Now Mum on Caging Plans—But the Silence Tells All

"Asked whether his party planned to use foreclosure information to compile challenge lists, Robert Bennett, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said the party did not discuss its election strategies in public."

Ian Urbina
"As Homes Are Lost Fears that Votes Will Be, Too"
New York Times
September 25, 2008

This comment appears in the same story in which Michigan Republicans insist that the use of foreclosure lists is not in their strategic toolkit. Ohio Republicans refuse to issue the same denial; they do not believe that they are required to do so, even though the practice raised with them is odious and legally indefensible. So what is the difference here between Ohio and Michigan?

(9/25/08) Read More

Fraud on the Election Law Listserv

Trevor Potter, John McCain's lawyer, said it all yesterday on the election law listserv, but it was not, we must be sure, how he meant to be understood.* He showed up with messages in defense of the Republican Party’s honor, defending it against the suit brought by the Obama campaign, the DNC, and voters over the planned use of foreclosure lists to challenge voters. Potter did not turn in a convincing performance but it was a revealing one; it could not help his cause because it made all too plain what that cause is and what, sadly, its defense requires.

*Under listserv convention, a listserv contributor may not be identified without consent, but a reporter called to inform me that Potter had given it.

(9/19/08) Read More

Objections

Two web commentaries in the last day, on different and important topics in election law, stake out or suggest certain positions and are vulnerable, as discussed below, to strong objections.

One considers the Michigan lawsuit over the use of foreclosure lists to challenge voters: Rick Hasen, pondering the strategy of the suit, notes as one possibility that "vote suppression" is strong public relations for Democrats in the same way as "fraud" flies from the lips of Republicans. The other by Reid Cox, of the Center for Competitive Politics, remarks on recent comments by a senior DOJ official about the Department's disinclination to prosecute 527 or other "independent group" activity conducted in violation of the law.

(9/17/08) Read More

More from CCP on (Against) Public Financing

CCP continues its hard questioning of the public financing system. In its latest white paper, it challenges the assumption that female candidates for public office, having less access to political money networks, will benefit from public funding alternatives. It studies Maine and Arizona and concludes that the women did not capture a larger share of state elected offices after public funds became available. CCP argues, in fact, that women politicians in those states experienced on average a “slight” decline in political market share.

(9/2/08) Read More

The Right to Vote in a Change Election

Notes on the Occasion of a Program on Voting Rights and Administration at the Democratic National Convention

This is the election to choose the successor to an incumbent who took office by order of the Supreme Court. In these eight years, the resolve has strengthened, in our party, to stop this from happening again, to have elections decided by the free choice of voters.

Much has been done to match this resolve; much has not.

(8/25/08) Read More

Also...

Ballots and the Problem of Intelligent Design 7/22/08

Shadow Institutions and the Question of Guidance on What is "Reasonable" : A Reply by Gerken and Bauer to Elmendorf 6/4/08

More on the Politics of ID, the Politics of Carter-Baker 6/2/08

Voter ID Politics as “Force” 5/13/08

Presidential Public Funding Reform: Letting Go of "Watergate" 3/13/08

What To Do—or, as Some Would Have It, NOT To Do—about Election Day Issues 3/6/08

A Difference an Election Makes, in Election Law 2/12/08

Voter Protection and Its Sources 2/7/08

Voter ID: Op-Eds and Their Uses 2/5/08

Carter and Baker, Marketing Nonpartisanship on Voter ID 2/4/08