Election Law Commons^™

Noncitizen Voting: A Case Study Of Oregon, Monet Gonnerman, Ryan Willett

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Using the State of Oregon as a case study, this Article proposes that states and municipalities may and should extend the right to vote to noncitizens. The Article’s analysis, rooted in national history and the U.S. Constitution, is applicable to other states across the country. The Article situates the practice of noncitizen voting within the larger historical context of both the United States and Oregon. It also provides the legal framework that demonstrates state and municipal power to set voter qualifications for their respective elections. Finally, the Article suggests reasons why states should allow for noncitizen voting.

Legislative Redistricting In The Time Of Covid, Norman R. Williams

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Due to the COVID pandemic, the U.S. Census Bureau was unable to provide 2020 census data to Oregon in time for the Legislature to engage in redistricting during the 2021 session, as required by the Oregon Constitution. As a result of this delay, the Oregon Legislature asked the Oregon Supreme Court to push back the constitutionally imposed deadlines for redistricting—a request which the Court agreed to in part. This Essay examines the Court’s power to revise constitutionally prescribed deadlines and the extent to which any districting plan must be based on federal census data.

Time To Mail It In? A Survey Of 2020 Voting Rights Issues In Arkansas And Recommendations For More Inclusive Elections, Kim Vu-Dinh

Faculty Scholarship

The highly contagious COVID-19 pandemic, combined with over fifty lawsuits brought by former President Donald Trump, made the general election of 2020 one of the most controversial in the history of the United States. Accusations of voter disenfranchisement proliferated across the nation and were initiated by members of both sides of the political spectrum, even before Election Day. Arkansas was no exception to this rule. In 2020, multiple Arkansas lawsuits highlighted the weaknesses of the state’s voter infrastructure, particularly with regard to the absentee ballot process. Voting-by-mail was particularly important in the pandemic year when long lines became a public …

Undue Deference To States In The 2020 Election Litigation, Joshua A. Douglas

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on so much of our lives, including how to run our elections. Yet the federal courts have refused to respond appropriately to the dilemma that many voters faced when trying to participate in the 2020 election. Instead, the courts—particularly the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal appellate courts—invoked a narrow test that unduly defers to state election administration and fails to protect adequately the fundamental right to vote.

Wisconsin’S 3/5 Compromise: Prison Gerrymandering In Wisconsin Dilutes Minority Votes To Inflate White Districts’ Population, Adam Johnson

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

The People's Court: On The Intellectual Origins Of American Judicial Power, Ian C. Bartrum

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

This article enters into the modern debate between “consti- tutional departmentalists”—who contend that the executive and legislative branches share constitutional interpretive authority with the courts—and what are sometimes called “judicial supremacists.” After exploring the relevant history of political ideas, I join the modern minority of voices in the latter camp.

This is an intellectual history of two evolving political ideas—popular sovereignty and the separation of powers—which merged in the making of American judicial power, and I argue we can only understand the structural function of judicial review by bringing these ideas together into an integrated whole. Or, put another way, …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Voting For History: One Person, One Vote And The Creation Of National Register Historic Districts, Jonathan Stark-Sachs

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Political Canary: An Empirical Study Of The Correlation Between Hatch Act Complaints And How The Electoral College Votes, Raimund Stieger

Upper Level Writing Requirement Research Papers

The American public witnesses hundreds, if not thousands, of violations of the Hatch Act—an administrative law designed to keep partisan politics out of Government—each year. This study aimed to determine whether there is a correlation between the number of Hatch Act complaints reported in the fiscal year leading up to a Presidential election and how divisive the political landscape is during that Presidential election. Political divisiveness was defined as how close the winning Presidential candidate was to receive fifty percent of the electoral college. To assess the theory that an increase in Hatch Act complaints is an early indicator of …

Don't Change The Subject: How State Election Laws Can Nullify Ballot Questions, Cole Gordner

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Procedural election laws regulate the conduct of state elections and provide for greater transparency and fairness in statewide ballots. These laws ensure that the public votes separately on incongruous bills and protects the electorate from uncertainties contained in omnibus packages. As demonstrated by a slew of recent court cases, however, interest groups that are opposed to the objective of a ballot question are utilizing these election laws with greater frequency either to prevent a state electorate from voting on an initiative or to overturn a ballot question that was already decided in the initiative’s favor. This practice is subverting the …

Innovoting: How Democracy Is Being Reshaped By Women's Innovative Voting Activism & Candidacy, Andrea Schneider, Kali Murray, Amber Wichowsky, Christina Wolbrecht, Mary Kelley, Kara Swanson

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

None

Prohibiting The Punishment Of Poverty: The Abolition Of Wealth-Based Criminal Disenfranchisement, Amy Ciardiello

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The majority of U.S. states disenfranchise formerly incarcerated individuals because of their poverty by conditioning re-enfranchisement on the full payment of legal financial obligations. This Note discusses the practice of wealth-based criminal disenfranchisement where the inability to pay legal financial obligations, including fines, fees, restitution, interest payments, court debts, and other economic penalties, prohibits low-income, formerly incarcerated individuals from voting. This Note argues this issue has not been adequately addressed due to unsuccessful legislative reforms and failed legal challenges. An examination of state policies, federal and state legislative reforms, and litigation shows that a more drastic state legislative solution is …

Reducing Election Litigation, Derek T. Muller

Journal Articles

Election litigation has exploded, and judges have increasingly been asked to evaluate ever-finer points of election administration. This Article posits some reasons that the judiciary has done so, and it offers potential ways to reduce election litigation.

Part I examines the increase in litigation and attributes at least some of that increase to several causes: increased campaign expenditures on litigation; increased partisanship in state legislatures yielded more contentious election laws; the decline of preclearance under the Voting Rights Act after Shelby County v. Holder; and Supreme Court extensions of the Anderson v. Celebrezze framework to broad areas of election …

"The Cornerstone Of The Stability Of Our Government": The Forgotten Penalty Clause And Electoral Reform In The Aftermath Of The 2020 Election, Delaram Takyar

Publications

The 2020 presidential election, which was preceded by months of efforts by Republican party members to disenfranchise voters during a global pandemic, highlighted the United States' historic need for electoral reform. The tools for this reform might already exist in the Penalty Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides a built-in remedy—reduced representation in Congress—in cases where a state abridges the voting rights of its citizens. This Remark provides an overview of the history of the long-neglected Penalty Clause, including a discussion of how important its drafters viewed its role, as well as practical proposals for ways it could be …

The Political (Mis)Representation Of Immigrants In Voting, Ming H. Chen, Hunter Knapp

Publications

Who is a member of the political community? What barriers to inclusion do immigrants face as outsiders to this political community? This Essay describes several barriers facing immigrants and naturalized citizens that impede their political belonging. It critiques these barriers on the basis of immigrants and foreign-born voters having rights of semi-citizenship. By placing naturalization backlogs, voting restrictions, and reapportionment battles in the historical context of voter suppression, it provides a descriptive and normative account of the political misrepresentation of immigrants.

The Political (Mis)Representation Of Immigrants In The Census, Ming Hsu Chen

Publications

Who is a member of the political community? What barriers to inclusion do immigrants face as outsiders to this political community? This article describes several barriers facing immigrants that impede their political belonging. It critiques these barriers not on the basis of immigrants’ rights but based on their rights as current and future members of the political community. This is the second of two Essays. The first Essay focused on voting restrictions impacting Asian American and Latino voters. The second Essay focuses on challenges to including immigrants, Asian Americans, and Latinos in the 2020 Census. Together, the Essays critique the …

Redistricting Transparency & Litigation, Rebecca Green

Faculty Publications

Legislative redistricting following the 2010 Census kicked up a deluge of litigation. It did not abate. In several states, redistricting litigation extended throughout the decade, costing taxpayers millions. Factors leading plaintiffs to challenge legislative lines are multifaceted; the reasons redistricting litigation flares (and persists) are complex. One underexamined question is the extent to which process fairness in redistricting impacted redistricting litigation after the 2010 Census. At least in theory, a transparent redistricting process should produce fairer maps less likely to be challenged in court. But fights over maps result from myriad sources--the raw quest for political power, the availability of …

Electoral Votes Regularly Given, Derek T. Muller

Journal Articles

Every four years, Congress convenes to count presidential electoral votes. In recent years, members of Congress have objected or attempted to object to the counting of electoral votes on the ground that those votes were not "regularly given." That language comes from the Electoral Count Act of 1887. But the phrase "regularly given" is a term of art, best understood as "cast pursuant to law." It refers to controversies that arise after the appointment of presidential electors, when electors cast their votes and send them to Congress. Yet members of Congress have incorrectly used the objection to challenge an assortment …

Weaponizing The Ballot, Derek T. Muller

Journal Articles

State legislatures are considering passing laws to prevent presidential candidates from appearing on the ballot if they fail to disclose their tax returns. These proposals exceed the states' power under the Elections Clause and the Presidential Electors Clause. States have no power to add qualifications to presidential or congressional candidates. But states do have constitutional authority to regulate the manner of holding elections and to direct the manner of appointing presidential electors. "Manner" regulations that relate to the ballot are those that affect the integrity and reliability of the electoral process itself or that require a preliminary showing of substantial …

Presidential Control Of Elections, Lisa Marshall Manheim

Articles

In recent decades, presidents of both political parties have asserted increasingly aggressive forms of influence over the administrative state. During this same period, Congress has expanded the role that the federal government plays in election administration. The convergence of these two trends leads to a troubling but underexamined phenomenon: presidential control of elections. Relying on their official powers, presidents have the ability to affect the rules that govern elections, including elections meant to check and legitimize presidential powers in the first place. This self-serving arrangement heightens the risk of harms from political entrenchment and subordination of expertise. These harms, in …

Minority Rights And The Electoral College: What Minority, Whose Rights?, David Schultz

Georgia Law Review

The Electoral College as a method of selecting U.S.
presidents was allegedly set up to protect one type of minority
rights—those of slave states and small states—but over time
it has operated to deny the rights of racial and other minorities,
especially given the winner-take-all system of electoral vote
allocation used in forty-eight states. This Essay examines the
history and current operation of the Electoral College, detailing
how, despite its changes, it continues to privilege some forms of
minority rights at the expense of others. The Essay also
indicates how in its current form in forty-eight states, the
Electoral College …

Bring The Masks And Sanitizer: The Surprising Bipartisan Consensus About Safety Measures For In-Person Voting During The Coronavirus Pandemic, Joshua A. Douglas, Michael A. Zilis

Georgia Law Review

Requiring masks at the polls might implicate a clash
between two vital rights: the constitutional right to vote and the
right to protect one’s health. Yet the debate during the 2020
election over requirements to wear a mask at the polls obscured
one key fact: a majority of Americans supported a mask
mandate for voting. That is the new insight we provide in this
Essay: when surveyed, Americans strongly supported safety
measures for in-person voting, and that support was high
regardless of partisanship. One implication of our results is
that by making some widely supported safety modifications,
state election officials …

Elected-Official-Affiliated Nonprofits: Closing The Public Integrity Gap, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have witnessed the growing use by elected officials, particularly state and local chief executives, of affiliated nonprofit organizations to advance their policy goals. Some of these organizations engage in public advocacy to advance a governor’s or mayor’s legislative program. Others operate more like conventional charities, raising philanthropic support for a range of governmental social welfare programs. Elected officials fundraise for these organizations, which are often staffed by close associates of those elected officials, and the organizations’ public communications frequently feature prominently the name or likeness of their elected-official sponsor. As these organizations do not engage in electioneering, they …

The Role Of Opposition In A Democracy: A Bibliometric Analysis, Abhinav Shrivastava Mr., Richa Dwivedi Ms.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Globally, democracy is under threat with the prevalence of authoritarian regime all over the world and the role of opposition in a democracy is an under studied subject and has not received adequate importance by researchers all over the world. The present study focuses on the bibliometrics analysis of the role of opposition in democratic system in order to understand the research status of the subject globally using SCOPUS and Web of Science databases.

The analysis shows that research has been undertaken by various organisations and researchers however, the present time demands more attention on the role of opposition so …

Twenty-Third Amendment Problems Confronting District Of Columbia Statehood, Derek T. Muller

Journal Articles

Proposals to make the District of Columbia a state would leave behind a new, substantially smaller District named "Capital." The Twenty-Third Amendment guarantees that the new District would have three electoral votes, no matter how few people reside in it. Proposals that would make the District of Columbia state do not adequately address this issue. Statehood, if it proceeds, should be conditioned on repeal of the Twenty-Third Amendment. Potential alternative statutory solutions to the Twenty-Third Amendment--which do not exist in recent bills that Congress has considered--present constitutional, legal, and practical problems.

In one sense, the scope of this Article is …

A Bully Pulpit Approach To Elections In The Early Biden Administration, Derek T. Muller

Journal Articles

From the Article

2020 yielded innovation to administer an election during a pandemic, high voter participation, divisive social media maelstroms, and extraordinary doubt cast by the losing presidential candidate on the results, all culminating in a riot at the Capitol during the counting of electoral votes. Election disputes looked bad in 2016, but they appear to have become even worse. Election law has attracted President Joe Biden's attention, but much less in legislative reforms and much more in the bully pulpit to advance his agenda.

Trump V. Mazars Usa, Llp: The Case Of The Chief Justice And The Congressional Subpoenas, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Democracy Principle In State Constitutions, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Miriam Seifter

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, antidemocratic behavior has rippled across the nation. Lame-duck state legislatures have stripped popularly elected governors of their powers; extreme partisan gerrymanders have warped representative institutions; state officials have nullified popularly adopted initiatives. The federal constitution offers few resources to address these problems, and ballot-box solutions cannot work when antidemocratic actions undermine elections themselves. Commentators increasingly decry the rule of the many by the few.

This Article argues that a vital response has been neglected. State constitutions embody a deep commitment to democracy. Unlike the federal constitution, they were drafted – and have been repeatedly rewritten and amended …

The Promise And Peril Of Local Election Administration, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The administration of elections in the United States—including elections for federal office – is highly decentralized.

Fundamental election law decisions – such as registration and voter identification requirements, and early in-person voting and vote-by-mail rules – are made by the state legislature, but the actual conduct of elections is handled almost entirely by local governments.

Local officials register voters, process absentee ballot applications, design ballots, recruit and train poll workers, manage early voting and election day operations, acquire, maintain and secure voting equipment, and count, canvass, and report the results. In most states, local officials also pay for most of …

Federalizing The Voting Rights Act, Travis Crum

Scholarship@WashULaw

In Presidential Control of Elections, Professor Lisa Marshall Manheim masterfully canvasses how “a president can affect the rules of elections that purport to hold him accountable” and thereby “undermine the democratic will and delegitimize the executive branch.” Bringing together insights from administrative law and election law, she categorizes how presidents exercise control over elections: priority setting through executive agencies, encouraging gridlock in independent agencies, and idiosyncratic exercise of their narrow grants of unilateral authority.

Manheim’s principal concern is an executive influencing elections to entrench themselves and their allies in power. Her prognosis for the future is steely-eyed, and she recognizes …