offers this report based on news I reported yesterday. For some anti-regulatory commentary, see Brad Smith and Bob Bauer. (There's a great niche here for a reformer to start a blog to make the pro-regulation case, in case anyone is interested.)
My own take on what is happening at the FEC: the commissioners are likely looking for a compromise that would garner a majority vote on the Commission and be upheld against an inevitable court challenge no matter what the FEC does. This is a tall task. This is likely to be the most salient action of the FEC since its summer 2004 decision not to regulate 527s as political committees during that election.
The commissioners are in a tough spot. If they do very little (such
as simply regulating paid ads and spam, as the Skeptic has suggested
in Seussian poetry), the reform community will go back to Judge
Kollar-Kotelly and complain that the Commission still has not done its
job---only now the schedule will have to be expedited to deal with the
upcoming 2006 elections. And if they do little, they can expect a flood
of complaints filed against political websites arguing that they need
to register as a political committee. If they do more, and set forth
detailed rules, including rules on who gets the "media exemption," they
are going to have to make some important and tough value choices. It
may be hard to get at least 4 commissioners to agree on the precise
contours of the rules that should be put in place.
The New York Times offers this
editorial, which concludes: "Many states have passed laws requiring
paper records for electronic voting. What is happening in Maryland is
important, because not a single member of the House stood behind the
once popular Diebold machines. It is just the latest indication that
common sense is starting to prevail in the battle over electronic
voting." Thanks to Dan Smith for the pointer.
Juaquin Avila and Barbara Seitle have written this
oped for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It begins: "When
it comes to voter registration reform, some local activists want the
state of Washington to use a sledgehammer for a task that needs a
scalpel ("Serious election reform is critical," March 14). They are
demanding the state start from scratch and re-register every voter.
This approach would violate the National Voting Rights Act and
disenfranchise large groups of voters. A full re-registration creates
problems rather than solving them."
See this
press release, which explains that "Members of the media are
invited to a media event hosted by ProEnglish in the National Press
Club's Lisagor Room to hear U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, discuss
growing congressional and citizen opposition to reauthorizing the
Voting Rights Act sections on multilingual election requirements."
See this
press release about an event with a very impressive line-up.
You can find the opinion in Alaska Right to Life v. Miles here.
The ruling is significant in that it shows that states that model their
own campaign finance laws after BCRA (in this case BCRA's
electioneering communications provisions) have a good chance of having
them upheld by the lower courts. Thanks to a number of readers for
passing along a link to the case.
Dan Tokaji offers these
thoughts at his Equal Vote Blog. See also this
post from Joe Hall.
CQ Politics has this
very important post, which explains that Oregon Secretary of State
Bill Bradbury and California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson have
signed a pledge of nonpartisanship which includes a promise not to
“serve in any ongoing official capacity on a campaign supporting any
candidates.†Ths is an important and excellent development, and I
hope that the NASS will follow suit, eventually endorsing the IDEA code
of conduct. (For more analysis on this point, see my recent Washington
and Lee Law Review article on election administration reform).
Thanks to David Kimball for the link.
-- 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