Election Law Commons^™

Corporations As Conduits: A Cautionary Note About Regulating Hypotheticals, Douglas M. Spencer

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Transforming Election Cybersecurity, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Judging Law In Election Cases, Michael S. Kang, Joanna Shepherd

Faculty Articles

In Part I, we introduce our earlier work on election cases and judicial partisanship before setting forth our new approach to studying the influence of law on judicial decisionmaking. We describe the special nature of the election cases in our database that allow more persuasive inferences of judicial partisanship than typically derived in empirical work on judicial behavior. We then explain our new approach for measuring case strength based on counterpartisan decisionmaking by judges. In Part II, we apply our approach to case strength to our dataset and present our results. In a nutshell, partisanship appears to matter as expected …

What The Polls Produce: Why Kentucky Should Retain Nonpartisan Elective Selection Of Its Supreme Court Justices, Nolan M. Jackson

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Protecting America's Elections From Foreign Tampering: Realizing The Benefits Of Classifying Election Infrastructure As Critical Infrastructure Under The United States Code, Allaire M. Monticollo

Law Student Publications

In just the past five years, the United States has suffered numerous hacks into important entities and institutions across the country by ill-intentioned actors. Private companies and government agencies alike have felt the negative impacts of security breaches by hackers infiltrating proprietary and protected systems. Even the United States political landscape has proven vulnerable to bad actors in the realm of cyber security. Furthermore, analysts have attributed some of the most recent highly publicized hacks to state-sponsored groups. As cyber security threats and opportunities for foreign hackers to infiltrate critical systems become more prevalent, it is natural to wonder where …

Judging Congressional Elections, Lisa M. Manheim

Georgia Law Review

A pivotal clause of our Constitution suffers from
uncertainty and neglect. The result has scrambled the law
of contested congressional elections. These high-stakes
disputes turn on questions of procedure, and in particular
on questions of forum. Yet across the country, an
unpredictable and ad hoc set of regimes governs these
fundamental questions. The culprit behind the confusion
is Article I, Section 5 of the United States Constitution,
which states that "Each House shall be the Judge of the
Elections ... of its own Members." This command may
seem straightforward, if a bit unsettling-it allows
Congress to decide who has won …

Political Gerrymandering: Was Elbridge Gerry Right, C. Daniel Chill

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Navigating The Post-Shelby Landscape: Using Universalism To Augment The Remaining Power Of The Voting Rights Act, Jesús N. Joslin

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Judging Congressional Elections, Lisa Marshall Manheim

Articles

This Article reveals what passes as federal constitutional law in this area: a chaotic set of ad hoc, state-based interpretations that vary drastically by jurisdiction. Some states, for example, have interpreted Article I, Section 5 to permit courts to adjudicate congressional election contests. Others have concluded the opposite. Through such conflicting interpretations, state courts have contributed to a deep, intractable split on the provision's meaning and reach.

State legislatures have compounded the discord by enacting statutes that codify their interpretations, a move that renders their constitutional determinations practically unreviewable. Meanwhile, both Houses of Congress continue to adjudicate these congressional election …

Voting Realism, Gilda R. Daniels

All Faculty Scholarship

Since Shelby County v. Holder, the country has grown accustomed to life without the full strength of the Voting Rights Act. Efforts to restore Section 4 have been met with calls to ignore race conscious remedies and employ race neutral remedies for modern day voting rights violations. In this new normal, the country should adopt “voting realism” as the new approach to ensuring that law and reality work to address these new millennium methods of voter discrimination.

Electoral Evidence, Peter Nicolas

Articles

Each year, millions of Americans cast votes for specific candidates or on specific ballot measures. Each such vote generates potential "electoral evidence," the admissibility of which may be the subject of dispute in subsequent litigation. The evidence may take various forms, including the marked ballot itself, a voter's testimony regarding her vote, or her written or oral statements regarding her vote.

Electoral evidence is most commonly offered in litigation over the election outcome itself, with the parties seeking to determine how certain individuals voted to resolve a close election. However, its potential relevance is not limited to such proceedings. It …

Voice And Exit As Accountability Mechanisms: Can Foot-Voting Be Made Safe For The Chinese Communist Party?, Roderick M. Hills Jr., Shitong Qiao

Faculty Scholarship

According to Albert 0. Hirschman's famous dichotomy, citizens can express their preferences with their "voice" (by voting with ballots to elect better representatives) or by "exit" (by voting with their feet to choose better places to live). Suppose, however, that ballot-voting is ineffective: Can exit not merely aid but also replace voice? Using the People's Republic of China, a party state without elective democracy as a case study, we argue that exit is not a substitute for, but rather a complement to, voice. China's bureaucratic promotion system plays the same role that local elections do in the United States, promoting …

Questions About Election Fraud, Jana Nestlerode

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Free Speech Matters: The Roberts Court And The First Amendment, Joel M. Gora

Journal of Law and Policy

This article contends that the Roberts Court, in the period from 2006 to 2016, arguably became the most speech-protective Supreme Court in memory. In a series of wide-ranging First Amendment decisions, the Court sounded and strengthened classic free speech themes and principles. Taken together, the Roberts Court’s decisions have left free speech rights much stronger than they were found.

Those themes and principles include a strong libertarian distrust of government regulation of speech and presumption in favor of letting people control speech, a consistent refusal to fashion new “non-speech” categories, a reluctance to “balance” free speech away against governmental interests, …

Introduction; The Past, Present And Future Of Free Speech, Joel M. Gora

Journal of Law and Policy

This short paper introduces the papers and commentary produced at two significant First Amendment occasions. First was a 40^th anniversary celebration of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo, the fountainhead ruling on the intersection between campaign finance restrictions and First Amendment rights. The questions were discussed provocatively by two of the leading players in that decision, James Buckley himself, now a retired United States Circuit Judge, and Ira Glasser, former head of the ACLU who helped organize a strange bedfellows, left-right coalition to challenge the new federal election campaign laws on First Amendment grounds. …

A Landmark Decision Turns Forty: A Conversation On Buckley V. Valeo, Ira Glasser, Nicholas W. Allard, James L. Buckley

Journal of Law and Policy

James Buckley gives a behind the scenes description as to why he thought the Campaign Reform Act of 1974 was suspect, how the case effected his career and how the holding of the Supreme Court has since effected campaign finance law. Remarks first given regarding the Buckley V. Valeo Panel where Dean Nichola`s Allard provided commentary. Included in this commentary, Mr. Glasser explains that similar to other problems that have plagued the United States, campaign finance is a unique issue that requires not only an analysis of what the problem is, but also whether the proposed remedy will solve the …

Money And Speech: Practical Perspectives, Nicholas W. Allard

Journal of Law and Policy

Dean Allard provides a practical perspective on the topic of money, politics and free speech based on his over three decades worth of experience in lobbying, campaigns and public policy. Commentary also includes opinions as to the state of politics in America and the problems with reforming campaign finance law.

Turning Cash Into Votes: The Law And Economics Of Campaign Contributions, Brett Silverberg

University of Miami Business Law Review

As a result of the recent Citizens United decision and its “Super PAC” spawn, individuals, corporations, and unions are allowed to independently spend unlimited amounts to influence elections. The ramifications of the Citizens United ruling have seemingly had a grave impact on the 2016 Presidential Election. In addition to examining the laws—and their loopholes—of political campaign contributions, this Essay will also explore the economics of campaign contributions. Ultimately, there are two reasons as to why corporations provide such large sums of money: one is rent creation, which is the attempt to gain political favors for “special interests;” the second is …

Election Law And The Presidency: An Introduction And Overview, Jerry H. Goldfeder

Fordham Law Review

Americans now fully appreciate that presidential candidates are vying for a majority of the Electoral College votes, rather than the individual votes of constituents. Modern campaigns are organized around this goal, and commentators are focused on this reality. As a result, there has been an increased cry to reform the electoral process. After all, if every other public official in the land is elected by receiving more votes than their competitors, why should the President of the United States be elected in this apparently undemocratic fashion? The process appears even more unusual in that electors are chosen pursuant to state …

Third-Party And Independent Presidential Candidates: The Need For A Runoff Mechanism, Edward B. Foley

Fordham Law Review

Consider what 2016 might have looked like if this better electoral system had been in place. Bloomberg then could have entered the race without risking being a spoiler. In a three-way race—Bloomberg, Clinton, and Trump—Bloomberg might have fizzled out, leaving a two-way race between Clinton and Trump. Since that is essentially how the election ended up anyway, the country would have been no worse off for having had a chance to consider Bloomberg as an alternative. But suppose, however, with Trump’s candidacy spinning out of control in a series of unacceptable comments (as it appeared to do in early August),11 …