Election Law Commons^™

Electoral College: Supreme Court Decides That States May Replace Or Punish Presidential Electors Who Do Not Vote For The Candidate Who Won The Most Votes In The State, But Leaves Several Questions Unanswered, Alan Raphael

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Are Presidential Electors Free To Vote As They Wish, Despite A State’S Popular Vote?, Alan Raphael, Elliott Mondry

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other: Naacp V. Alabama Is Not A Manual For Powerful, Wealthy Spenders To Pour Unlimited Secret Money Into Our Political Process, Erin Chlopak

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

‘‘Appearance Of Corruption’’: Linking Public Opinion And Campaign Finance Reform, Douglas M. Spencer, Alexander G. Theodoridis

Publications

At present, campaign finance regulations may only be justified if their primary purpose is to prevent quid pro quo corruption or the appearance of corruption. References to the ‘‘appearance of corruption’’ are ubiquitous in campaign finance decisions, yet courts have provided very little guidance about what the phrase means. In this article, we report findings from a broadly representative national survey in which we (1) directly ask respondents to identify behaviors that appear politically corrupt, and (2) indirectly measure perceptions of corruption using a novel paired-choice conjoint experiment asking respondents to choose which of two randomly generated candidates are more …

Law Library Blog (January 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

While The Water Is Stirring: Sojourner Truth As Proto-Agonist In The Fight For (Black) Women’S Rights, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

This Essay argues for a greater understanding of Sojourner Truth’s little-discussed role as a proto-agonist (a marginalized, long-suffering forerunner as opposed to a protagonist, a highly celebrated central character) in the process that led up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Though the Nineteenth Amendment failed to deliver on its promise of suffrage for black women immediately after its enactment, black women were stalwarts in the fight for the Amendment and for women’s rights more broadly, well before the ratification of the Amendment and for many years after its passage. Women’s rights in general, and black women’s rights in …

The Political Process Of Preemption, Paul A. Diller

University of Richmond Law Review

Preemption, particularly of the state-city variety, has become a hot topic. State legislatures in many states over the last decade have preempted a wide swath of areas in which cities and counties were previously free to govern. In addition to the sweeping nature and frequency of preemption, the increasingly aggressive methods of enforcing preemption have drawn notice. The threat of fiscal penalties, removal of local officials from office, and even criminal sanctions constitute what one scholar has dubbed the phenomenon of “hyper preemption.”

Governing Elections Without Law, Derek T. Muller

Journal Articles

From the Article

The field of election law, unsurprisingly, focuses on law. But Professor Rick Hasen's book Election Meltdown rightly highlights that law can only take us so far in governing elections. As we think about the problems that persist in our elections, Professor Hasen moves us to think about long-term reforms, which are the best and perhaps only ways to respond to some of our elections' short-term perils. Some of his proposed reforms offer new legal frameworks. But I want to focus on those nonlegal reforms that work alongside the law - places where the law simply runs out, …

Politicians As Fiduciaries: Public Law V. Private Law When Altering The Date Of An Election, Steven Cleveland

Faculty Articles

In the 2019 decision Rucho v. Common Cause, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that federal challenges to partisan gerrymandering-a practice yielding election results that "reasonably seem unjust"-were non-justiciable. If partisan gerrymandering claims are not federally justiciable, and if that conclusion emboldens politicians, how else might incumbents manipulate election mechanics to preserve their political advantage? This Article explores one possibility that was briefly mentioned by the Rucho majority: the strategic advancement or delay of the date of a federal election. The strategic shift of election day is not simply a theoretical problem. Foreign politicians have strategically altered their election days for …

Brnovich V. Dnc: Election Litigation Migrates From Federal Courts To The Political Process, Derek T. Muller

Journal Articles

We are in a time of public skepticism over elections. The losing side doubts the fairness of the outcome, attributing the loss to suppression, fraud, foreign influence, or late-breaking changes to laws—some “true reason” outside the legitimate political process why a preferred candidate failed. The winning side is a sour contest or a sore loser away from doubting the legitimacy of the election.

It’s hard to tell whether the sharp rise in litigation over elections is the cause or the effect. Major political parties are spending more money than ever on lawyers and litigation in federal elections, from $7.5 million …

Election Law Localism In The Time Of Covid-19, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

In just a few short months, the COVID-19 pandemic has already provoked multiple election law disputes. These have tended to track the same normative and policy conflicts that have marked election law for years, particularly the tension between strict adherence to preexisting rules and the willingness to stretch or relax those rules in order to deal with emergency conditions, and the overlapping debate over whether the primary threat to the integrity of the electoral system is fraud or the legal and administrative obstacles to voting during a pandemic. A third, but much less discussed, strand in the emerging COVID-19 election …

How Many Votes Is Too Few?, Rebecca Green

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Liquidating Elector Discretion, Rebecca Green

Faculty Publications

In Chiafalo et al. v. Washington, the US. Supreme Court determined that states may constitutionally remove or punish faithless electors. In support of its holding, the Court cited a 2014 case called National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, which blessed a form of constitutional interpretation that looks to settled practice (or "liquidation," as James Madison called it) to resolve constitutional ambiguity. The Court agreed with petitioners that electors following the majority will of voters in their state is settled practice. This Article engages this assertion, suggesting that the question is more nuanced than the Court allowed. It …

Speech Inequality After Janus V. Afscme, Charlotte Garden

Faculty Articles

This Article explores the growing divide between the Roberts Court’s treatment of the free speech rights of wealthy individuals and corporations in campaign finance cases as compared to its treatment of the rights of public-sector labor unions and their members. First, it highlights some internal contradictions in the Janus Court’s analysis. Then, it discusses the growing—yet mostly ignored—divergence in the Court’s treatment of corporate and labor speakers with respect to the use of market influence to achieve political influence.The Article has two Parts. In Part I, I explain how the Court reached its decision in Janus before critiquing the decision’s …

When Presidential Campaigns End, What Happens To The Leftover Money?, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Andrew Yang and Michael Bennet have ended their campaigns for president.

What happens to the money they have raised, but not yet spent?

I teach and write about campaign finance law. There is one clear rule about that money: Candidates can’t use it for personal expenses, like mortgage payments, groceries, clothing purchases or vacations. But there are a lot of other options, both within politics and outside of it.

Money Matters But It Doesn’T Decide: The Case Of Michael Bloomberg’S Presidential Campaign, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Michael Bloomberg spent nearly a billion dollars in personal wealth on an unsuccessful bid for the US presidency. While personal spending is not limited by campaign finance laws, self-funded candidates often find it difficult to win elections.

A Better Financing System? The Death And Possible Rebirth Of The Presidential Nomination Public Financing Program, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

In the spring of 1974, the 31-year-old junior Senator from Delaware, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., published a law review article in which he decried the traditional system of privately financed election campaigns. Private financing, Senator Biden contended, “affords certain wealthy individuals or special interest groups the potential for exerting a disproportionate influence over both the electoral mechanism and the policy-making processes of the government.” Moreover, Biden urged, private funding poses an obstacle to the candidacies of “individuals of moderate means” and so was at odds with the “concept of American democracy [that] presumes that all citizens, regardless of access to …

Constitutional Law And The Presidential Nomination Process, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The Constitution says nothing about the presidential nominating process and has had little direct role in the evolution of that process from congressional caucuses to party national conventions to our current primary-dominated system of selecting convention delegates. Yet, constitutional law is a factor in empowering and constraining the principal actors in the nomination process and in shaping the framework for potential future changes.

The constitutional law of the presidential nomination process operates along two axes: government-party, and state-national. The government-party dimension focuses on the tension between the states and the federal government in writing the rules for and administering the …

Covid-19 And The Law: Elections, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

With one Supreme Court decision, lower federal and state court decisions, pending litigation, and proposals around the country for major changes in how elections are conducted, COVID-19 has already had and likely will continue to have a significant impact on election law.

The discussion that follows proceeds in two parts. The first addresses the initial consequences of COVID-19 as an electoral emergency. Voters were due to go to the polls in states around the country just as the pandemic was gathering force and governors and mayors were calling on people to stay at home and avoid large gatherings – which, …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Election 2020 Sees Record $11 Billion In Campaign Spending, Mostly From A Handful Of Super-Rich Donors, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Total spending in the 2020 federal elections is projected to set a new record of almost US$11 billion by November.

When adjusted for inflation, that’s over 50% higher than 2016 election spending. This year’s federal election spending – for the presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives – is on track to be double what it was in 2008.

The surge in campaign spending is striking. But my research on campaign finance regulation suggests the volume of election spending is not the main problem with the U.S. campaign finance system.

The real challenge for American democracy is where this …

Corporate Control, Dual Class, And The Limits Of Judicial Review, Zohar Goshen, Assaf Hamdani

Faculty Scholarship

Companies with a dual-class structure have increasingly been involved in high-profile battles over the reallocation of control rights. Google, for instance, sought to entrench its founders’ control by recapital­izing from a dual-class into a triple-class structure. The CBS board, in contrast, attempted to dilute its controlling shareholder by distributing a voting stock dividend that would empower minority shareholders to block a merger it perceived to be harmful. These cases raise a fundamental question at the heart of corporate law: What is the proper judicial response to self-dealing claims regarding reallocations of corporate control rights?

This Article shows that the reallocation …

Presidential Control Over Disputed Elections, Lisa Marshall Manheim

Articles

An election that is “disputed” lacks two qualities after Election Day: a clear winner and a concession. These elections instead depend on legal processes — recounts, court proceedings, and more — for resolution. As a result, when a sitting President, running for reelection, becomes immersed in a disputed presidential election, he potentially enjoys an advantage over his opponent. He can attempt to exploit the powers of the presidency to push these legal proceedings in his favor. As a practical matter, this advantage can be formidable. A sitting president can resort to his extraordinary bully pulpit, for example, to influence public …

Cracks In The Foundation, Lisa Marshall Manheim

Articles

This essay is part of a symposium on Richard L. Hasen’s book, Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy (2020). It discusses how intentional voter suppression runs contrary to a universalist conception of voting and exacerbates the other major threats facing American elections.

The Independent State Legislature Doctrine, Federal Elections, And State Constitutions, Michael T. Morley

Georgia Law Review

The U.S. Constitution does not confer authority to regulate
federal elections on states as entities. Rather, it grants that
authority specifically to the “Legislature” of each state. The
“independent state legislature doctrine” teaches that a state
constitution is legally incapable of imposing substantive
restrictions on the authority over federal elections that the U.S.
Constitution confers directly upon a state’s legislature. Over the
past 130 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly adopted
conflicting positions on this doctrine without recognizing its
deep historical roots or normative justifications.
The independent state legislature doctrine reflects the
prevailing understanding of states, Congress, and other …

Foreword, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

In November 2019, the Western New England Law Review held its symposium, On Account of Sex: Women’s Suffrage and the Role of Gender in Politics Today. The symposium articles ask us to look at history to see what factors enabled path-breaking activists to secure the right to vote in a time of immense national turmoil. They also ask us to weigh how history should assess the strategic decisions that ultimately gained political rights for some women, but deliberately excluded Black women and other activists.

These historical accounts help us consider how the right to vote is faring, particularly after …

First Amendment (Un)Exceptionalism: A Comparative Taxonomy Of Campaign Finance Reform Proposals In The United States And United Kingdom, Lori A. Ringhand

Scholarly Works

There is an urgent conversation happening among the world’s democracies about how to respond to the combined threat of online electioneering and foreign interference in domestic elections. Despite the shadow such activities cast over the 2016 presidential election in the United States, the US has been largely absent from comparative discussions about how to tackle the problem. This is not just because of a recalcitrant president. The assumption that America’s “First Amendment Exceptionalism” – the idea that American freedom of expression law is simply too much of an outlier to warrant useful comparative consideration – is strong on both sides …

Gobbledygook: Political Questions, Manageability, & Partisan Gerrymandering, Michael Gentithes

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In finding that extreme partisan gerrymandering is a non-justiciable political question in Rucho v. Common Cause , the Supreme Court fixated upon the lack of judicially manageable standards to evaluate their constitutionality. The decision culminated in the Court's recent reinforcement of that manageability focus in partisan gerrymandering cases, with Chief Justice Roberts even calling efforts to numerically calculate the extremity of such gerrymandering "sociological gobbledygook." Such belabored fears about manageability misread the questions in the political question doctrine. The doctrine requires the Justices to initially ask, as a normative matter, whether the judiciary should resolve the controversy in our constitutional …

Restraining Judicial Application Of The "Safe Harbor" Provision In The Electoral Count Act, Derek T. Muller

Journal Articles

The Electoral Count Act of 1887, as codified in part at 3 U.S.C. § 5, includes a "safe harbor" for states to resolve disputes in their choices of presidential electors. Congress will treat as "conclusive" a "determination" about "any controversy or contest concerning the appointment" of presidential electors, if that determination is made "at least six days" before the time the electors are to meet. This is a rule governing how Congress handles "the counting of electoral votes as provided in the Constitution."

It is not a judicially-enforceable rule for courts to heed. And it is a rule that state …

Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, Travis Crum

Scholarship@WashULaw

Racially polarized voting makes minorities more vulnerable to discriminatory changes in election laws and therefore implicates nearly every voting rights doctrine. In Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court held that racially polarized voting is a necessary—but not a sufficient—condition for a vote dilution claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court, however, has recently questioned the propriety of recognizing the existence of racially polarized voting. This colorblind approach threatens not only the Gingles factors but also Section 2’s constitutionality.

The Court treats racially polarized voting as a modern phenomenon. But the relevant starting point is the 1860s, …