Election Law Commons^™

Visions Of The Republic Symposium: The People: A Pre-Primer For Critically Reevaluating Representation & Court Power In The Present, Marvin L. Astrada

Fordham Law Review Online

What exactly is an American? Who or what are the People? Is there an authentic, viable American political identity or community? Or do the deep ruptures and balkanization that seem to pervade law and politics— ranging from pandemics, national security, impeachment, and the environment, to issues of an everyday, local nature—indicate a crisis of legitimacy, cohesion, and national community?

Voting By Mail: Issues And Resources, Virginia A. Neisler

Law Librarian Scholarship

As the world navigates the worst pandemic in living memory, America has been faced with the prospect of holding a federal presidential election amid a public health crisis. In the spring of 2020, when the coronavirus began to spread rapidly in the United States, election officials in many states opted to extend absentee voting deadlines or postpone elections altogether to reduce the risk of disease transmission. In anticipation of a resurgence of COVID-19 in the fall, the scheduled November election has caused concern for many officials who have searched for potential solutions to make the upcoming presidential election safer.

Democracy, Deference, And Compromise: Understanding And Reforming Campaign Finance Jurisprudence, Scott P. Bloomberg

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court interpreted the government’s interest in preventing corruption as being limited to preventing quid pro quo— cash-for-votes—corruption. This narrow interpretation drastically circumscribed legislatures’ abilities to regulate the financing of elections, in turn prompting scholars to propose a number of reforms for broadening the government interest in campaign finance cases. These reforms include urging the Court to recognize a new government interest such as political equality, to adopt a broader understanding of corruption, and to be more deferential to legislatures in defining corruption.

Building upon that body of scholarship, this Article begins with a descriptive …

Undefeated - Exhibit Introductory Panels, Sally Brown

Undefeated Exhibit Panels

Undefeated - Exhibit Introductory Panel posters

Democracy, Deference, And Compromise: Understanding And Reforming Campaign Finance Jurisprudence, Scott P. Bloomberg

Faculty Publications

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court interpreted the government’s interest in preventing corruption as being limited to preventing quid pro quo—cash-for-votes—corruption. This narrow interpretation drastically circumscribed legislatures’ abilities to regulate the financing of elections, in turn prompting scholars to propose a number of reforms for broadening the government interest in campaign finance cases. These reforms include urging the Court to recognize a new government interest such as political equality, to adopt a broader understanding of corruption, and to be more deferential to legislatures in defining corruption. Building upon that body of scholarship, this Article begins with a descriptive account of …

Ge2020: No Wipeout But Another Breakthrough For The Workers’ Party, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan examined how the 2020 general election results show both the putative importance and the relative impotence of opposition politics in Singapore.

The Death Of Non-Resident Contribution Limit Bans And The Birth Of The New Small, Swing State, George J. Somi

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District race in 2018 featured an eye-popping number: 96.7. That figure represents the percentage of candidate Maura Sullivan’s individual contributions derived from out-of-state, non–New Hampshire donors. In August 2018, of the $1.37 million USD of individual contributions that Sullivan had raised, only 3.3%—$46,648 USD—originated from in-state contributors. Sullivan had received individual donations amounting to $497,405 USD from Boston, $216,359 USD from New York City, $101,562 USD from the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and $92,371 USD from San Francisco.

In nearby Maine, campaign finance reports filed on October 15, 2019, with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) indicate …

Women's Quotas: Making The Case For Codifying Syrian Women's Political Participation, Jomana Qaddour

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Mapping The New Senate, Assembly & Congressional Districts, Jeffrey M. Wice

Redistricting Resources

New York State in 2021 must redraw the State’s senate, assembly and congressional districts. The process will be different from the process used to draw legislative and congressional district lines in the past. Previously, the State legislature redrew the districts for its own members and for the State’s congressional members. After years of efforts to reform a process seen as too self-interested, New York State voters in 2014 approved an amendment to the State constitution that created a new Redistricting Commission that will propose new district lines to the legislature. The legislature still gets the last word, but the commission …

The Changing Face Of Terrorism And The Designation Of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Patrick J. Keenan

Indiana Law Journal

In this Article, I take up one slice of what should be a broad re-examination of

U.S. law and policy. I argue that the new attacks have been undertaken by entities

that can and should be designated as foreign terrorist organizations. Doing this would

permit prosecutors to target those who support these entities with tools that are not

currently available. This Article is both a doctrinal argument that directly addresses

the many legal hurdles that make designating groups, such as foreign hackers and

troll farms, terrorist organizations a complicated endeavor, and a policy argument

about how U.S. law and policy …

The Consent Of The Governed, Carter A. Hanson

Student Publications

The Consent of the Governed is a Kolbe Fellowship project investigating gerrymandering through the lens of mathematics, Supreme Court litigation, and the potential for redistricting reform. It was produced as a five-episode podcast during the summer of 2020; this paper is the transcription of the podcast script. The project begins with an analysis of the impact of gerrymandering on the composition of the current U.S. House of Representatives. It then investigates the arguments and stories of Supreme Court gerrymandering cases in the past twenty years within their political contexts, with a focus on the Court's reaction to different mathematical methods …

Thin And Thick Conceptions Of The Nineteenth Amendment Right To Vote And Congress's Power To Enforce It, Richard L. Hasen, Leah M. Litman

Articles

This Article, prepared for a Georgetown Law Journal symposium on the Nineteenth Amendment’s one-hundred-year anniversary, explores and defends a “thick” conception of the Nineteenth Amendment right to vote and Congress’s power to enforce it. A “thin” conception of the Nineteenth Amendment maintains that the Amendment merely prohibits states from enacting laws that prohibit women from voting once the state decides to hold an election. And a “thin” conception of Congress’s power to enforce the Nineteenth Amendment maintains that Congress may only supply remedies for official acts that violate the Amendment’s substantive guarantees. This Article argues the Nineteenth Amendment does more. …

What The New Cabinet Line-Up Says About Leadership Continuity And Renewal, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan discussed three features that stood out in the new Cabinet line-up after the July 10 General Election, and explained what this says about leadership continuity and renewal.

Democratic Legitimacy Under Conditions Of Severely Depressed Voter Turnout, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Due to the present pandemic, it seems increasingly likely that the 2020 general election in November will be held under conditions of unprecedented downward pressure on voter turnout. The possibility of severely depressed turnout for a highly consequentialpresidential election raises troubling questions of democratic legitimacy. Although voter turnout in the United States has historically been poor, low turnout is not usually thought to threaten the legitimacy of electoral processes when it results from voluntary abstention and is distributed unsystematically. Conversely, electoral legitimacy is often considered at risk when nonvoting is involuntary, especially when obstacles to voting fall systematically on specific …

How Single-Candidate Super Pacs Changed The Game And How To Change It Back: Adopting A Presumption Of Coordination And Fixing The Fec’S Gridlock, Sarah E. Adams

Brooklyn Law Review

A series of Supreme Court decisions chipping away at campaign finance regulations, particularly the regulation of expenditure-only groups, has resulted in a proliferation of single-candidate Super PACs. While purportedly independent of the candidate, in reality, single-candidate Super PACs operate as an extension of the candidate’s own campaign team. This note argues that single-candidate Super PACs, now operating as fundamental extensions of candidates’ campaigns, pose quid pro quo corruption risks by acting as surrogates for donors who have maxed out on contributions made directly to a candidate. This note will prove that curbing the proliferation of candidate Super PAC coordination, and …

The Vra At A Crossroads: The Ability Of Section 2 To Address Discriminatory Districting On The Eve Of The 2020 Census, Ben Boris

Notre Dame Law Review

Part I of this Note begins by examining the background of the VRA. In Part I, this Note will briefly summarize the Act’s relationship with the Fifteenth Amendment and the circumstances that prompted its enactment, and detail the development of both section 2 and section 5 of the Act, as they have been used to combat vote discrimination. Part I will also discuss recent Supreme Court decisions that have limited the strength of the Act and set the stage for an analysis of the Act’s inability to combat discriminatory districting.

Part II will highlight two shortcomings of the Act to …

Not Gill-Ty: Challenging And Providing A Workable Alternative To The Supreme Court's Gerrymandering Standing Analysis In Gill V. Whitford, Colin Neal

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

Constitutionalism And Africa's Agenda 2063: How To Build "The Africa We Want", John Mukum Mbaku

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In 2013, Africans, under the leadership of the African Union, set out to develop a “strategic framework for the socio-economic transformation of the continent over the next 50 years.” This new development program was expected to “accelerate the implementation of past and existing continental initiatives for growth and sustainable development.” This transformative program, called Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want, was officially adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in January 2015. The heart of this ambitious development initiative are seven aspirations, which Africans hope to achieve by the …

A New Old Solution: Why The United States Should Vote By Mail-In Ballot, Annie Barouh

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Legal History Of State Legislative Vacancies And Temporary Appointments, Tyler Yeargain

Journal of Law and Policy

We love paying attention to special elections. They operate as catharsis for opposition parties and activists, easily serve as proxies for how well the governing party is doing, and are ripe for over-extrapolation by prognosticators. But in thirty states and territories throughout the United States, state legislative vacancies are filled by a combination of special elections and temporary appointments. These appointment systems are rarely studied or discussed in academic literature but have a fascinating legal history that dates back to pre-Revolutionary America. They have substantially changed in the last four centuries, transitioning from a system that, like the Electoral College, …