"Senate Dem: Take up campaign finance bill in lame-duck session"

The Hill reports.

"In important cases, Supreme Court outcomes sometimes determined by a single word"

The Washington Post offers this report.

"God Didn't Create Corporations"

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite blogs.

Persily/Ansolabehere Data on Attitudes About Corporate Spending in Elections

Following up on this post, via Doug Berman comes a link to this (preliminary version of?) the Persily-Ansolabehere study of public attitudes toward Supreme Court constitutional decisions. The CU-related questions are on page 101.

Cert. Denied in Simmons v. Galvin, First Circuit Felon Disenfranchisement Case

SCOTUSBlog reports. More from AP. I expected this after the Ninth Circuit's recent en banc ruling on this question eliminated the circuit split.

"Groups Push Legal Limits in Advertising"

The NYT explores 501(c)(4) status. (More here ("A Profusion of Magic Words")). I give some of the basics in my recent Slate column on secret donors.

"Democrats have raised $1 million from foreign-affiliated PACs"

This item appears at The Hill's blog.

"Axelrod Calls for End to Mystery Donors"

Roll Call reports on a sensible Administration pivot from the issue of foreign donors to the issue of secret donors more generally. Al Hunt's prediction, now picked up in modified form as a NYT letter from Washington, is that a scandal will emerge from all this secret money. And history tells us that Washington money scandals lead to congressional acquiescence in new campaign finance regulations.

"Political Ads Help Bolster TV Business"

TV is always a winner.

Levitt: A "Democracy Facts" Product Label?

Rick has graciously invited me to write a campaign-finance guest post as well, focused on disclosure. And I also offer my thanks for the opportunity.

Rick has posted a number of campaign finance items recently with a similar theme: significant donors sponsoring political ads not in their own names, but in the names of organizations with substantial positive valence and suggesting widespread support. Americans for America and the Concerned Taxpayers of America are only the most recent examples. The names seem designed to enhance the credibility of the message, by encouraging viewers and voters to believe that they represent the shared opinions of lots of like-minded individuals.

In a new paper, I've suggested a new model of disclosure, equipping viewers to see for themselves whether there are 2 like-minded concerned taxpayers, or 2 million, supporting a particular communication. The model, based on the now-ubiquitous "Nutrition Facts" and "Drug Facts" labels on supermarket and pharmacy shelves, involves a label for "Democracy Facts" (at right, and linked here).

"Ballot Measure would resize Legislature"

News from Alaska that does not involve how to spell a candidate's name.

"PACs linked to foreign companies legally donate millions to U.S. campaigns"

A must-read WaPo report.

Schleicher: The Parable of the Fox and the Target

[I have asked election law prof David Schleicher to write a series of guests posts related to election law issues in the 2010 elections. There should be one each week before the election. Here's the first.--RH]


First, I'd like to thank Rick for inviting me to write this column about the 2010 elections. One of the great things about this election season has been the availability of blogs by political scientists and statisticians (like the indispensible group blog The Monkey Cage, Seth Masket's Enik Rising, Brendan Nyhan's blog, and of course, Five Thirty Eight) to provide better guidance about what actually effects voting patterns and what is just journalistic noise. Election law scholars blog both pretty frequently and insightfully, I think -- not only Rick, Justin and Dan here, but Rick Pildes, Heather Gerken, Michael Kang and the people at Moritz among a number of others --- but we have not as a group spent too much time using the medium to address the big election law issues implicated by the 2010 elections. So I thought I would give it a go. I'm going to write three columns: Today's is about campaign finance; next week's column will be about election law and party polarization; my final column will discuss the failures of primary elections and urban politics through the lens of the D.C. Mayoral race.

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Virtually everyone who thinks about election law has said something about Citizens United. This discussion has focused both on normative questions, like the basic question of whether the Court should have made such a sweeping decision, and on whole series of positive questions about the decision's likely effects, including efforts to determine how much corporate money will be spent in this election cycle, whether Citizens United caused any increase, and to whom the benefits of increased spending have run.

But there has been little focus on the most basic question one might ask about Citizens United: Who is going to change their behavior following the decision?

The answer to this question might seem obvious -- Citizens United eliminated restrictions on independent expenditures by corporations and unions and therefore they are the entities who will change their behavior. But corporations and unions are not monolithic. Some will spend money on politics; others will not. Before we can make predictions about the long-run effects of Citizens United on parties, candidates and public policy, we need to answer the question of which corporations and unions are likely to spend more (and differently) in elections.

One possible answer can be found in a story that took up a day or two of headlines during the 2010 election, in what one might call The Parable of the Fox and the Target.

Within days of one another, two major corporations, News Corp, the parent company of Fox, and Target got in a bit of hot water about their political spending. News Corp. gave $1M to the Republican Governors Association ("RGA") and Target gave $150K to Minnesota Forward, a group supporting Tom Emmer, a very conservative candidate for Governor in Minnesota who, among other things, supports a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Both were criticized, but the reactions were very different. News Corp. was teased in the press for a day or two, but largely ignored the criticism, with Rupert Murdoch noting that he made the donation because he is friends with John Kasich, the Republican candidate for Governor of Ohio. Target was subject to a boycott led by LGBT groups and was forced to apologize.

Why did News Corp. largely escape criticism, and ignore what attacks came its way, while Target was both battered and cowed by the criticism it received for its much smaller amount of spending?

The answer, I think, lies in the ownership structure of the companies. And the difference between Fox and Target can tell us a great deal about which corporations are likely to spend money in politics. And, in turn, this can tell us a lot about the likely effects of Citizens United on the country and its politics.

Are Micro-Donors Fueling at Least Part of Tea Party?

I have written extensively about the role of micro-donors (donors giving under $200 in the aggregate to a campaign) and micro-donations (donations under $200) to presidential candidates, especially to the Obama 2008 campaign. Now comes this CBS News report (based upon data from the Center for Responsive Politics) that micro-donors are playing a key role for a number of Tea Party candidates for House and Senate.

Of course, there's big money behind the Tea Party as well.

"Who is Bankrolling the Ballot?"

CBS News reports.

"Justice Department was wrong to dismiss the New Black Panther case"

See this letter to the editor in WaPo.