| Subject: Electionlawblog news and commentary 5/19/06 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 5/19/2006, 9:05 AM |
| To: election-law |
Those interested in VRA renewal should not miss this
report, originally appearing in the Dallas Morning News. In
addition to providing information on the moves of the Texas and Georgia
delegations in the House that I noted a few
days ago, it contains this information from the Senate side of things:
Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who is on that committee, said he has no problem with the delay.
"It doesn't expire until 2007. We've got some time to work on it," he said. "There's more than the Voting Rights Act at stake. There's political calculations going on, and I want to try and make sure I understand what that's all about."
He said he also shares concerns about another element of the law regarding language assistance. Jurisdictions with high numbers of people whose native language isn't English must print bilingual ballots. Some must also provide translators.
"In order to be an American citizen you have to learn English. Why would we continue to publish ballots in a language other than English?''' That's a pretty compelling argument," Cornyn said.
Abigail Thernstrom's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee
is here.
There have also been some interesting posts on the Election law
listserv regarding renewal, including these posts by David
Lublin, David
Epstein, Mark
Posner, Keith
Gaddie (responding to Nate Persily's guest blog post---see
also this
response from Nate), James
Blacksher, David
Becker, Lublin
again, and Blacksher
again.
Ned Foley has this
post on redistricting reform possibilities in Ohio. His earlier
thoughts on the current proposal are here.
There's more information on the Ohio redistricting process here
and Dan Tokaji has further thoughts on how to improve the current
redistricting bill here.
The following just arrived via email:
It recommends that state and local jurisdictions:
* Adopt public campaign financing systems to combat
non-competitive
campaigns, reduce special interest influence and increase voter
confidence;
* Provide participating candidates with additional
funding when confronted with high-spending opponents and independent
expenditures;
* Ensure that programs are securely and adequately funded as a whole
and for individual candidates over the course of several elections;
* Provide candidates with diminished amounts of public funding when
running unopposed or against weak opponents;
* Encourage new and former candidates to participate in public
financing systems;
* Develop public education programs to explain the benefits of public
campaign financing programs;
* Control the use of separate fundraising committees and entities by
candidates; and,
* Make local public financing laws compatible with state law.
Keeping It Clean finds that public campaign financing encourages more candidates, more competition, more voter participation and less influence-peddling. Public financing:
* Helps women, people of color, and new candidates run in
elections;
* Reduces perceptions of wealthy and special interest contributor
influence;
* Frees candidates from fundraising pressures;
* Diminishes funding disparities among candidates;
* Encourages more voters to participate in elections by lowering
contribution thresholds and increasing voter education.
With a spate of political scandals at the federal, state and local levels, the trend toward more jurisdictions adopting public financing is growing. Connecticut has recently adopted a new public financing system. New Jersey has recommended expansion of a pilot legislative program (with modifications). And earlier this week, the California Nurses Association submitted signatures for a "Clean Money" initiative that will likely be on the November 2006 California ballot. On the local level, both the Portland (OR) city council and voters in Albuquerque (NM) approved full public financing for city elections in 2005.
Focusing on state and local programs, Keeping It Clean examines all forms of public financing, including full public financing ("clean money"), partial public financing ("matching funds"), tax credits, tax deductions, political party financing and free media resources to candidates. It also makes specific recommendations to improve the effectiveness of public financing programs.
Keeping it Clean is part the CGS series on Public Financing in American Elections. Earlier reports in the series are available on the CGS website, www.cgs.org.
This project is funded by generous grants from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The views in the study do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Carnegie Corporation, and it does not take responsibility for any of the statements or views in the report.
For more information about public financing, please contact Steve Levin, Political Reform Project Director, (310)470-6590, ext. 115.
The Campaign Finance Institute has issued this report.
You can find the opinion here.
Plaintiffs raised one person, one vote and partisan gerrymandering
claims.
I just received a copy in the mail of Juliet Eilperin's Fight
Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of
Representatives. Chapter 6 is entitled "The Road to Redistricting
Reform." This should be an interesting read.
Via Political Wire comes this report that a candidate for the 50th Congressional district in California may not in fact be a resident of the district. This may well have political implications, but the article suggests it may have legal ones as well. ("If Bilbray lives in Virginia, he may not be eligible to run for the congressional seat here.")
I don't think that's right. In Schaefer v. Townsend, 215
F.3d 1031 (9th Cir. 2000), the Ninth Circuit held that "California's
requirement that candidates to the House of Representatives reside
within the state before election violates the Constitution by
handicapping the class of nonresident candidates who otherwise satisfy
the Qualifications Clause."
Reuters offers this
report on sentencing in the New Hampshire phone scandal.
The Oregonian offers this
editorial. UPDATE: For a rosier view, see this
press release,
"Voter-Owned Election (VOE) Brings People-Powered Politics to Portland
; Report on May 2006 Primary Shows System Works." The full report is 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