Election Law Commons^™

Fundamental, Unequivocal, Yet Unreliable: The Interplay Of Voting, Electronic Voting Systems, And Trade Secrets In Today's Interconnected World, Burns Marlow

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Counterfeit Campaign Speech, Rebecca Green

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

A New Voting Rights Act For A New Century: How Liberalizing The Voting Rights Act’S Bailout Provisions Can Help Pass The Voting Rights Advancement Act Of 2017, Mario Q. Fitzgerald

Brooklyn Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in Shelby County. v. Holder in 2013. Members of Congress have attempted to renew the VRA with an updated coverage formula through the Voting Rights Advancement Acts of 2015 and of 2017. Unfortunately, Congressional Republicans have not supported either bill. Even if passed in its current form, the Supreme Court is likely to strike down the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2017 (VRAA) for violating the principle of “equal sovereignty between the States” as set forth by the Court in Shelby County. Therefore, this note …

Is Groton The Next Evenwel?, Paul H. Edelman

Michigan Law Review Online

In Evenwel v. Abbott the Supreme Court left open the question of whether states could employ population measures other than total population as a basis for drawing representative districts so as to meet the requirement of "one person, one vote" (OPOV). It was thought that there was little prospect of resolving this question soon as no appropriate instances of such behavior were known. That belief was mistaken. In this Essay I report on the Town of Groton, Connecticut, which uses registered voter data to apportion seats in its Representative Town Meeting and has done so since its incorporation in 1957. …

The Question For Another Day: Hooker V. Illinois State Board Of Elections And Its Effect On The Vitality Of Citizen Ballot Initiatives And Redistricting Reform In Illinois, Thomas Q. Ford

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Like most states, Illinois is no stranger to political gerrymandering. Since 2010, redistricting reformers have made repeated efforts to change the way Illinois's political maps are drawn, essentially by minimizing or eliminating the role lawmakers play in the process. Polls show the vast majority of Illinoisans support such a change. Reformers have chosen Illinois's citizen ballot initiative as their vehicle to amend the redistricting process, but every proposed initiative has been struck down in court before reaching voters. Most recently, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected a proposed initiative in Hooker v. Illinois State Board of Elections. This Note argues …

The (Dunkin') Donut Hole: Fixing The Llc Loophole In State Campaign Finance Laws—A New Hampshire Exemplar, Brendan O'Neill

Seattle University Law Review

The campaign finance laws of New Hampshire (and other states) permit direct contributions to gubernatorial candidates from individuals or corporations of up to $7,000 per campaign cycle. However, no state campaign finance statutes discuss, define, or even mention LLCs. Each LLC is its own individual donor for the purpose of direct campaign contributions, regardless of who controls it. Thus, a wealthy individual can max out the $7,000 direct contribution to his or her preferred candidate through every LLC under his or her control, limited only by imagination and the ability to set up as many LLCs as legally feasible. A …

Rethinking How Voters Challenge Gerrymandering: Congress, Courts, And State Constitutions, Megan Wilson

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Keynote Address: Judging The Political And Political Judging: Justice Scalia As Case Study, Richard L. Hasen

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This is a revised version of a Keynote Address delivered at “The Supreme Court and American Politics,” a symposium held October 17, 2017 at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. In this Address, Professor Hasen considers through the lens of Justice Scalia’s opinions the role that views of the political process play, at least rhetorically, in how Supreme Court Justices decide cases. It focuses on Justice Scalia’s contradictory views on self-dealing and incumbency protection across a range of cases, comparing campaign finance on the one hand to partisan gerrymandering, voter identification laws, political patronage, and ballot access rules on the other. …

The Consequences Of Citizens United: What Do The Lawyers Say?, Ann Southworth

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This Essay examines a polarized world of advocacy over campaign finance regulation in the Roberts Court. It considers what lawyers who filed party and amicus briefs in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission have to say about the consequences of the decision. It shows that the lawyers generally agree about the ruling’s direct consequences but strongly disagree about whether those consequences are good or bad for the country and what lessons the public should draw. This Essay also explores the competing frames that these lawyers bring to questions about money in politics and their competing perspectives about government and where …

How Courts Analyze Voter Identification Laws Under The First Amendment, Joby Len Richard

LSU Master's Theses

Some scholarship and political experts describe voter ID laws as a form of voter suppression because they make it harder for certain groups of people to vote. First, this thesis considers the historical backdrop of voter discrimination resulting in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and subsequent state uses of registration and voter ID laws. Then, this study reviews the theoretical foundation of freedom of expression as developed by Thomas Emerson and individual and social free expression values, including the social value of self-governance explicated by Alexander Meiklejohn. Some scholars also suggest that voter ID laws may …

Teaching Apportionment, Charles M. Biles

IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Cal Poly Humboldt

No abstract provided.

State Court Litigation: The New Front In The War Against Partisan Gerrymandering, Charlie Stewart

Michigan Law Review Online

Partisan gerrymandering is the process of drafting state and congressional districts in a manner that gives one political party an advantage over another. The end goal is simple: help your party win more seats or protect existing ones. The tactic is as old as the United States. In 1788, Patrick Henry convinced the Virginia state legislature to draw the 5th Congressional District to pit his rival James Madison against James Monroe. The term “gerrymander” itself is a hybrid: in 1810, democratic Governor Gerry signed a partisan redistricting plan into law—one that contained a district that infamously looked like a salamander. …

A Conversation On Learning From The History Of The Civil Rights Movement, Walter F. Mondale

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

Introduction & Abridged Transcript, The Summit for Civil Rights, November 10, 2017

When At Loggerheads With Customary International Law: The Right To Run For Public Office And The Right To Vote, Thompson Chengeta

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Many populist demagogues in America and Europe have spoken; and continue to speak; against human rights in their campaigns for political office. This article discusses the factors that have contributed to the current wave of populism; and the nature of the challenges that are presented by populism to democracy; human rights; and constitutionalism from an international human rights law perspective. It also focuses on President Donald Trump; who was voted President of the United States; even after he clearly and publicly indicated his support for torture and his intentions to approve it in the United States. To that end; the …

Appendix: A Reasonable Bias Approach To Gerrymandering: Using Automated Plan Generation To Evaluate Redistricting Proposals, Bruce E. Cain, Wendy K. Tam Cho, Yan Y. Liu, Emily R. Zhang

William & Mary Law Review Online

Here, we present our findings, analogous to those on the efficiency gap in Part I.B of our Article published in the print edition of the William & Mary Law Review, on the other measures of partisan fairness.

Taking The States' Congressional Delegations Seriously: A Twelfth Amendment And First Amendment Approach To Identifying The Worst Gerrymanders, Jamin B. Raskin

William & Mary Law Review Online

Charming and irresistible as it is, the nineteenth-century slang term “gerrymander” cannot generate an equal protection standard to transform congressional and state legislative redistricting in the twenty-first century.

Appendix: Text And Precedent For Representational Adequacy Claims Under Fifty State Constitutions, Christopher S. Elmendorf

William & Mary Law Review Online

This Appendix supplements the Article, From Educational Adequacy to Representational Adequacy: A New Template for Legal Attacks on Partisan Gerrymanders in the print edition of the William & Mary Law Review.

Judicial Candidates’ Right To Lie, Nat Stern

Maryland Law Review

, the Supreme Court struck down a law forbidding certain judicial campaign speech. A decade later, the Court in United States v. Alvarez ruled that factually false statements do not constitute categorically unprotected expression under the First Amendment. Together, these two holdings, along with the Court’s wider protection of political expression and disapproval of content-based restrictions, cast serious doubt on states’ ability to ban false and misleading speech by judicial candidates. Commonly known as the misrepresent clause, this prohibition has intuitive appeal in light of judges’ responsibilities and still exists in many states. Given the provision’s vulnerability to challenge, however, …

Raila Amolo Odinga And Another V Independent Electoral And Boundaries Commission And Others Presidential Petition No. 1 Of 2017, O'Brien Kaaba

SAIPAR Case Review

No abstract provided.

Black And White Make Gray: Common Cause V. Kemp, What's The Trigger For Purging Voters?, Caitlin Wise

Mercer Law Review

Imagine showing up to the voting poll, eager to vote and to show support for a candidate, and waiting in a long line, possibly in the cold. Then imagine handing your identification over only to be told you were not on the voter registration roll. This is what happened to 100,000 voters in the 2016 presidential primary election when they were purged from the voter registration rolls. Because of the voter purging, they were unable to cast their vote in a controversial and close election. ABC News reported many voters who were removed from voting registration rolls were from low-income …

Suing For Spanish: Puerto Ricans, Bilingual Voting, And Legal Activism In The 1970s, Ariel Arnau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how the legal activism of a Puerto Rican group of activist-lawyers and community members contributed to the reshaping of voting law and language policy during the 1970s. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF) coordinated a series of lawsuits in Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia during the early 1970s. The decisions in these lawsuits provided the legal framework to rewrite federal voting rights law during the Voting Rights Act (VRA) reauthorization hearings in 1975. These cases resulted in vastly expanded opportunity to vote for all language minorities in the United States. These civil rights …

Race And Representation Revisited: The New Racial Gerrymandering Cases And Section 2 Of The Vra, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Section 2 After Section 5: Voting Rights And The Race To The Bottom, Ellen D. Katz

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Causes And Consequences Of Gerrymandering, Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos

William & Mary Law Review

In recent years, scholars have made great strides in measuring the extent of partisan gerrymandering. By and large, though, they have not yet tried to answer the questions that logically come next: What are the causes of district plans’ partisan skews? And what consequences do these skews have for democratic values? Using a unique dataset of state house and congressional plans’ partisan tilts from 1972 to 2016, this Article addresses precisely these issues. It finds that single-party control of the redistricting process dramatically benefits the party in charge, while other mapmaking configurations have small and inconsistent effects. It also shows …

Prophylactic Redistricting? Congress’S Section 5 Power And The New Equal Protection Right To Vote, Michael T. Morley

William & Mary Law Review

The Voting Rights Act (VRA) has been an important mechanism for increasing participation by racial minorities in the electoral system. In recent years, however, the Supreme Court has demonstrated its willingness to reconsider the VRA’s constitutionality. Due to the broad prophylactic scope of section 2 of the VRA, two main developments pose risks to its continued validity.

First, the Supreme Court narrowed Congress’s enforcement power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment in City of Boerne v. Flores, and is likely to interpret Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment similarly. Section 2 of the VRA features many key characteristics of …

Race Or Party, Race As Party, Or Party All The Time: Three Uneasy Approaches To Conjoined Polarization In Redistricting And Voting Cases, Richard L. Hasen

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Reasonable Bias Approach To Gerrymandering: Using Automated Plan Generation To Evaluate Redistricting Proposals, Bruce E. Cain, Wendy K. Tam Cho, Yan Y. Liu, Emily R. Zhang

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taking Virtual Representation Seriously, Joseph Fishkin

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Something Old, Something New, Or Something Really Old? Second Generation Racial Gerrymandering Litigation As Intentional Racial Discrimination Cases, Dale E. Ho

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Intent Is Enough: Invidious Partisanship In Redistricting, Justin Levitt

William & Mary Law Review

When the Supreme Court last seriously grappled with partisan gerrymandering, all nine Justices concluded that an excessive injection of politics in the redistricting process violates the Constitution, but failed to agree on what is excessive (or who should decide). Commentators have since offered no shortage of assistance, offering various models to resolve exactly “how much is too much.” This effort is a sprint to answer the wrong question. It is perhaps the question Justices have asked, but not the one best illuminating the problem.

This Article suggests an alternative: not “how much,” but “what kind.” The Court wants to distinguish …