"A Remarkable Turn in the Paper Trail Debate"

See Dan Tokaji's important comments here. Paper trails are so 2005.

Who Trusts the Vernon City Clerk with the Uncounted Ballots?

The LA Times reports:

The election in Vernon had a Keystone Kops feel to it almost from the beginning, and certainly on election day with the decision not to count the votes.

It was, among other things, the first contested City Council election in 25 years. The race included a cast of old-guard council members and three new arrivals who managed to keep the election in the courts until election day.

Vernon is unique — some call it peculiar to the extreme — in that it has 86 registered voters even though about 44,000 people work in the city's five square miles of low-slung industrial and commercial buildings.

This year, three entrenched incumbents were challenged by three candidates who set up residence in the tiny city and filed to run for office. Within days, the building where they were living was red-tagged as unsafe and dangerous and their electricity was cut off.

But after a series of court challenges, the three prevailed and their names were on the Tuesday ballot.

After the polls closed, City Clerk Bruce Malkenhorst Jr. carried a red metal box containing ballots into the council chambers and said it would be kept locked until pending litigation over the election was completed.

Will Monterey Referendum Go Forward Despite Padilla Given the Ruling from Loma Linda?

Here is the Monterey Herald report, which references this federal district court order holding that referendum petitions in California are not subject to section 203 of the Voting Rights Act. Although the Herald quotes a Monterey county official as saying that this is a tentative ruling, I understood that the judge issued this as a final ruling (despite the copy I posted being marked "tentative"). If someone knows for sure, e-mail me and I'll post an update.

"'Shadow campaigns' put millions into races"

This article, which originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune, begins: "The Democratic and Republican organizations charged with getting candidates elected to Congress this fall are preparing to wall off parts of their staff and form separate entities, allowing them to pour tens of millions of dollars into individual campaigns, a move that otherwise would be illegal."

"Election officials see trouble ahead"

The Indianapolis Star offers this report on troubles with electronic voting machines in Marion County, Indiana.

"Proposal would gut Clean Elections"

The Arizona Republic offers this report, which begins: "Voters could end the state's strict limits on money flowing into Arizona political campaigns under a new legislative proposal that soon could be headed to the November ballot. Under the proposed overhaul of campaign-finance laws, voters would also be asked to gut the Clean Elections system for publicly financed elections."

"Electoral College Reform is Heating Up, and Posing Some Tough Choices"

Robert Bennett has posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Electoral College reform is beginning to get some attention, with two different emphases: a move to institute a nationwide popular vote without a constitutional amendment, and a move to forbid faithless electoral votes. There is no logical incompatibility between the two, but in political and public policy terms, there are tensions between them. This paper evaluates the relative merits and importance of the two efforts and explores the tensions in simultaneous pursuit of the two.

More Kudos for Commissioner Martinez

The directors at Moritz's election law project offer these words. See also this BNA report and this Roll Call report (paid subscription required).

Bauer Replies to Malbin on Public Financing

See here.

-- 
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