Election Administration
News & Commentary | Archive

After the 2000 elections, election administration become a leading item on the agenda of election law reform. Congress enacted the Help America Vote Act:  the implementation of that Act, scheduled in phases, presents a continuing series of issues such as voter eligibility, access and voting technology. The role of elected officials in the administration of elections has given rise to calls for the professionalization—and depoliticization—of state and local election administration.

"Taxpayer Dollars"

     It was refreshing to see Sean Parnell’s posting at the Center for Competitive Politics ("CCP"), replying to one here, which acknowledges that the case for public funding can be “respectable”.  Parnell takes up the point that the public funding can be, and often is, oversold as potentially “transformative”.  A respectable case concedes that this goes too far but insists that there are still good reasons to have public funding as an option:  to free willing candidates at least a little from the ardors of fundraising, and to provide seed capital to candidacies that might build successfully on this start-up money but would wither without it.

 

Public Financing Reform and Its Evaluators

     Evaluations of public financing, such as those recently in Florida and Arizona, usually show that the criteria for judging these laws are neither settled nor, in specific cases, consistently applied.  The Center for Competitive Politics, for example, which devotes a fair amount of energy to pointing out the problems with “clean elections” laws, tends to dwell on their failure to deliver transformative changes in government.  
Other criticisms are centered more on problems with public financing laws’ mechanics: expenditure limits that are too high, or party spending allowances that serve as the channel for excessive private spending.

 

2000-2006 in Election Law: The Pace of Change and the Phases of Reform

     Following are remarks prepared for a University of a Miami Law School Symposium Devoted to the Question: "How Far Have We Come Since 2000?"

 

2000-2006 in Election Law: The Pace of Change and the Phases of Reform

     This paper takes the position that little has changed since 2000, and so has everything, in most of the subject areas we put under the label "election law."

     Election law never moves sure-footedly toward its goals: it adjusts with difficulty to changes in politics and it does not chart or hold a steady course toward one jurisprudential port or the other. We are ceaselessly surprised and never satisfied with its results.  And yet it seems that this frustration is caused more than anything else by the measure we choose to take of political reform, by our notions of how progress in reform takes place.

 

Lines on the Blog, on the Listserve

     Over the last couple of days, a question debated on the Hasen blog and on the lisetserv has been the prevalence and—if widespread—the significance of lines of voters waiting too long to vote.  Heather Gerken and Ned Foley believe on the strength of election day reports that these lines were a problem; another view, expressed on the listserve, is that the press reports may be overstated, and that voters will gladly stand for lines, within reason, just as they do on other occasions, for other reasons. 

 

A Further Note on "Appearances" in Election Administration Reform

     Chris Elmendorf and I had an exchange about the goal of strengthening "public confidence" in any election law reform.  It seemed that chasing this ghost, as a primary objective, would lead quickly nowhere, and that election reform would produce confidence if confidence was earned--by performance. So far the term "confidence" has shown up to ill effect in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence: it is the easy way out in empowering election officials to adopt "anti-fraud" measures in the absence of any evidence that fraud occurs.  But Elmendorf makes the point that the objective of higher public confidence should not be discounted altogether, especially in encouraging the losing side to accept the results. 

 

Also...

Approaches to Reform: Chris Elmendorf on the Problems with the “Federal Fix” Model  11/10/08

After this Election Day, Looking to the Next….  11/6/08

The Rokita Standard of Public Service  10/29/08

Understanding the Voters—and Respect for Them  10/28/08

McCain and the "Fabric of Democracy"  10/16/08

Vote Suppression and the Daily Call  10/15/08

Now Mum on Caging Plans—But the Silence Tells All  9/25/08

Fraud on the Election Law Listserv  9/19/08

Objections  9/17/08

More from CCP on (Against) Public Financing  9/2/08