"Arizona court urged to decide redistricting issue"

AP offers this report about the oral argument heard yesterday in this case about the Arizona redistricting commission.

Dept of Irony

The Hill: "The Office of Management and Budget has not released public comments on its guidance banning lobbyists from federal advisory boards, frustrating public interest groups who find the nondisclosure out of sync with President Obama's transparency agenda."

"Kobach seeks voter IDs, power to prosecute"

The Witichita Eagle offers this report.

"Judge Declines to Delay Compton Elections"

The LA Times offers this story about a tentative ruling of a California trial court seeking a preliminary injunction under the California Voting Rights Act (raising issues of racially polarized voting between Latinos and non-Latinos---in Compton, primarily African-American voters). According to the article, the judge did not accept the evidence of racially polarized voting offered by plaintiff's expert, Morgan Kousser. It will be interesting to see the basis for the judge's conclusion, and whether that conclusion is upheld on appeal.

"FEC Seems Headed for Continued Deadlock On Rule Following Citizens United Decision"

BNA reports on an agenda following a sad, predictable pattern:

A 143-page draft expected to be supported by the FEC's three Democratic commissioners includes provisions that could require disclosure of all contributors above a threshold level to groups spending money on federal campaigns. The Democratic draft also includes a proposal to restrict campaign spending by companies that have more than a minimum level of ownership or control by foreign nationals.

A rival 91-page draft believed to be backed by the three Republican commissioners excludes the proposals on disclosure and foreign nationals and concentrates more narrowly on eliminating existing regulatory provisions that restrict campaign spending by corporations and unions.

Bainbridge Rounds Up Corporate Personhood Issues after CU

Here.

McCain-Feingold Crunch

Yum.

"Equal Citizenship and the Individual Right to Vote"

Joseph Fishkin has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming Indiana Law Journal). Here is the abstract:

An emerging consensus among election law scholars urges courts to break out of "the stagnant discourse of individual rights and competing state interests" and instead adopt a jurisprudence of "structural" democratic values that sidelines individual rights. This structuralist approach won out in the great "rights-structure" debate in election law, and came to dominate the field, during a period in which the main controversies--vote dilution, gerrymandering, ballot access, campaign finance--were all ones in which the structuralist move was illuminating. However, structuralism is now causing both scholars and courts to evaluate the new vote denial controversies--such as voter roll purges and voter identification laws--in problematic ways that bypass the importance of each individual voter's right to cast a ballot.

This Article breaks out of the rights-structure debate by offering a distinctive, pluralistic account of the interests at stake in all voting controversies. Some of these interests are indeed structural, in the sense that they are interests of the polity as a whole; some are the interests of groups; and others are irreducibly individual in nature. This pluralistic account explains why structuralism was the right approach to certain election law questions and yet is leading both scholars and courts to misjudge the new vote denial cases. This Article argues, through both political theory and American voting rights law, that the individual right to cast a ballot matters for reasons that cannot be reduced to election outcomes or structural concerns. By allowing individuals to vote, the polity includes them within the circle of full and equal citizens. This Article excavates this individual interest in equal citizenship, demonstrates its centrality to the foundations of our modern voting rights regime, and explores how taking it seriously would reshape both the scholarship and the jurisprudence of election law, especially in the domain of the new vote denial.

Read Institute for Justice Opening Brief in McComish AZ Campaign Finance Case

Here.

"Rep. Fitzpatrick, money and politics"

Meredith McGehee blogs.

Trevor Potter Speaks on C-SPAN About New ABA Lobbying Task Force Report

Check it out! [Disclosure: I am a member of the task force.]