The News from Vernon Just Gets Worse

The LA Times offers S. Pasadena Is Tired of Vernon Politics; Police accuse private detectives of weapons violations and harassing candidates and advisors.

"Suppressing The New Orleans Vote"

This editorial first appeared in The Nation.

"The GOP's Betrayal On Speech"

George Will offers this Washington Post column on decisions of Republicans in the House to support 527 reform. Will notes: "Fortunately, the measure the House passed April 5 will not become law this year. Not because Republican senators are too principled to pass it, or because Democrats have a truly principled opposition to it but because Senate Democrats will have 41 votes, enough to block action on it."

"Gallegly fundraising healthy"

The LA Daily News offers this report, which begins: " Despite his surprising decision to retire, then his change of his mind, Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Thousand Oaks, has raised nearly $90,000 for his 11th and final congressional race, according to campaign finance reports released Friday."

"Dougherty to challenge campaign law"

The latest in the dispute over Philadelphia's campaign finance law.

Federal District Court Rejects Democrats' Challenge to Indiana's Voter ID Law

You can find the opinion here. AP's story is here. I have only had a chance to glance at the decision, but I must say I found the discussion of the evidence of fraud to justify such a law (but permit an exception for absentee ballots) to be particularly unpersausive.

Electronic Voting Technology Conference August 1 in Vancouver, BC

Details here.

"Barnes files lawsuit against voter ID law"

A.P. offers this report, which begins: "Former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes on Wednesday filed a lawsuit alleging that the state's voter ID law violates the Georgia Constitution. He said the GOP-backed law is 'a blatant attempt to curb minority voting.'"

Who Should Replace EAC Commissioner Martinez?

Bonnie Brinegar of Verified Voting just sent along the following email (with permission to post):

This week Ray Martinez, 2006 vice chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, submitted his resignation to President Bush. In his letter www.eac.gov he cited family considerations as his primary reason for stepping down and lauded his colleagues at the EAC and the agency's staff for their continued work on behalf of the nation--Commissioner Martinez' resignation is effective June 30, 2006. He was appointed to serve as one of two Democrat Commissioners mandated by the Help America Vote Act.

Listed below are suggestions from VerifiedVoting.org for consideration to fill this vacancy:

Bill Gardner is the current Secretary of State in New Hampshire and the longest serving state level Secretary of State in US History. He is in charge of the department that oversees all general elections, primary elections, voter registration and recounts within the state, including the New Hampshire Primary. He began his life in New Hampshire politics as a state representative and was elected Secretary of State in 1976. He has been kept in office by both Democrats and Republicans governors. In New Hampshire the Secretary of State is elected by the Legislature.

David J. Becker is an Election Law Attorney who works with jurisdictions nationwide to help them comply fully with evolving federal and state election laws (including HAVA and the Voting Rights Act), conducts international democracy-building efforts, and is active in working with Congress on the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. David recently left the U.S. Department of Justice after serving for seven years as a senior Trial Attorney in the Voting Section of the department’s Civil Rights Division, where he was responsible for leading dozens of investigations into violations of federal voting laws, regarding issues including, among other things, minority language voter rights, redistrictings, alleged voter intimidation, and vote dilution. Most notably, David served as lead trial counsel for the United States in Georgia v. Ashcroft, 195 F. Supp. 2d 25 (D.D.C. 2002), rev’d by 539 U.S. 461 (2003), for which the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights awarded him the department’s Special Commendation for Merit.

Douglas A. Kellner was appointed by Governor George Pataki as one of four commissioners of the New York State Board of Elections. Mr. Kellner was also designated as the Co-Chair of the State Board. Doug Kellner served as the Democratic commissioner from Manhattan on the New York City Board of Elections since 1993. He resigned from that position in order to assume the state-wide post. Commissioner Kellner was one of the first proponents of a voter verifiable paper audit trail for electronic voting machines. He was instrumental in promoting new technology for scanning absentee and provisional ballots and drafted model procedures to open the process of canvassing ballots to public scrutiny and convinced fellow commissioners to adopt rules that provided meaningful due process in ballot challenges.


David Orr- Cook County Clerk, serves as the chief election authority in the third largest election jurisdiction in the country and has found innovative ways to reform how government works.Orr – who serves as president of the National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks (NACRC), and a member of the Board of Advisors to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) – has played pivotal roles in helping to shape federal and state election reforms. Orr promoted passage of a statewide law that allows senior high school students to serve as election judges, part of the Clerk’s Teen Democracy Program and has used new technology to layout the county’s multiple ballot formats in house, which saves about $1 million every year. Orr established an award-winning interactive voter website, www.voterinfonet.com, and has earned national recognition for launching voter education campaigns and redesigning polling place materials.

Edward Hailes, Jr., senior attorney with the Advancement Project, formerly served as the General Counsel for the United States Commission on Civil Rights, directing the federal agency’s historic investigation into allegations of voting irregularities in Florida during the November 2000 presidential election and the Commission’s high-profile hearing on police practices and civil rights in New York City after the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. Mr. Hailes also served for 10 years as a legal, then legislative, counsel for the NAACP, gaining a remarkable record of success in civil rights litigation and legislative advocacy on behalf of the organization. A graduate of the Howard University School of Law, he also earned his undergraduate degree at Howard University as an Honors Program graduate.

Deborah Markowitz was elected Vermont’s 37th Secretary of State in 1998. Secretary Markowitz is the constitutional officer chiefly responsible for Vermont’s elections. During her tenure, Secretary Markowitz has made it a priority to improve Vermont’s democracy and promote good citizenship. Over the past 7 years, Markowitz has helped schools throughout Vermont bring civics education into the classroom at all levels by providing teachers with curriculum materials including a comprehensive mock-election program. Markowitz has modernized the administration of Vermont’s elections, resulting in fewer problems and complaints during elections. She implemented an ambitious election reform agenda that included widespread voter education and outreach programs. She presently serves on the Executive Board of the National Election Standards Board and is President-Elect of the National Association of Secretaries of State. Markowitz is also widely respected as one of the most knowledgeable resources in the State on legal and ethical issues for local officials.

Ms. Betty Castor was the 2004 Democratic Party nominee for the US Senate from Florida and until recently served on the Carter –Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform. Castor served for six years as president of the University of South Florida, one of the largest metropolitan universities in the nation. Prior to joining the university, Castor served as Florida Commissioner of Education for seven years from 1986-93, she was the first woman ever elected to the Florida Cabinet. She served three terms as a state senator from the west coast of Florida, becoming the first female to hold the position of President Pro Tempore (1985-86) and chaired the Appropriations Committee on Education. She presently is the founder and president of political action committee called Campaign for Florida’s Future focused on increasing participation in public life by citizens in Florida and the nation.


CHRISTINA GALINDO-WALSH is a senior staff attorney for the National Disability Rights Network. Christina oversees voting training and technical assistance efforts for the Protection and Advocacy System. She spearheads the networks Protection and Advocacy System under the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) as they work to ensure election access to individuals with various disabilities. She joins the staff from Florida, where she worked as a litigation associate focusing on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Christina received her law degree from Florida State University.


Sincerely,
Bobbie Brinegar
Senior Political Adviser
www.VerifiedVoting.org ...

*VerifiedVoting.org has no knowledge of the interest or availability of the people cited above in serving on the EAC.

"Separation of Parties, Not Powers"

Daryl Levinson and Rick Pildes have posted this article on SSRN (forthcoming Harvard Law Review). Here is the abstract:

American political institutions were founded upon the Madisonian assumption of vigorous, self-sustaining political competition between the legislative and executive branches. Congress and the President would check and balance each other; officeholders would defend the distinct interests of their distinct institutions; ambition would counteract ambition. To this day, the idea of building self-sustaining political competition into the structure of government is frequently portrayed as the unique genius of the U.S. Constitution and largely credited for the success of American democracy. Yet the truth is closer to the opposite. The success of American democracy overwhelmed the branch-based design of separation of powers almost from the outset, preempting the political dynamics that were supposed to provide each branch with a will of its own. What the Framers did not count on was the emergence of robust democratic competition, in government and in the electorate. Political competition and cooperation along relatively stable lines of policy and ideological disagreement quickly came to be channeled not through the branches of government but rather through an institution the Framers could imagine only dimly but nevertheless despised: political parties. Parties quickly came to serve as the primary organizational vehicle for mobilizing, motivating, and defining the terms of democratic political competition, creating alliances among constituents and officeholders that cut across the boundaries between the branches and undermined Madisonian assumptions of branch-based competition.

Few aspects of the Founding generation's political theory are now more clearly anachronistic than their vision of legislative-executive separation of powers. Nevertheless, few of the Framers' ideas continue to be taken as literally or sanctified as deeply by courts and constitutional scholars as the passages about interbranch relations in Madison's Federalist 51. This Article reenvisions the law and theory of separation of powers by viewing it through the lens of party competition. In particular, it points out that during periods - like the present - of cohesive and polarized political parties, the degree and kind of competition between the legislative and executive branches will vary significantly, and may all but disappear, depending on whether party control of the House, Senate, and Presidency is divided or unified. The practical distinction between party-divided and party-unified government thus rivals, and often dominates, the constitutional distinction between the branches in predicting and explaining interbranch political dynamics. Recognizing that these dynamics will shift from competitive when government is divided to cooperative when it is unified calls into question basic assumptions of separation of powers law and theory. More constructively, re-focusing the separation of powers on parties casts numerous aspects of constitutional structure, doctrine, and institutional design in a new and more realistic light.

Philadelphia campaign finance controversies

See here and here.

"2005 Miami Dade Election Reform Coalition Data Relevant to Preclearance of 2006 GA Photo ID Measure"

The ACLU has posted this press release and this letter. The release begins:

In an April 14, 2006, letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, the ACLU cited data from a 2005 Florida study showing the retrogressive effect of photo ID requirements on black and Hispanic voters. Specifically, the data shows that black voters in Hillsborough County, Florida, were three times as likely as white non-Hispanic voters to use affidavits to prove their identities at the precinct level and Hispanic voters were twice as likely to use affidavits. In Hendry County, black voters were three times as likely as white non-Hispanics to use affidavits and Hispanic voters were slightly more likely to use affidavits."

Kern County Padilla Lawsuit Dropped

Following up on this report, the Bakersfield Californian offers Firms Drop Sludge Suit, which begins: "Voters will get their chance to vote to keep Southland sludge out of Kern County on June 6. Attorneys who tried to defeat an anti-sludge initiative in court on Friday, dismantled their civil-rights lawsuit on Wednesday. Attorney Bradley W. Hertz said his firm dismissed its own case because election ballots were already in the mail. 'We have no interest in interfering with the election,' Hertz said. State Sen. Dean Florez, who championed anti-sludge initiative Measure E, thinks the decision had more to do with protecting Bakersfield law firm Borton, Petrini & Conron's reputation."

-- 
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