Election Law Commons^™

Sins Of Omission: Abstention In Democratic Institutions, Grant M. Hayden

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Assumptions regarding the effect of an abstention guide the theory and practice of abstention across the full range of democratic decisionmaking. Sometimes, however, these assumptions are false, and may prevent voters from achieving their objectives. This Article examines the effect that abstention has under common voting procedures, dispelling many assumptions that voters make about the effect of an abstention.

Arbitrating Ballot Battles?, Rebecca Green

Kentucky Law Journal

This short article posits that arbitration is an under-explored mechanism for resolving post-election disputes. As Professor Edward Foley documents in Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States, post-election disputes have brought state and federal government to a political precipice numerous times in our history. A comprehensive, transparent, and fair arbitration process could well save us from another.

In Defense Of Lowering The Voting Age, Joshua A. Douglas

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Essay outlines the various policy arguments in favor of lowering the voting age to sixteen. Part I presents a very brief history of the voting age in U.S. elections. It notes that setting the voting age at eighteen is, in many ways, a historical accident, so lowering the voting age for local elections does not cut against historical norms. Part II explains that there are no constitutional barriers to local jurisdictions lowering the voting age for their own elections. Part III highlights the benefits to democracy and representation that lowering the voting age will engender. Turning eighteen represents a …

Voter Ignorance And Deliberative Democracy, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

American voters are shockingly ignorant about politics. Not only do they not know basic facts about the structure of American government (what the three branches are, etc.) or the views of the major political parties, they do not really know in many cases even what they believe about politics, because what they believe can be manipulated depending on how pollsters ask the questions. People may oppose welfare, for instance, but favor increasing money transfers to the poor-which is pretty much what welfare is.2 Even worse, when voters are motivated to seek out more information, and do seek out that information, …

Economic Precarity, Race, And Voting Structures, Atiba R. Ellis

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Voter Welfare: An Emerging Rule Of Reason In Voting Rights Law, Samuel Issacharoff

Indiana Law Journal

For the first time in at least a generation, the central focus of voting rights law has returned to the issue of eligibility to cast a ballot and the act of voting itself. Unlike in prior generations, the fights over voting are centrally part of a partisan battle for electoral supremacy and are not organized around perpetuating the historic sub-ordination of minority populations—whatever the localized impact on minorities that the new voting rules may trigger. In the partisan environment, courts face claims of exclusion that only imperfectly map onto constitutional prohibitions of discrimina-tory intent or statutory protections of minority voting …

The Long Shadow Of Bush V. Gore: Judicial Partisanship In Election Cases, Michael S. Kang, Joanna M. Shepherd

Faculty Articles

Bush v. Gore decided a presidential election and is the most dramatic election case in our lifetime, but cases like it are decided every year at the state level. Ordinary state courts regularly decide questions of election rules and administration that effectively determine electoral outcomes hanging immediately in the balance. Election cases like Bush v. Gore embody a fundamental worry with judicial intervention into the political process: outcome-driven, partisan judicial decisionmaking. The Article investigates whether judges decide cases, particularly politically sensitive ones, based on their partisan loyalties more than the legal merits of the cases. It presents a novel method …

Electing Justice Roush To The Supreme Court Of Virginia, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

In late April 2015, the Supreme Court of Virginia announced that Justice LeRoy F. Millette, Jr. would retire on July 31, 2015. Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe expeditiously created an open process for tapping a worthy successor. At July’s conclusion, the Governor appointed Fairfax County Circuit Judge Jane Marum Roush, an experienced, consensus jurist. On a Sunday night, merely two days after Roush swore her oath of office, Republican General Assembly leaders proclaimed their caucuses’ intention to elect another individual, despite conceding that Roush was very qualified. During the August special session, this concerted GOP endeavor prompted a Republican senator to …

State Judges And The Right To Vote, Joshua A. Douglas

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

State courts are paramount in defining the constitutional right to vote. This primacy of state courts exists in part because the right to vote is a state-based right protected under state constitutions. In addition, election administration is largely state-driven, with states regulating most of the rules for casting and counting ballots. State law thus guarantees—and state courts interpret—the voting rights that we cherish so much as a society. State courts that issue rulings broadly defining the constitutional right to vote best protect the most fundamental right in our democracy; state decisions that constrain voting to a narrower scope do harm …

A “Checklist Manifesto” For Election Day: How To Prevent Mistakes At The Polls, Joshua A. Douglas

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Mistakes happen—especially at the polls on Election Day. To fix this complex problem inherent in election administration, this Article proposes the use of simple checklists. Errors occur in every election, yet many of them are avoidable. Poll workers should have easy-to-use tools to help them on Election Day as they handle throngs of voters. Checklists can assist poll workers in pausing during a complex process to avoid errors. This is a simple idea with a big payoff: fewer lost votes, shorter lines at the polls, a reduction in post-election litigation, and smoother election administration. Further, unlike many other suggested election …

Politics At Work After Citizens United, Ruben J. Garcia

Scholarly Works

There are seismic changes going on in the political system. The United States Supreme Court has constitutionalized the concentration of political power in the "one percent" in several recent decisions, including Citizens United v. FEC. At the same time, unions are representing a shrinking share of the workforce, and their political power is also being diminished. In order for unions to recalibrate the balance of political power at all, they must collaborate with grassroots community groups, as they have done in several recent campaigns. There are, however, various legal structures that make coordination between unions and nonunion groups difficult, …

Political Dysfunction And The Election Of Donald Trump: Problems Of The U.S. Constitution's Presidency, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

In this article, Professor Orentlicher examines the Constitution's design for the executive branch. He argues that by opting for a single executive rather than a multi-person executive, the Constitution causes two serious problems-it fuels the high levels of partisan polarization that we see today, and it increases the likelihood of misguided presidential decision making. Drawing on the experience in other countries with executive power shared by multiple officials, he proposes a bipartisan executive.

A Right To Participate In The Electoral Process, Jessica Bulman-Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

In McCutcheon v. FEC, Chief Justice Roberts described campaign contributions as a form of participation in electoral politics. His plurality opinion invalidating aggregate limits on contributions to federal candidates concluded that “[c]onstituents have the right to support candidates who share their views and concerns” and that representatives’ responsiveness to such concerns “is key to the very concept of self-governance through elected officials.” As commentators quickly noticed, there was something curious about this paean to democratic representation: the “constituents” the Chief Justice described were not eligible to vote for most of the candidates they were funding. They were not, in other …

No U-Turn Needed On The Elected Presidency, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan cited the commentary "Let's talk about policy failures and the elected presidency" by Professor Kishore Mahbubani, where the latter argued that Singapore’s policy of an elected presidency should be revisited, and perhaps "the time has come to do a U-turn", stop having direct elections and go back to the previous practice of having Parliament elect the president. While Associate Prof Tan noted that Prof Mahbubani's concern is legitimate, he emphasised that the way forward is not a U-turn, but rather, a collective effort to determine how we can reduce the likelihood of electing …

Who's Afraid Of The Hated Political Gerrymander?, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The political gerrymander has few friends among scholars and commentators. Even a majority on the Supreme Court agreed that the practice violates constitutional and democratic norms. And yet, this is one of the few issues that the US. Supreme Court refuses to regulate. The justices mask their refusal to regulate this area on a professed inability to divine judicially-manageable standards. In turn, scholars offer new standards for the justices to consider. This is not only a mistake but also misguided. The history of the political question doctrine makes clear that the discovery of manageable standards has never controlled the Court's …

November Madness: A Proposal For Representative Democracy Brackets To Eliminate The Undue Influence Of Money On Elections, Daniel P. Valentine

Texas A&M Law Review

This Comment proposes Representative Democracy Brackets, a multi-level manner of choosing candidates in which all voters have an equal voice, but which by its structure reduces the effect of mass marketing in favor of a focus on forming and evaluating interpersonal relationships. By implementing Representative Democracy Brackets, a state or the United States can achieve the twin benefits of decreasing the undue effects of political spending and increasing the quality of the resulting decisions. The proposed brackets winnow the pool of voters until it is small enough to make an informed decision.

This Comment defines the problem by reviewing the …

In The Shadows Of Sunlight: The Effects Of Transparency On State Political Campaigns, Douglas M. Spencer, Abby K. Wood

Faculty Articles and Papers

In recent years, the courts have invalidated a variety of campaign finance laws while simultaneously upholding disclosure requirements. Courts view disclosure as a less-restrictive means to root out corruption while critics claim that disclosure chills speech and deters political participation. Using individual-level contribution data from state elections between 2000 and 2008, we find that the speech-chilling effects of disclosure are negligible. On average, less than one donor per candidate is likely to stop contributing when the public visibility of campaign contributions increases. Moreover, we do not observe heterogeneous effects for small donors or ideological outliers despite an assumption in First …

India's Participatory Model: The Right To Information In Election Law, Manoj Mate

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

A New Proposal To Address Local Voting Discrimination, Cody Gray

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Pivotal Moment For Election Law, Joshua A. Douglas

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Judicial "Enforcement" Of A Grand Election Bargain, Michael J. Pitts

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Judicial Review Of Direct Democracy: A Reappraisal, Michael E. Solimine

Kentucky Law Journal

In his dissent in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission in 2015, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the Supreme Court had been inconsistent in the rigor it employs when considering constitutional challenges to the products of direct democracy, i.e., referenda and initiatives. Some cases seemed to use stricter scrutiny, and others lesser scrutiny, as compared to challenges to ordinary legislation. Justice Thomas argued that the review of direct democracy should be the same as for ordinary legislation, a proposition with which this Article agrees. This Article challenges the position advanced by Professor Julian Eule over twenty-five years …

Introduction: New Models For Prosecutorial Accountability, Russell Shapiro

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

The criminal justice system in the United States was established on a simple notion: “that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.” It is for this reason that a prosecutor’s burden at trial is so demanding, requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet, while a vast majority of prosecutors are committed to the highest ethical standards, with troubling frequency, some high profile exonerations shed light on systemic problems, most often involving failures by prosecutors and other law enforcement officials to disclose exculpatory and impeachment evidence as required by Brady v. Maryland.

To address …

Financing Corporate Elections, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

Elections for corporate directorships have become more competitive and expensive in recent years, raising important questions of corporate campaign finance, such as whether an insurgent campaign must disclose the source of its funding and whether a director is permitted to receive third-party compensation during her term in office (known as a "golden leash"). These present novel and unanswered issues of corporate law, but many analogous issues have been resolved in the political sphere using the First Amendment and a well-developed line of Supreme Court case law beginning with Buckley v. Valeo and continuing through Citizens United and other key precedents. …

Fighting To Lose The Vote: How The Solider Voting Acts Of 1942 And 1944 Disenfranchised America's Armed Forces, Molly Guptill Manning

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Politics At Work After Citizens United, Ruben J. Garcia

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

There are seismic changes going on in the political system. The United States Supreme Court has constitutionalized the concentration of political power in the “one percent” in several recent decisions, including Citizens United v. FEC. At the same time, unions are representing a shrinking share of the workforce, and their political power is also being diminished. In order for unions to recalibrate the balance of political power at all, they must collaborate with grassroots community groups, as they have done in several recent campaigns. There are, however, various legal structures that make coordination between unions and nonunion groups difficult, …

A Most Precious Right: Equal Protection, Voter Photo Identification, And The Battle Brewing In Texas, Emily V. Cox

Georgia Law Review

On a Tuesday in November, millions of Americans show
up and cast their votes, even in the face of cynicism,
perceived futility, and disappointment with the politicians
in Washington. It is the birthright of every citizen, and
there is simply nothing more fundamentally American.
The future of this right is now uncertain in the wake of the
United States Supreme Court decisions Crawford and
Shelby County. This Note suggests finding certainty by
re-framing the current test for the constitutionality of state
voting restrictions, the Anderson-Burdick Balancing Test.
This new imagining of the current test hinges on
identifying the nature of …

The Appearance And The Reality Of Quid Pro Quo Corruption: An Empirical Investigation, Christopher Robertson, D. Alex Winkelman, Kelly Bergstrand, Darren Modzelewski

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court says that campaign finance regulations are unconstitutional unless they target "quid pro quo" corruption or its appearance. To test those appearances, we fielded two studies. First, in a highly realistic simulation, three grand juries deliberated on charges that a campaign spender bribed a Congressperson. Second, 1271 representative online respondents considered whether to convict, with five variables manipulated randomly. In both studies, jurors found quid pro quo corruption for behaviors they believed to be common. This research suggests that Supreme Court decisions were wrongly decided and that Congress and the states have greater authority to regulate campaign finance. …

A Closer Look At Ncmp, Elected President Reforms, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The proposed changes to the political system continue the Government’s narrative that political reforms ought to enhance Parliament’s representativeness and increase Singaporeans’ civic participation. They reinforce the Government’s abiding belief that the political system must produce a Government with a clear mandate, demonstrated through a strong parliamentary majority, for it to govern resolutely and decisively in the long-term interests of Singapore.

Marriage On The Ballot: An Analysis Of Same-Sex Marriage Referendums In North Carolina, Minnesota, And Washington During The 2012 Elections, Craig M. Burnett, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.