Election Law Stories
Authors:
Douglas, Joshua A. / Mazo, Eugene D.
Edition:
1st
Copyright Date:
2016
22 chapters
have results for election law
Introduction: The Maturing of Election Law 42 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Though election law is relatively young as an academic field, election law scholars understand that election laws are not new. Elections have existed since our Founding, and we have always had laws in place to regulate them. In this sense, the so-called “newness” of election law is misleading and perhaps ahistorical. What is new, rather, is that election law has experienced a profound “judicialization” in recent years, the effects of which cannot be underestimated. When no one could decide who should determine the outcome of controversies in our democratic process, the courts stepped in to fill the void. Most election law scholarship today focuses on how the courts have shaped the rules of our political process, especially since the 1960s.
- Election law scholars have done something else in addition to publishing casebooks, secondary teaching materials, and law review articles to bring their field to maturity. They have also severed the field’s ties with its parents. In 1999, Pamela Karlan predicted that election law would be “leaving constitutional law’s empire.” Ten years later, that break was complete. By 2010, Heather Gerken confidently pronounced that election law scholars had “declared their independence from constitutional law in a bloodless revolution.” Most election law scholars do not view their discipline as a subfield of constitutional law, in the way that First Amendment scholars or Equal Protection scholars might. Rather, they view election law as a separate discipline.
- Election law is a relatively young field. It was born in the 1980s, when the first classes in the subject were taught by scholars such as Richard Briffault at Columbia, Daniel Lowenstein at UCLA, and Roy Schotland at Georgetown. Election law was arguably still in its infancy when the field’s first casebook was published in 1995. In the introduction to that casebook, Dan Lowenstein, its author, wrote about how election law “falls at junctures formed by other subjects.” Election law’s parents were constitutional law and political science. Most law professors who took an interest in election law did so while pursuing their main research interests in constitutional law. On the other hand, for political scientists, election fell between the subfields of public law and American politics. Thus, in its infancy, election law found itself on the periphery of other disciplines, and this new field did not have a natural home within the academy.
- The first ten years of the twenty-first century witnessed election law’s adolescence. By 2001, the field had its own peer-reviewed journal,
- The first and most important distinction between election law and constitutional law concerns the object of study. Election law scholars are interested in the institutions of democracy and how they channel politics. In general, election law scholars seek to examine how democratic institutions reflect the preferences of voters and how well they protect the rights of minorities. They are also interested in looking at situations when courts might be encouraged to interfere in “normal” politics, especially in cases where partisan motivations inhibit politicians from improving the political system on their own. The dominant institutions that draw the attention of election law scholars are courts, although there has been a move to look beyond courts, too. Relatedly, some election law scholars part from constitutional law scholars in their attitudes toward individual rights and equality. While these notions interest scholars of constitutional law, there are situations in which election law...
- Open Chapter
Chapter 5: Belling the Cat: The Story of Vieth v. Jubelirer 71 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Déjà Vu All Over Again: Courts, Corporate Law, and Election Law
- Another phrase contained in the Black’s Law definition—the “practice of dividing a geographical area into electoral districts”—is itself a definition for a common term: “redistricting.” The Constitution requires redistricting at least once every ten years to reflect shifts in population. With respect to congressional elections, the Constitution empowers Congress to dictate the rules for redistricting, but it does not require that Congress so act. Instead, it initially places the authority for redistricting congressional districts in the hands of state legislatures. With respect to non-congressional elections (for example, with respect to state legislative races), the power to redistrict is set not by the United States Constitution, but rather by state law. More often than not, state law vests ...dynamic, the dominant redistricting regime across the country is one in which state legislators draw the electoral lines governing the elections that they themselves will be running in,...
- As the history of political gerrymandering quickly reveals, these theoretical questions—and the profound difficulty of resolving them—have significant practical effects. Attempts at resolving these sorts of questions have dominated the development of the law of political gerrymandering, which in turn has affected the constraints (or lack thereof) facing legislatures as they draw the maps that will govern elections.
- Teaching Election Law
- First, Article I, § 4 provides that “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” While this provision speaks directly to election design, it does little to indicate where or how the Constitution sets the line between acceptable uses of political considerations and unacceptable uses. If anything, it suggests that some degree of reliance on political considerations is to be expected, given that state legislatures are by default the ones tasked with redistricting. But it fails to speak to how much reliance is too much.
- Open Chapter
Election Law Stories 9 results (showing 5 best matches)
Foreword: Election Law Stories, or an Election Law Story? 15 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Election Law Story
- What follows are the personal histories, litigation struggles, judicial considerations, and political calculations underpinning the most significant Supreme Court decisions involving election law. These stories tell the universal problem of how the Court, in deciding election law cases, must navigate issues of race, class, politics, judicial manageability, and theories of democracy. Our hope is that these stories—and the singular Election Law Story that they entail—help to bring the cases to life in a way that the judicial opinions themselves cannot do.
- The thirteen cases in this book run the gamut of election law. There are three cases on the constitutional right to vote, three redistricting disputes, four campaign finance cases, and three opinions involving election administration. These represent the most-read decisions in a survey course on election law, the disputes most discussed in the media, and the cases that have had the greatest impact on the field. Yet one virtue of this book is that it includes an analysis of many additional election law decisions. Each chapter tells not just the story of the case in question but also explains how that case fits within the broader doctrinal realm. The story of presents much of the case law that led up to that seminal decision. The story of test that courts use to analyze election administration issues. In this way, the book provides an explanation of well more than the thirteen principal selections.
- The Court, of course, is itself not immune to politics and ideology, adding another partisan layer to the difficulties that election law cases present. Yet when the Court entered the “political thicket” in the 1960s, it did so through a bipartisan coalition led by Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William Brennan (both appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower), and accompanied by Justices William Douglas and Hugo Black (both Franklin D. Roosevelt appointees who were New Deal Democrats). This judicial bipartisanship continued for about half a century, with Republican appointees like Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens often joining Democratic appointees such as Thurgood Marshall and Byron White to decide election law disputes. Since 2010, however, the Court’s 5–4 splits in major election law cases such as ...there was a confirmation of his successor; these previous 5–4 splits show how a new Justice may have a huge impact on the Court and its resolution of election...
- The stories presented in this book do not necessarily answer those questions. But they do show a Supreme Court struggling with the problem in the various subtopics that comprise election law, including the right to vote, redistricting, campaign finance, and election administration. To best understand the cases, and how they relate to one another, it is important to keep these various issues in mind: what theory of democracy and representation is the Court choosing, and has it justified that decision? What is behind the choice of tests the Court has adopted? Are the tests judicially manageable, in that they are easy for lower courts to apply in a time-sensitive case as Election Day draws near? Are manageable tests even possible in this field?
- Open Chapter
Biographies of the Contributors to Election Law Stories 16 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Richard L. Hasen is Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. He is a nationally recognized expert in election law and campaign finance regulation, and is co-author, with Daniel Hays Lowenstein and Daniel P. Tokaji, of a leading casebook, E (5th ed. 2012). From 2001–2010, he served (with Dan Lowenstein) as founding co-editor of the field’s leading publication, the peer-reviewed quarterly Election Law Journal. Hasen is the author of more than 80 articles on election law issues. These have appeared in numerous journals, including the Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Supreme Court Review. Hasen was elected to the American Law Institute in 2009, and he was named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by the National Law Journal in 2013. Hasen’s op-eds and commentaries on election law topics have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, and Slate. Hasen also writes and edits the popular Election Law
- Joshua A. Douglas is the Robert G. Lawson & William H. Fortune Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky. His research focuses on the constitutional right to vote, election administration, judicial interaction with the election process, and post-election disputes. Professor Douglas’s articles have appeared in the Vanderbilt Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, George Washington Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, and the Election Law Journal, among others. His article “Procedural Fairness in Election Contests” was a winner of the Call for Papers at the SEALS conference in 2011–12, and he has been cited extensively by courts, in major law review articles, and in casebooks in the field. With Edward B. Foley and Michael J. Pitts, he is the co-author of the new casebook E ...Prado of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and practiced litigation at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. He earned his B.A. and J.D...
- Bradley A. Smith is the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Professor of Law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. In 2000, he was nominated by President Clinton to fill a Republican-designated seat on the Federal Election Commission, where he served for five years, including as Chairman of the Commission in 2004. Professor Smith’s writings on campaign finance have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Pennsylvania Law Review, George Washington Law Review, Harvard Business Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, Election Law Journal, and numerous other academic publications. His 2001 book U was lauded by columnist George Will as the year’s “most important book on governance.” Professor Smith is the founder and Chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics in Alexandria, Virginia. He is a past member of the Advisory Committee to the ABA’s Standing Committee on Election Law, and currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Election Law Journal and...
- Guy-Uriel E. Charles is the Charles S. Rhyne Professor of Law and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty & Research at Duke University. He is also the founding director of Duke Law’s Center on Law, Race, and Politics. Professor Charles is an expert and frequently comments for the public on issues of election law, campaign finance, redistricting, politics, and race. Before joining Duke Law School’s faculty in 2009, he was the Russell M. and Elizabeth M. Bennett Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. He is co-author with James A. Gardner of the casebook E . He has published articles in Constitutional Commentary, the Michigan Law Review, Michigan Journal of Race & Law, Georgetown Law Journal, Journal of Politics, California Law Review, and North Carolina Law Review. Professor Charles has taught as a visiting professor at Georgetown, Virginia, and Columbia law schools and has served as a member of the National Research Commission on Elections and Voting and the Century...
- Eugene D. Mazo is law professor specializing in election law and constitutional law who has taught at the Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and at Rutgers Law School in Newark, New Jersey. His research addresses the regulation of the political process, democratic development, and constitutional design. Mazo was previously a Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and an Affiliated Scholar of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), both at Stanford University. He has been awarded grants for his research by the John M. Olin Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His articles have appeared in the Stanford Journal of International Law, Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy, Wake Forest Law Review, Florida State University Law Review, Kentucky Law Journal, and Election Law Journal. A graduate of...
- Open Chapter
Chapter 11: The History of Voter ID Laws and the Story of Crawford v. Marion County Election Board 194 results (showing 5 best matches)
- These were the various problems that confronted the U.S. Supreme Court when it upheld Indiana’s strict photo ID law in 2008 in
- Reports of fraud during a Democratic primary election in East Chicago, Indiana also may have motivated the state’s Republicans to push this law, although the problems in that election stemmed from absentee balloting, not the kind of in-person impersonation that a voter ID law would prevent. Connie Lawson, then a state Senator who would become Indiana’s Secretary of State, remembers seeing a newspaper report about dead people voting in that election and thinking that a photo ID law would help to stop this kind of fraud. advocating for the law noted that there was “widespread evidence of corruption” in the East Chicago election and that The state also relied on this East Chicago voter fraud when defending the photo ID law in court.
- Justice Stevens closed with a curious statement about the politics of the photo ID law, seeming to respond to Judge Evans’s lament from the Seventh Circuit that the law was a “not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.” rationale for the law, then the state would not have any basis to sustain it. Indiana’s “valid neutral justification” in election integrity, however, provided a sound basis for the law even if politics was also a motivating factor. Of course, it would be odd for a state to justify a voter ID law solely based on politics, and not also claim it was trying to improve election integrity, so Justice Stevens’s response to Judge Evans seems to ring hollow.
- First, with respect to election modernization, the Court explained that both the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) made it important for states to “reexamine” their election procedures. The NVRA has contributed to inflated voter registration rolls, while HAVA—which requires voters who register by mail to show an ID the first time they vote—demonstrates Congress’s attention to issues of election integrity. Both laws thus imply that election processes and security can benefit from “improved technology.”
- Judge Posner backed up his better understanding of the burdens of voter ID laws in an October 2014 dissent regarding Wisconsin’s strict photo ID requirement, which a three-judge panel had upheld. In a scathing, thirty-one-page dissent to the Seventh Circuit’s denial of en banc review, Judge Posner “systematically demolishes every argument mustered in support of voter ID laws.” Posner pointed to a stronger factual record in the Wisconsin case regarding the burden on voters as well as a “changed political culture in the United States” in terms of who supports and opposes these laws. Although the Supreme Court put Wisconsin’s law on hold for the 2014 election, it ultimately allowed Wisconsin to implement the law for future elections. is that one of the most influential jurists who upheld Indiana’s law suggested that he probably should have ruled the other way—which might have altered the history of voter ID laws across the country.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 10: “More Speech” as a First Amendment Violation: Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett and the Challenge to Public Funding 110 results (showing 5 best matches)
- litigation. The law authorized additional payments to participating candidates, and a concomitant adjustment in the spending limits, in light of the spending and fundraising of nonparticipating candidates and of independent expenditures. Specifically, if a non-participating primary candidate spends above the original primary election spending limit, the Citizens Clean Election Commission is to pay “an amount equal to any excess of the reported amount over the primary election spending limit, less six percent for the nonparticipating candidate’s fundraising expenses,” up to three times the initial spending limit to all participating candidates running for the office. Similarly, if, during the general election, a nonparticipating candidate receives contributions which, together with any contributions left over from the primary, exceeds the original general election spending limit, the Commission is to pay each participating candidate in the same race “an amount equal to any excess of...
- , on August 21, 2008, three incumbent Arizona legislators seeking reelection, led by House Majority Whip John McComish, and joined by three other candidates running for seats in the legislature brought suit in the Arizona federal district court to invalidate the matching funds provision of the clean elections law. Each claimed to have reported spending over the primary election spending limit, thereby triggering matching funds for their publicly-financed opponents. On August 26, they moved for a temporary restraining order against the award of any matching funds to their opponents. After a hearing on August 28, Judge Roslyn O. Silver denied the motion. In early September, Dean Martin, the Arizona state treasurer who had been litigating the trigger funds issue in a separate suit since 2004, was permitted to intervene on the side of the plaintiffs, and the Clean Elections Institute, a public interest organization committed to the support of the Clean Elections program, intervened on...
- litigation was moving through the courts, the United States General Accountability Office completed a study of the Arizona and Maine clean elections systems. It found that over the course of its first five election cycles (1999–2000 to 2007–08) participation in the Arizona program rose steadily, from 24% of legislative candidates in the 2000 primaries and 26% in the 2000 general election to 59% in the 2008 primaries and 64% in the 2008 general election. The proportion of races in an election cycle with at least one candidate participating in the program rose from 53% in 2000 to 82% in 2008. The program was used by candidates of both major parties, albeit more so by Democrats. In 2008, 72% of Democratic legislative candidates took public funding in the primaries and 82% in the general election, compared with 50% of Republicans in the primaries and 52% of Republicans in the general election. ...—80% of general election legislative challengers took public funding in 2008. However,...
- Probably the most important issues for a public funding program are the interconnected ones of who qualifies, how much money is provided and how that is determined, and, whether the public funds are intended to supplement or fully supplant private funds. Typically, a candidate qualifies for public funds either by (i) raising a threshold amount of money from a requisite number of donors, with the size of the contribution that counts toward qualification capped at a relatively low level; (ii) for a general election, by being the nominee of a party whose nominee for a major office in a past election received more than a threshold percentage of the vote; or, (iii) again in a general election, by being a candidate who did not qualify for public funds by virtue of his or her party nomination but who received a sufficient number of votes to qualify for a post-election grant. The primary election component of the presidential public funding system uses the first method, as do most state and...
- Arizona, Connecticut, and Maine have adopted so-called “clean elections” programs for their primaries and general elections. Like the presidential general election scheme, “clean elections” provides full public funding for participating candidates. Candidates qualify for public funds by raising a certain number of very small qualifying contributions. In Arizona, for example, a candidate for the lower house of the legislature in 2008 had to collect 220 qualifying $5 contributions. To cover the cost of gathering the qualifying contributions, the candidate may collect a limited amount of low-dollar “early contributions.” Upon qualifying, a candidate in a contested primary election receives a grant equal to the spending limit. If the candidate wins the primary, she receives a general election grant, again in an amount equal to the spending limit.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 13: Bush v. Gore: The Court Stops the Recount 70 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In 2000, Florida law contained two different ways for a candidate to challenge the count of ballots in an election. The first way was a “protest,” which was an administrative procedure undertaken by the local election officials in a particular county. The second was a “contest,” which was a judicial procedure undertaken by a single state judge. A protest occurred before the result of an election was officially certified. A contest occurred after certification.
- The main issue that arose in the litigation of the 2000 election was over how to handle these hanging and dimpled chads. The voting machines could not identify them as votes, but arguably they were still valid under Florida law nonetheless. But how to tell? Was any dimpled chad on a ballot a valid vote? What if the voter had successfully and completely dislodged chads for all other races on the ballot, but left a dimpled chad only in the presidential race? Maybe the dimple then was evidence of the voter’s hesitancy and, upon second thought, the voter decided not to cast a vote for that candidate and then failed to select any other candidate in the presidential race. In this situation, should the ballot be recorded as a “no vote” for president? In any presidential election, there are at least some voters who decline to cast a vote for president and instead confine their choices to “down-ballot” races (for representative to Congress, the state legislature, and so forth). Maybe, at...
- , there continues to be a debate over how much of an impact it will have in the development of election law jurisprudence. Some say little, and point to the much-vilified sentence to say that the Court wanted it that way. Others observe that is already having an effect in lower courts on the development of equal protection law as it applies to various aspects of election administration, including early voting.
- Absentee ballots were the source of additional issues. Florida law contained a set of requirements for absentee ballots to satisfy in order to be counted. For example, an absentee ballot needed the signature of a witness who attested that the absentee ballot was cast properly. Also, although ballots were entitled to be counted if received by local officials up to ten days after Election Day, they needed to be postmarked by Election Day or bear the voter’s own signature dated on or before Election Day.
- suggested that conceivably they might have made a difference in the outcome of the election. , there were 680 absentee ballots that should not have been counted under Florida law but
- Open Chapter
Chapter 12: The Shelby County Problem 35 results (showing 5 best matches)
- arose after an African-American man named William Garner was unable to vote in a municipal election in Lexington, Kentucky, on January 31, 1873. State law required voters to pay a poll tax in advance of the election. Garner had tried to do so, but the city tax collector had refused to accept payment “on account of the race and color of Garner.” On Election Day, Garner attempted to vote by presenting an affidavit attesting to his efforts to pay the tax. Hiram Reese and Matthew Foushee were election inspectors who, over the dissent of a colleague, refused to let Garner vote.
- Ralph W. Aigler Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. Thanks to the participants at the Election Law Stories roundtable at Moritz College of Law for helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks also Daniel Osher for excellent research assistance, and to the University of Michigan Law School, which provided generous financial support for this project through the Cook Endowment.
- Federal indictments followed that charged Reese and Foushee with violating Sections 3 and 4 of the 1870 Act. Section 3 said a voter’s “offer” to satisfy a prerequisite to voting should be treated as “performance in law of such act,” an election official wrongfully prevent the offer from being “carried into execution.” Section 4 made it a criminal offense “wrongfully [to] refuse or omit to receive … the vote of such citizen,” or to prevent a citizen “from doing any act required to be done” to “qualify him to vote or from voting at an election as aforesaid.”
- did not question Congress’s power to proscribe bribery in federal elections, the absence of state action notwithstanding. But while the election in dispute was, in fact, a congressional election, the statute itself referenced the Fifteenth Amendment as the source under which Congress had acted. The Court insisted it was unable to limit the statute to federal elections, and thus allow it to serve another purpose from the one for which it was enacted.
- Some observers celebrated, commending the Court for restoring “normalcy” to election law and curbing a regime they thought had outlasted its purpose.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 6: LULAC v. Perry: The Frumious Gerry-Mander, Rampant 63 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Professor of Law, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. I would like to thank the other authors of these Election Law Stories for their suggestions and comments, and particularly Professor Ned Foley for his insightful feedback. All errors, of course, are my own.
- Of the remaining ten legislators, five were defeated in primary elections, two were defeated in the general election, and three opted not to run for re-election. Information sourced from Legislative Reference Library of Texas, http://perma.cc/YL6V-Y3R4; Office of Sec’y of State, Race Summary Report: 2004 Democratic Primary Election, http://perma.cc/4VCD-SW3Q; Office of Sec’y of State, Race Summary Report: 2004 General Election, http://perma.cc/39PL-FGL8; Office of Sec’y of State, Race Summary Report: 2006 Democratic Party Primary Election, http://perma.cc/FY76
- House Democrats Say Revolt Won’t Hurt Re-Election Bids
- The Court also declined to open Section 2 to claims that a group’s votes had been diluted based on a deprivation of political influence beyond the opportunity to elect candidates. These sorts of “influence districts” describe areas in which a minority community may not be able to control an election outright, but is nevertheless an important factor in the outcome. In District 24, even if African-Americans had not the election, they had certainly influenced it to a substantial degree. The plaintiffs claimed that a deprivation of that influence was unlawful.
- Of course, it is difficult to determine from election results alone the degree to which partisan motivations may have been responsible for the congressional plan, or the degree to which results from one election may linger. Many criteria for the drawing of district boundaries—including criteria often considered to have little inherent partisan valence—will often result in maps that elect a legislative delegation not reflecting the political composition of the state, due to political demography, partisan waves, or candidate effects.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 2: Offering A New Vision for Equal Protection: The Story of Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections 50 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Despite the uniform rejection of such arguments by both the district court and in earlier Supreme Court decisions, the appellants did not eschew arguments about the tax’s discriminatory effects. The brief made much of the manner in which the state designed and administered the tax. The appellants argued that its cumulative nature, the timing of payments six months before the election, and the use of exceptions for certain voters (mostly military servicemen) all worsened its disparate impact and further privileged the rights of some voters over others. The appellants pointed to the recent passage of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, which prohibited the poll tax in federal elections, as evidence that not only had the national mood changed, but striking down the poll tax in state elections would be consistent with both this amendment and ...Virginia law passed in response to the Twenty-Fourth Amendment that required federal voters to either pay the poll tax or file a certificate of...election
- Betty T. Ferguson Professor of Voting Rights, Florida State University College of Law. Thanks to Jason Byrd, Christopher Cabral, and Derrick McBurrows for excellent research assistance. Special thanks to the editors, Josh Douglas and Eugene Mazo, for putting together an amazing conference on
- Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections
- This strategy, then legal under state law, had the effect of increasing voter participation in state elections, according to one political scientist,
- would not have struck down poll taxes in state elections on the basis of wealth. In doing so, however, the decision opened the door for a strong conception of the right to vote as a fundamental interest, yet it is important to remember that its potential has yet to be fully realized. Since and this analysis dominates the Court’s assessment of all voting restrictions, regardless if the law applies to state elections, federal elections, or both. The end result has been improper judicial deference to the states’ authority to set voter qualifications and the flourishing of state laws that, similar to the poll tax, impermissibly narrow the field of eligible voters. Despite these setbacks, the lesson of
- Open Chapter
Chapter 4: Realizing the Right to Vote: The Story of Thornburg v. Gingles 70 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Aycock harshly criticized the Fusionist government for liberalizing voting rules through a statute that historian Morgan Kousser characterizes as “probably the fairest and most democratic election law in the post-Reconstruction South.” That is not how Aycock saw it. He claimed that the Fusionist election law was designed to help Republicans cheat by providing the “means for registration and voting of minors, dead, imported and convicted Negroes.” He also stoked fears of “Negro domination,” by decrying the election of blacks to office, alongside the standard tales of black men defiling white women.
- Making Sense of Section 2: Of Biased Votes, Unconstitutional Elections, and Common Law Statutes
- Fraud and force were major factors in the election, with the Red Shirts out in force, tampering with registration lists, ballots deliberately put in the wrong box, and questionable results from some counties with large black populations—who inexplicably voted to disfranchise themselves, if the official returns were to be believed. Statewide, the Fusionist vote plummeted, especially in black areas, due to the sinister combination of stringent voting laws, voter intimidation, and outright fraud that characterized the 1900 election. And if that were not enough, Democrats strengthened their grip over local election procedures and redrew the boundaries of legislative districts.
- Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Professor of Constitutional Law, The Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law. The author is indebted to Rebecca Barnard, Hayden Capace, Greg Djordjevic, and Wes Harty for their excellent research assistance. This chapter benefitted from the suggestions of Heather Gerken, Franita Tolson, and the other participants in the “Election Law Stories” workshop held at Ohio State in June 2015, and as well as participants in a faculty workshop at the University of Wisconsin Law School in September 2015. Special thanks to Rick Pildes and Brad Snyder for their comments on an earlier draft.
- The district court devoted the bulk of its opinion (roughly two-thirds) to detailed factual findings concerning the challenged districts, the history of voting discrimination in North Carolina, the effects of discrimination in other areas, voting procedures that harm black voters, the election of blacks to office, racial polarization, black turnout, and the state’s justifications for its districting plan. The court’s conclusions of law were remarkably brief for a case of this complexity. In less than one page of text in the Federal Supplement, the court concluded that all the challenged districts violated Section 2. In a supplemental opinion issued less than three months later, the district court unanimously accepted a remedial plan adopted by the General Assembly, which was used for elections later that year.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 7: The Nine Lives of Buckley v. Valeo 66 results (showing 5 best matches)
- upholding the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, “we are left with a package of federal campaign finance laws and regulations that have distorted virtually every aspect of the election process. The 1974 amendments were supposed to de-emphasize the role of money in federal elections. Instead, by severely limiting the size of individual contributions, today’s law has made the search for money a candidate’s central preoccupation.”
- Given the government’s ambivalence about the legislation’s constitutionality, lawyers for the reform groups led the defense. Lloyd Cutler and others from the Washington firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering represented intervenors the Center for the Public Financing of Elections and the League of Women Voters. Common Cause was represented by its own counsel, Kenneth Guido and Fred Wertheimer. Former Solicitor General Archibald Cox argued as amicus curiae for Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Hugo Scott. The California Fair Political Practices Commission, the Missouri Elections Commission, the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, and the New York Board of Elections filed an amicus brief arguing for the constitutionality of the expenditure provisions, noting that thirty-seven states in recent years had adopted statutes limiting campaign expenditures,
- Gora soon learned that the basis for the 1972 lawsuit was the government’s belief (or as Gora put it, the belief of the “Richard Nixon Justice Department”) that the purpose of the advertisement was to influence the outcome of federal elections, and that the group therefore should be considered a political committee subject to disclosure requirements. Moreover, the law required the group to certify that the ad, which the government believed was purchased in support of George McGovern’s bid against President Nixon’s reelection, would not put the McGovern campaign over the $50,000 cap on media expenditures contained in the 1971 FECA. requirements and filed its own lawsuit seeking the right to sponsor advertisements critical of President Nixon’s handling of certain issues during the election season without having to get the approval of any politician who might benefit from the advertisements. It won both lawsuits on First Amendment grounds. ...campaign finance laws only intensified as...
- Institutional Process, Agenda Setting, and the Development of Election Law on the Supreme Court
- The strategy worked, helped by the fact that Democrats became more interested in campaign finance reform as large donor money shifted from Democrats to Republicans following Nixon’s 1968 election One of its more controversial provisions limited federal candidate spending on media to $50,000 or less per election. A related bill revived the plan for the public financing of presidential elections, but it was not to go into effect until the 1976 elections.
- Open Chapter
Acknowledgements 2 results
- Election law cases, with their salient topics and partisan ramifications, inherently make for good stories. This is one reason why I was thrilled when Gene Mazo suggested that we edit a book on
- This book had its genesis in a phone conversation. In my first year of teaching, I called Tessa Boury at Foundation Press to ask why election law did not have its own volume in the Law Stories Series. Tessa allowed me to pitch the idea of this book to her, and I then asked Josh Douglas to join me as its co-editor. I owe enormous gratitude to Tessa for not turning away a young professor and to Josh for being a true partner at every stage of this journey. My colleagues at Wake Forest University have been unfailing in their support of this and other endeavors. Those to whom I owe special thanks include Luellen Curry, Michael Curtis, Shannon Gilreath, Jaya Gokhale, Liz Johnson, Barbara Lentz, Harold Lloyd, Chris Knott, Tanya Marsh, Rebecca Morrow, Zoe Niesel, Wilson Parker, Gregory Parks, Charley Rose, Sidney Shapiro, Andrew Verstein, and especially Ronald Wright. I am also grateful to my two deans, Blake Morant and Suzanne Reynolds. The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law...
- Open Chapter
Chapter 9: The Citizens United Trilogy: The Myth, the True Tale, and the Story Still to Come 77 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Thanks Citizens United! Outside Election Spending in 2012 Exceeds Previous Eight Elections Combined
- Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, Pub. L. No. 92–225, 86 Stat. 3 (1972) (codified as amended in scattered sections of the U.S. Code). It was the 1974 Amendments to FECA that gave the law its enduring structure.
- Lost in the Political Thicket: The Court, Election Law, and the Doctrinal Interregnum
- This SCOTUS Destroyed America: How Citizens United is Ruining More than Our Elections
- BCRA made a number of changes to the law, but it left the basic structure of FECA in place. For example, BCRA broadened longstanding prohibitions on the use of corporate and union funds for election-related expenditures. To close a loophole in FECA, Congress crafted BCRA §§ 201 and 203, which prohibited corporations and unions from using their treasury funds to pay for what would henceforth be known as an “electioneering communication”—a “broadcast, cable, or satellite communication” that “refers to a clearly identified candidate for federal office,” is made within sixty days of a general election or thirty days of a primary, and is “targeted to the relevant electorate.”
- Open Chapter
Chapter 8: Politics, Money, and Corruption: The Story of McConnell v. Federal Election Commission 71 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The “Buying Time” studies were an important part of both the public relations and legal effort. The studies purported to show that many “issue” ads were in fact viewed by the public as “election ads,” and that ads shown within thirty days of a primary election and sixty days of a general election were in fact usually intended to influence campaigns. This was important to buttress the argument that the express advocacy line failed to effectively separate what they claimed were unprotected “sham” issue ads from protected “true” issue ads, despite assumption that issue ads would be used to influence elections.
- of reasons why Congress might think the law a good idea. Between the many government hearings on the bill, the Senate and House reports on the 1996 election, and the lengthy floor debates, it is unclear what developing a record added, but its compilation certainly slowed the case and made the district court panel’s job more difficult.
- The first was the emergence of a colorful leader and spokesman in Senator McCain. With the help of his votes for campaign finance bills in 1991 and 1992, McCain had weathered the Keating 5 scandal and scored a solid re-election victory in 1992. But his support for a campaign finance bill did not die with re-election. In 1993 he was one of a handful of Republicans to support the primary Senate campaign finance bill, helping to break a filibuster. Two days after the 1994 elections, which handed Republicans control of the Senate, he called Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold and said he wanted to collaborate on “reform” matters.
- established that while true “issue speech” was entitled to First Amendment protection, “election-related” spending was not protected. They then argued that the express advocacy test failed to separate adequately “issue” ads from “election” ads. But the purpose of the test had not been to serve as some type of objective description to separate protected “true issue” speech from unprotected “election” speech. To the contrary, had recognized that “discussion of issues and candidates and advocacy of election or defeat of candidates may often dissolve in practical application.”
- advocate the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate for federal office.” And in footnote 52 of the opinion, the Court added that this definition would restrict the application of the independent expenditure limits to “communications containing express words of advocacy of election or defeat, such as ‘vote for,’ ‘elect,’ ‘support,’ ‘cast your ballot for,’ ‘Smith for Congress,’ ‘vote against,’ ‘defeat,’ ‘reject.’ ”
- Open Chapter
Chapter 3: The Right to Vote in Local Elections: The Story of Kramer v. Union Free School District No. 15 49 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Wake Forest University. I first presented this story at the Conference on Election Law Stories, and I am indebted to Ned Foley, Steve Huefner, Daphne Meimaridis, and Dan Tokaji of the Election Law @ Moritz program at Ohio State for hosting this event in June 2015. I presented it again at the Fourth Annual Local Government Works-in-Progress Conference, and I owe thanks to David Troutt, Kenneth Stahl, and my hosts at the Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity at Rutgers Law School in November 2015. Richard Briffault attended both conferences and gave me prescient comments on each occasion. Others who provided feedback include Paul Diller and my Wake Forest colleagues Andrew Verstein and Ronald Wright. I thank Aimee Durant and Alysia Yi for research assistance, Liz McCurry Johnson for superb library assistance, and the estimable Josh Douglas for being a terrific collaborator on this book. My greatest thanks go to Morris Kramer for telling me his...
- as applying only to general elections. Everyone was affected by general state-wide elections, but school board elections were different. It was not inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause, Moore argued, for states to require those voting on school policy to have a direct stake in the issues. In “a local election on limited issues,” Moore wrote, “certain local residents have a far greater direct interest than others.”
- in the outcome of a school board election. In 1965, New York provided for three methods of selecting its school boards. In some large cities, the school board was appointed by the mayor or city In other cities, mostly those with less than 125,000 residents, the school board was popularly elected, and all citizens could vote for it at the time of the city’s general or municipal election. Finally, in a third group of school districts, most of them rural and suburban, the school board was elected at a special annual meeting, but only “qualified” voters were eligible to vote for it. To qualify to vote in these Union Free School District elections, Section 2012 of New York’s Education Law required a voter to be a citizen, twenty-one years of age, and a resident of the school district for thirty days.
- called to take Kramer’s picture, he refused to pose for the photo unless Murray Miller was also included. Kramer considered Miller to be the real hero of his case. A related election law case, It struck down a Louisiana statute that restricted voting in an election to approve revenue bonds to taxpaying property owners.
- Election Law as Applied Democratic Theory
- Open Chapter
Chapter 1: Reynolds Revisited 34 results (showing 5 best matches)
- There was one exception to this strategy: Georgia’s primary election law and the county-unit rule. The law, known as the Neill Primary Act, dated back to 1917 and governed state-wide primary races, such as governor, lieutenant governor, and U.S. Senator. Under the law, unit votes were assigned to the various counties according to population. The eight most populous counties received six unit votes each; the next thirty counties received four unit votes each; and the rest of the counties received two units a piece. In turn, the candidate who won the county’s popular vote received all the unit votes from that county; and the candidate who received the most unit votes won the nomination. When the law was enacted, the state of Georgia had 159 counties, of which 121 were rural counties with less than thirty percent of the population. These rural counties controlled 242 unit votes, or around sixty percent of the total of 410 unit votes. In contrast, by 1960 the eight most populous...
- Professor of Law and Harry T. Ice Fellow, Indiana University Maurer School of Law. We are very thankful to the librarians at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division for their help as we pored over the Justices papers, and to Jennifer Morgan, librarian at Maurer, for her invaluable help in locating government documents. Finally, special thanks to Josh Douglas and Eugene Mazo for putting together this volume and for their editorial work, and to the Ohio State Moritz College of Law for hosting a conference on
- Harper v. Va. State Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 673 (1966) (Black, J., dissenting) (“The equal protection cases carefully analyzed boil down to the principle that distinctions drawn and even discriminations imposed by state laws do not violate the Equal Protection Clause so long as these distinctions and discriminations are not ‘irrational,’ ‘irrelevant,’ ‘unreasonable,’ ‘arbitrary,’ or ‘invidious.’ ”); E
- and its companion cases on June 10, 1963. The following day, as George Wallace made his notorious stand at the schoolhouse door, the Court scheduled oral arguments for the week of November 12. With the 1964 election looming, the Court stood ready to answer these questions.
- Harper v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966).
- Open Chapter
Part IV: Election Administration Your search matches the chapter title
Copyright Page 1 result
- Publication Date: April 8th, 2016
- ISBN: 9781634604338
- Subject: Election and Voting Rights
- Series: Law Stories
- Type: Overviews
- Description: One of the most dynamic fields in the legal academy now has its own Stories book. This title offers a rich and detailed account of the most significant cases in election law, including the landmark decisions of Reynolds v. Sims, Bush v. Gore, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and Shelby County v. Holder. The book relies on a unique encapsulated approach to storytelling, as each of its authors surveys an important doctrinal area in the field through the telling of his or her story. The volume’s thirteen cases concern the right to vote, redistricting and gerrymandering, campaign finance, and election administration. The book is suited for courses in the law of democracy at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.