05 Apr

"Fully Open" After Evenwel -The Court left open the question of how a state must apportion its districts, so for now, both total population and total voting age population remain acceptable means of apportionment.  The Court’s decision today sided with Texas, a decidedly Republican-leaning state, and simply ruled that the way Texas had apportioned its districts was constitutionally acceptable.The Republican...

19:03 / Uncategorized
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05 Apr

RNC Launches ConventionFacts.gop | GOPRNC COO (and attorney) Sean Cairncross does an excellent job of explaining how an "open" convention would work.  Today the Republican National Committee (RNC) launched ConventionFacts.gop, a new site that provides an easy way to learn about the 2016 Republican National Convention. Since 1856, Republican delegates from across the country have gathered to adopt a platform, determine...

18:10 / Uncategorized
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17 Mar

With the caveat that the job of a lower court judge is to implement the Supreme Court’s rulings and the job of a Supreme Court Justice is to make those rulings not bound by a higher court, my view is that a Justice Garland would be moderately liberal on election law issues, probably voting with the four more liberal Justices...

17:32 / Uncategorized
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03 Mar

The Green Papers: What's NewThe Green Papers is an excellent resource for detailed delegate analysis. When I was doing delegate counting for the Romney campaign, their counts were almost always identical to ours.  The Democratic Convention has total of 4,763 delegates votes with 2,382 needed to nominate.--Soft delegate count changed from Clinton 962, Sanders 378, O'Malley 1 to Clinton 1,062...

21:31 / Uncategorized
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23 Feb

Justice Scalia and Campaign Finance: A Puzzle -In voting as a member of the Roberts majority on campaign finance, Justice Scalia could be a reliable member of the “conservative bloc”, but also have his own reasons—just as Justices Kagan and Ginsburg may vote with Justice Breyer on campaign finance without sharing his theory of “Active Liberty.”  Scalia accepted a role...

17:17 / Uncategorized
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16 Feb

So here’s the case for Trump’s standing (as I alluded to in an earlier post): competitive standing. Here’s a 2008 federal district court case, Hollander v. McCain, involving a voter challenge to McCain’s eligibility to run for president: To be sure, courts have held that a candidate or his political party has standing to challenge the inclusion of an allegedly...

17:53 / Uncategorized
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21 Jan

FEC: Van Hollen - LitigationToday the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued an opinion, judgment and order in Van Hollen v. FEC (15-5016 & 15-5017). The Court reversed the November 2014 decision of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and upheld the Commission’s regulation at 11 C.F.R. § 104.20(c)(9) requiring corporations...

23:21 / Uncategorized
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21 Jan

Beyond ‘Citizens United’: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Very Wealthiest in Elections | Brennan Center for JusticeAlready, undisclosed spending in the 2016 cycle is outpacing all prior elections. Though the Court often speaks positively about the importance of disclosure, their decisions allowing for unlimited independent spending laid the groundwork for unlimited secret spending.6 years later, the impact of Citizens United still looms...

20:15 / Uncategorized
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21 Jan

Obama considers campaign finance executive orderMoney-in-politics reformers are seizing on reports that President Obama is weighing the possibility of issuing an executive order to force companies doing business with the federal government to reveal their political spending.   If Obama issues this order, as The New York Times suggests is likely, it would be a rare offering from a president who came...

20:13 / Uncategorized
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