On November 7, 2000, Willie Steen, a Navy vet who had served in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm, went to cast his ballot for president at the St. Francis Episcopal Church in Tampa, Florida. He brought his 10-year-old son, Willie Jr., to the polls for the first time.Source: How the 2000 Election in Florida Led to a New Wave...
Editor’s note: This post examines two cases the Supreme Court will review at its next Term: Evenwel v. Abbott, and Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. This post will be followed this week by a symposium on Evenwel.Source: The new look at “one person, one vote,” made simple...
The federal government has all but surrendered to the powerful, rich donors whose anonymous contributions threaten to undermine the 2016 elections.Source: The I.R.S. Gives Up on ‘Dark Money’...
Twenty-one House Republicans on Monday called for the firing of IRS Commissioner John A. Koskinen after they said he failed to cooperate with their inquiry into the targeting of conservative groups by tax investigators.Source: House Republicans want IRS commissioner fired...
First Read is a morning briefing from Meet the Press and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.Source: First Read: The First GOP Debate is the New Ames Straw Poll...
On July 8, 2015, Campaign Legal Center President Trevor Potter addressed The Public Policy Forum of Crested Butte in Colorado. His speech “The Money in Politics Disaster: Where Do We Go from Here”, follows below.Source: The Money in Politics Disaster: Where Do We Go from Here...
Passions have clearly been stirred by the recent 4-2 decision by the Wisconsin state supreme court to shut down a state “John Doe” investigation into potentially illegal coordination between the 2012 recall campaign of Gov.Source: Judicial Oblivion: How the Wisconsin Supreme Court Ignored Legal Precedent to End the John Doe Investigation...
Despite all the hype about tools like Snapchat and Meerkat, the 2016 campaign will be dominated by a technology that's been around for decades: TV. This was supposed to be the presidential campaign that ends the dominance of TV ads — the Snapchat election, the live streaming election.Source: The television election...
The dashcam footage of Sandra Bland’s arrest is disturbing for a number of reasons—including trooper Brian Encinia’s apparent use of excessive force in subduing Bland. But for civil liberties advocates, a less dramatic moment of the footage is nearly as disquieting.Source: Did Sandra Bland Have a Right to Film Her Arrest?...
Among those who decry the levels of money being spent on elections, the villain is almost always Citizens United, which unleashed corporations and permitted them to make unlimited independent expenditures in support of or in opposition to candidates for elected office.Source: It’s Buckley, not Citizens United, that created massive spending...
