| Subject: Electionlawblog news and commentary 7/18/06 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 8/18/2006, 7:36 AM |
| To: election-law |
Nate
Persily has written Strict in Theory, Loopy in Fact: Justice Scalia’s
Opinion in LULAC v. Perry, 105 Mich. L. Rev. First Impressions XX
(2006) (part of Michigan Law Review's new online presence). A draft of
the paper is here.
Soon the final version will be posted here.
I read an earlier draft. It is a must-read.
John Samples has written this oped.
It begins: "The Federal Election Commission, the six-member agency
charged with implementing campaign finance law, is split on a proposal
to allow grassroots organizations like the American Civil Liberties
Union and pro-life groups to run ads lobbying their fellow citizens.
The change, which would take effect immediately, would set out
conditions under which groups could lobby Congress without running
afoul of the McCain-Feingold law. Members of the Commission, three
Republicans and three Democrats, could divide along party lines."
Ned Foley has written this
important commentary
for law.com. It concludes: "We must hope, then, that the indecisiveness
of this year's election law cases is nothing more than the first-term
jitters of an understandably cautious Roberts Court. We can anticipate
the Court acting more decisively the next time it considers a campaign
finance or redistricting case. But much more importantly, as a nation,
we can and should collectively plead that the Court rule definitively
whenever it has occasion to entertain a follow-up to Bush v. Gore
concerning the applicability of the Equal Protection Clause to the
vote-counting process."
E.J.
Dionne (Washington Post), NY
Times (editorial), Fred
Wertheimer and Trevor Potter (Democracy 21 website), Bob Bauer.
The opinion in Akins
v. Secretary of State may cause a
delay
in the state's Sept. 12 primary. As the co-author of an article on the
ballot order effect (Alvarez, Sinclair and Hasen, How Much is Enough?
The 'Ballot Order Effect' and the Use of Social Science Evidence in
Election Law Disputes, 5 Election Law Journal 40 (2006)), I was
interested in seeing how the state supreme court dealt with the
conflict in the scientific evidence. But in this case, the state
conceded on appeal that the ballot order gave as much as a 6-10%
advantage to candidates listed first (something that seems quite
dubious to me), and the case proceeded under that concession.
-- Rick Hasen William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law Loyola Law School 919 South Albany Street Los Angeles, CA 90015-0019 (213)736-1466 - voice (213)380-3769 - fax rick.hasen@lls.edu http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html http://electionlawblog.org