| Subject: [EL] Electionlawblog news and commentary 11/10/10 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 11/10/2010, 8:09 AM |
| To: Election Law |
John Samples has written this
response to Bruce Cain's The
Case for Semi-Disclosure at the Cato Unbound forum.
Two more to come (including one from me).
The Chicago Tribune reports.
How do you solve a problem like Vernon?
The LA Times offers this
report.
The LA Times offers this
report.
The Anchorage Daily News offers this
report. See also this
WaPo report. My earlier coverage of the lawsuit is here.
The Minnesota Star Tribune offers this
report.
See this
press release, which begins: "A team of researchers from
George Mason University, the Brookings Institution, and Harvard
University, in collaboration with Azavea, a Philadelphia-based
software design company, is announcing the release of District
Builder, a free, open-source web-based software that will enable
greater public participation and transparency during the
upcoming electoral redistricting process. "
Earlier today the Alaska Division of Elections announced rules
for segregating and counting write-in votes that may be credited
for Murkowski. Soon thereafter, Joe Miller filed suit in federal
court. The suit claims that the rules violate the U.S.
Constitution's Elections Clause (giving the state legislature,
not state elections officials, the power to choose the rules for
counting ballots in Congressional elections, the U.S.
Constitution's Equal Protection Clause (by ostensibly failing to
adopt uniform standards for judging voter intent under Bush
v. Gore), and various state law claims. You can read the complaint
and motion
for a preliminary injunction. (Thanks to a reader for
sending both of these along.)
As I've explain in earlier
postings,
the issues raised by the Alaska write-in situation raise
important questions of both statutory interpretation and
constitutional law. Given the analysis I've offered in this
article, I was quite surprised to see that Miller's
complaint does not include a due process claim, arguing that his
rights were violated by a change of the rules in the middle of
the election. (That claim is there, but it is not framed as a
separate due process claim. That may be the strongest claim he
could make.)
Still keeping an eye on this
one, but if the numbers in the article are accurate, I
expect Mr. Wiggins will stay comfortably out of the automatic
recount provision.
AP offers this
report about this
10th Circuit opinion holding that a group advocating
positions on ballot measures but spending very little and
receiving few contributions was constitutionally exempt from
certain campaign finance disclosure requirements. See also this
blog post from CCP, which filed an amicus brief in the
case.
One reader points me to this line from the opinion: ""Candidate
elections are, by definition, ad hominem affairs."
The Senator Kirk push
begins (as I advocated).