| Subject: Electionlawblog news and commentary 7/7/06 |
| From: DANIEL TOKAJI |
| Date: 7/7/2006, 9:13 AM |
| To: election-law |
The AP has this report on a lawsut by the ACLU, third-party candidates, and lobbyists challenging Connecticut's campaign finance law passed late last year and amended in June. The complaint may be found here and plaintiffs' press release here.
Reuters reports here that: "Felipe Calderon, a ruling party conservative, won a razor-thin victory on Thursday in Mexico's presidential election but his leftist rival vowed to contest the result in the courts and on the streets." Further discussion of the Mexican election controversy may be found on the Electino Updates blog in this post from Michael Alvarez, who observed the election, and this one from Paul Gronke collecting media accounts.
The Salt Lake Tribune offers this report on the difficulty of conducting recounts on Utah's voting machines, which generate a contemporaneous paper record (or "voter verified paper audit trail") of the electronic vote. The problem, according to the article, is determining "exactly how to recount votes, which are recorded electronically and also printed on yards-long paper backups, which resemble cash-register tape." It also reports on the legal issues surrounding Utah's lack of uniform standards for conducting recounts. According to Thad Hall of the University of Utah: "The Help America Vote Act requires that all states have uniform standards of what constitutes a vote .... The state should be providing uniform standards - that is their job, and that is what HAVA is about. If counties get to choose how it is done, the state is very likely going to get sued."
The Austin American-Statesman has this report on a lawsuit challenging the electronic voting system used in Travis County, Texas. According to the report of a hearing on Thursday, "visiting Judge Rose Spector, a former Texas Supreme Court justice, voiced skepticism that the plaintiffs presented a case that paper ballots are clearly more reliable than electronic voting." Courts have so far rejected similar claims in lawsuits brought in California, Florida, and Maryland.
Tova Wang of The Century Foundation has written this issue brief on "Improving Voter Participation." Among its recommendations are that:
-Voters should be allowed to register up until and on Election Day.
-Election Day should be a national holiday.
-As long as a voter appears at any precinct within the county in which the voter resides, the provisional ballot cast by the voter should be counted for all countywide, statewide and presidential races.
-States should not have restrictive voter identification requirements.
-Social service agencies and departments of motor vehicles must comply with the National VoteRegistration Act and provide citizens with an effective opportunity to register to vote.
-Take the partisan politics out of redistricting.
-Extend free media time to candidates.
-Parties and candidates should do more to personally engage voters.
The complaint in Project Vote v. Blackwell, described in this post yesterday, may be found here. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Plaintiffs include Project Vote, the American Association of People with Disabilities, Common Cause, and People for the American Way. A press release on the case asserts that the "groups have all planned voter registration drives in coming months that are now threatened by Blackwell's rule." They challenge the rule under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and the National Voter Registration Act. Plaintiffs are represented by Perkins Coie, the Brennan Center, the McTigue Law Group, People for the American Way Foundation, and the Advancement Project.
The American Spectator has this comment from Quin Hillyer, arguing that "Congress ought to move slowly" in renewing the VRA and that Section 5 should be altered significantly.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer has this report on a new lawsuit challenging voter-registration rules promulgated by the office of Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Background on the rules may be found here on the Election Law @ Moritz site.
Daniel P. Tokaji
Assistant Professor of Law
The Ohio State University
Moritz College of Law
614.292.6566
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/blogs/tokaji/