Law Commons^™

Election Delays In 2012, Rebecca Green, Emily Lippolis, Shanna Reulbach, Andrew Mccoy

Rebecca Green

No abstract provided.

The Youth Vote Matters. But Just How Young Should Voters Be? [Part I], Vivian E. Hamilton

Vivian E. Hamilton

No abstract provided.

Just How Youthful Should Voters Be? Part Ii: Defining Electoral Decision-Making Competence, Vivian E. Hamilton

Vivian E. Hamilton

No abstract provided.

Just How Youthful Should Voters Be? Part Iii: Why We Need A Conception Of Electoral Competence, And Its Implications For Adults With Cognitive Impairments, Vivian E. Hamilton

Vivian E. Hamilton

No abstract provided.

Just How Young Should Voters Be? Part Iv: Assessing Adolescents’ Electoral Competence, Vivian E. Hamilton

Vivian E. Hamilton

No abstract provided.

How Young Should Voters Be?: 16-Year-Olds’ Entitlement To The Most Basic Civil Right [Part V], Vivian E. Hamilton

Vivian E. Hamilton

No abstract provided.

Introduction: How We Vote: Electronic Voting And Other Voting Practices In The United States, Davison M. Douglas

Davison M. Douglas

No abstract provided.

Reforms In Florida After The 2000 Presidential Election, Jon L. Mills

Jon L. Mills

Much has been written concerning the Florida recount, and the final U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. Moreover, the popular media has mostly focused on the negatives of the Florida recount without delving into the exact reasons why Florida became the epicenter of this controversy. Not much has been written pinpointing the actual circumstances precipitating Florida's position after the election, nor discussing the theoretical underpinning of Florida election law, which embraces a broad liberal concept of respecting the “will of the voter.” By examining both the actual circumstances surrounding Florida in 2000 and recognizing that Florida election jurisprudence …

Florida On Trial: Federalism In The 2000 Presidential Election, Jon L. Mills

Jon L. Mills

This article analyzes how Florida's state election laws operated during the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. The intersection of law and politics in this controversy was critical. Political considerations affected decisions in both the Bush and Gore camps. The aftermath of the 2000 election found the federal government, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the State of Florida (among others) commissioning task forces and committees to investigate and suggest election reforms. Ultimately, the State of Florida passed significant election reform legislation. On May 10, 2001, Florida enacted sweeping election reform legislation entitled the Florida Election Reform Act of …

Freedom Of Speech & Election Day At The Polls: Thou Doth Protest Too Much, James J. Woodruff Ii

James J. Woodruff II

This Article seeks to answer the following question: What are the actual limits the government can place on political speech at and around the polling place? In examining this question, this Article argues that some of the current limitations placed on polling-place activities are unconstitutional. Specifically, this Article focuses on the wearing of political slogans and images within the polling room and campaign-free zone and the placement of campaign signs within the campaign-free zone.

Citizens Disunited: Mccutcheon V. Federal Election Commission, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

The wealthy are democracy’s darlings, the middle class are its stepchildren, and the poor are its orphans. And the Constitution’s written and unwritten rights are alive for the wealthy, merely evolving for the middle class, and dead for the poor. Corporate giants like Goldman Sachs and AT&T line the pockets of senatorial candidates—and purchase influence—while average citizens walk into a polling station, often encounter voter suppression tactics, and cast a largely symbolic vote. Stated simply, we now live in a society of soft inequality. Like the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” soft inequality has created a liberty gap between the …

Unfulfilled Promise: Mental Disability Voting Rights And The Halving Of Hava’S Potential, Benjamin Hoerner

Benjamin O Hoerner

In 2012, the heated presidential election between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney reanimated the debate surrounding the voting rights of mentally disabled citizens in the United States. A decade earlier, in October 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), aiming to protect the voting rights of the country’s disabled population. At the time of its enactment, legislators and commentators lauded HAVA as “the most important voting rights bill since the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.” However, since its passage, HAVA has been subjected to a flurry of …

High Courts And Election Law Reform In The United States And India, Manoj Mate

Manoj S. Mate

The Brief History Of "Voter-Owned Elections" In Portland, Oregon: If Public Financing Can't Make It There, Can It Make It Anywhere?, Paul A. Diller

Paul Diller

From 2006 to 2010, Portland, Oregon, experimented with a publicly financed campaign system called "Voter-Owned Elections." In 2010, Portland's voters declined to renew the system. This article assesses Portland's experience with public financing and draws lessons therefrom that may inform efforts to promote public financing at the national, state, and local levels.

A Federal Baseline For The Right To Vote, John M. Greabe

John M Greabe

A number of states have laws that define domicile for purposes of voting in terms that would disenfranchise those state residents who do not plan to remain in the state permanently, or even indefinitely. This essay argues that such laws are preempted by the federal constitutional concept of state citizenship, which is informed by the traditional definition of domicile set forth in the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws. Under that definition, all United States citizens with a physical presence in a state and an intention to make the state their home for the time at least are citizens of …

Voting Technology And The Quest For Trustworthy Elections, S. Candice Hoke

S. Candice Hoke

This chapter reviews four dimensions of the still-unresolved voting technology quandary. It begins by briefly reviewing the Florida Bush v. Gore background that, combined with the tradition of state governmental control over election administration, spawned the contours and limitations of new federal regulatory apparatus. It also surveys some illustrative voting system malfunctions and their consequences surfacing predominantly from 2009–12.

The second part of this chapter, Federal Compulsion to Adopt Software-Based Voting Technologies, explains the misconceptions about software and digital equipment that led to both the flawed federal mandates and the ineffectual regulatory structure.

The third part of this chapter, Litigation …

Invisible Federalism And The Electoral College, Derek Muller

Derek T. Muller

What role do States have when the Electoral College disappears? With the enactment of the National Popular Vote on the horizon and an imminent presidential election in which a nationwide popular vote determines the winner, States would continue to do what they have done for hundreds of years — administer elections. The Constitution empowers States to decide who votes for president, and States choose who qualifies to vote based on factors like age or felon status. This power of States, a kind of “invisible federalism,” is all but ignored in Electoral College reform efforts. In fact, the power of the …

Two Cheers For Instant Runoff Voting, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

"Instant runoff voting" (IRV) is a system that allows voters to rank their choices in a multicandidate election. Thus, the second-choice voters of less successful candidates are redistributed to the front-runners. The purpose of this system is to prevent candidates opposed by a majority of voters from winning. For example, if candidates A and B each have 40 percent of the vote and candidate C has 20 percent, the front-runner supported by the majority of C's supporters is the true "majority choice" and will win under IRV. The purpose of this article is to critically examine the arguments for and …

Noncitizens And Citizens United, James Ianelli

James Ianelli

No abstract provided.

When The Veil And The Vote Collide: Enhancing Muslim Women’S Rights Through Electoral Reform, Amber R. Maltbie

Amber R Maltbie

Voter identification laws serve a critical purpose in the consolidation of emerging democracies and post-conflict situations. By serving as a prophylactic curb against voter fraud when trust in the electoral process is low, voter identification laws strengthen the public’s perception of an election’s integrity and the legitimacy of the government elected. However, even when administered absent any discriminatory intent, these laws can have unintended consequences, especially for Muslim women who wear a veil that covers the face. For new democracies or post-conflict states with large or majority Muslim populations, voter turnout among women can be suppressed if the jurisdiction’s electoral …

E-Voting And Forensics: Prying Open The Black Box, Candice Hoke, Matt Bishop, Mark Graff, Sean Peisert, David Jefferson

S. Candice Hoke

Over the past six years, the nation has moved rapidly from punch cards and levers to electronic voting systems. These new systems have occasionally presented election officials with puzzling technical irregularities. The national experience has included unexpected and unexplained incidents in each phase of the election process: preparations, balloting, tabulation, and reporting results. Quick technical or managerial assessment can often identify the cause of the problem, leading to a simple and effective solution. But other times, the cause and scope of anomalies cannot be determined. In this paper, we describe the application of a model of forensics to the types …

A Brief History Of Voter Picture Identification Cards From The Help America Vote Act To Crawford V. Marion County Election Board, Hirak Shah

Hirak Shah

In recent years, no election-law issue has generated such a partisan response by legislatures all over the country as the proposal that voters be required to “prove their identity before voting.” Republicans have called the measure “a simple, commonsense proposal and a necessary safeguard against voter fraud.” Democrats have decried the proposal calling it “a tawdry attempt by Republicans to suppress the votes of millions of Americans.” While, the issue of voter identification has divided elected officials, the American public as high as eighty one percent according to NBC News/ Wall Street Journal survey have favored the requirement of requiring …

Voting And Registration Technology Issues: Lessons From 2008, S. Candice Hoke, David Jefferson

S. Candice Hoke

This chapter reviews the 2008 election performance and scientific assessment records of the two major Help America Vote Act (HAVA) promoted election technologies considered here, the voting systems themselves and, to a lesser extent, the statewide voter-registration databases, to delineate both their performance records and the statutory and regulatory apparatus that produced the technological shift. Perhaps surprisingly, HAVA's role in generating each of these election technologies is quite different. While HAVA mandated and constituted the originating impetus for most of the statewide voter registration database systems that were in use for the 2008 election cycle, and provided major financial incentives …

More Thoughts On The Compact Clause And The National Popular Vote: A Response To Professor Hendricks, Derek Muller

Derek T. Muller

This article briefly responds to three of the more salient issues noted by Professor Hendricks in her article "Popular Election of the President: Using or Abusing the Electoral College?, 7 ELECTION L.J. 218 (2008). First, I establish that the Supreme Court actually would enforce the requirement of congressional consent for the Compact under its current jurisprudence according to the "Political Consent" Compact Clause. Second, I define a "political compact," not merely in terms of the topic or type of the compact, but in terms of its function as a compact that tends to enlarge the power of some states at …

Book Review, Goldfeder's Modern Election Law, Gerald Lebovits

Hon. Gerald Lebovits

No abstract provided.

The Compact Clause And The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, Derek T. Muller

Derek T. Muller

Despite previous historical failed attempts to abolish the Electoral College at the federal level, in the months following the 2000 election, several lawyers, politicians, and academics concocted a novel plan to abolish the College at the State level. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would be enacted State by State and require each enacting State to give its electoral votes to the winner of a plurality of the national popular vote.

This Article does not attempt to address the merits or drawbacks of the system as a matter of policy. Instead, Part I begins with a brief history of the …

When Is Cumulative Voting Preferable To Single-Member Districting?, Michael E Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Cumulative voting is most appropriate in small towns, nonpartisan elections, and jurisdictions in which voters know whether they are in the majority. By contrast, single-member districts are preferable to cumulative voting in big cities, state or federal elections, partisan elections, and elections in which the racial or partisan balance between factions is either close or is unknown to most voters.

How Radical Is Lani Guinier? , Michael E Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

In 1993, Lani Guinier was nominated to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Her nomination was withdrawn after she was accused of being too liberal, if not radical, on issues relating to voting rights law. This article discusses her views, and finds that her writings were not clear enough to either support or debunk the accusations of radicalism.

How To Limit Gerrymandering, Michael E Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

An extensive discussion of constitutional issues related to partisan gerrymandering.