Election-Campaign Law

Popular monitoring of popular elections

Posted on October 28, 2008
Heather Gerken writes on Balkinization: A few months ago, I blogged about a new strategy for "popular monitoring of popular elections" – Harvard professor Archon Fung's proposal for harnessing the power of the wiki to monitor election problems by creating...

Our Vote

Posted on October 28, 2008
Election Protection's Our Vote site is up and running already. You can find it here. Election Protection has added a new wrinkle -- Our Vote Live -- "the official site documenting the groundbreaking voter assistance work of the Election Protection...

Good new: plenty of work for lawyers; bad news: it's unpaid

Posted on October 28, 2008
The New York Times reports: With heavy voter turnout expected on Election Day, both parties are amassing thousands and thousands of lawyers to keep an eye on the polls. Senator Barack Obama’s campaign is expected to send at least 5,000...

Alabama: should state reinstitute early voting?

Posted on October 27, 2008
The Huntsville Times reports: Alabama could have been among the 31 states allowing early voting in the Nov. 4 general election had it not repealed a state law in 2001. Alabama experimented in 1998 and 2000 with what it called...

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Georgia: Challenged ballots to be cast by questioned-citizenship voters

Posted on October 27, 2008
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports: The state of Georgia must allow persons whose citizenship has been questioned in a new voter verification system the opportunity to cast a ballot in the Nov. 4 elections, a three-judge court ruled Monday. The court...

Alaska: state law may allow Palin book but not TV show while still in office

Posted on October 26, 2008
Politico reports: If Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin does not become vice president on Nov. 4, she can look forward to a sweet payday for a memoir about her unlikely VP run should she choose to write one. But she might...

Since it is illegal for the campaign to pay for Palin's clothes, the RNC did

Posted on October 26, 2008
Newsweek reports: The disclosure that the Republican National Committee spent more than $150,000 on clothing and accessories for vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family set off recriminations among GOP officials—and, more important, party donors...

Virginia: Fairfax email system crashes, stopping military-ballot distribution

Posted on October 25, 2008
The Washington Post reports: Efforts by elections officials in Fairfax County and several Virginia jurisdictions to distribute absentee ballots to military members and others living overseas ground to a halt Tuesday after a group concerned about the state's voting system...

Virginia: GOP says Kaine has "assembled a felonious coalition"

Posted on October 25, 2008
The Washington Post reports: Virginia Republicans opened up two fronts in the increasingly testy battle over the voting process Thursday by accusing Gov. Timothy M. Kaine of stacking the registration rolls with felons and raising concerns that county registrars were...

Ohio: White House urges DOJ to investigate new voters in Ohio

Posted on October 25, 2008
The Washington Post reports: The White House has asked the Department of Justice to look into whether 200,000 new Ohio voters must reconfirm their registration information before Nov. 4, taking up an issue that Republicans and Democrats in the battleground...

Alabama: political parties are lawyered up

Posted on October 25, 2008
The Birmingham News reports: The polls aren't open yet, but Alabama Democrats and Republicans are preparing their legal teams to deal with any problems that might crop up on Election Day. Voter registration surged past 2.9 million as election officials...

Florida: long lines in early voting bode ill for Election Day

Posted on October 24, 2008
The Washington Post reports: After standing for more than an hour outside his polling place earlier this week, Dick Rosenow finally gave up when it started raining. He returned the next day, but again the line snaked around the branch...

Pennsylvania: suit filed over back-up paper ballots

Posted on October 24, 2008
The New York Times reports: Concerned that voting machine breakdowns could cause long lines on Election Day, particularly in minority neighborhoods, several groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday to force Pennsylvania election officials to provide paper ballots when half the...

"The Republican Disconnect"

Posted on October 24, 2008
Democracy Corps reports: With the country poised for its second wave election, Republican supporters are on a different page and disconnected from the rest of the country. That helps explain John McCain’s implausible close to the campaign and perhaps foretells...

Lawyer 2 Lawyer interviews Brenda Wright and Ed Still

Posted on October 24, 2008
Description: Voter fraud, faulty equipment, voter purges, 3rd party registration problems-These are just some of the issues plaguing elections past and present. Law.com blogger and host, J. Craig Williams welcome experts, Attorney Brenda Wright, Legal Director of Demos, and Attorney...

Ohio: hackers hit Sec/State's web site

Posted on October 23, 2008
Computerworld reports: The Web site of Ohio's secretary of state was shut down after it was hacked Monday, according to the site and local media reports. The site was later restored, but with only limited functionality. Tuesday morning, the site...

"More Democrats Casting Early Ballots, Data Show"

Posted on October 23, 2008
The New York Times reports: With as many as one-third of voters expected to cast their ballots before Election Day, preliminary data from several key battleground states show more Democrats than Republicans have voted early. While the information should hardly...

Q&A: Heather Gerken on Election Law

Posted on October 23, 2008
With less than two weeks to Election Day and record early voting expected, The Takeaway is talking with Yale Law School professor Heather Gerken about election law and voting rights. Professor Gerken is taking your questions about your voting problems,...

Alabama: Glasgow settles suit with Dept of Corrections on voter registration in prison

Posted on October 21, 2008
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund announces: Today, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) settled the lawsuit it filed against the Alabama Department of Corrections in federal court earlier this month on behalf of Reverend Kenneth Glasgow. Immediately after the lawsuit...

Mark Crispin Miller talks about problems voters may face at the polls

Posted on October 21, 2008
The Bill Moyers Journal on PBS reported: As election day approaches and both Democracts and Republicans warn that the other side may be planning to tamper with the results, voters may be wondering if their vote will be counted properly....

Large donors have been giving to joint-fundraising committees

Posted on October 21, 2008
The New York Times reports: Much of the attention on the record amounts of money coursing through the presidential race this year, including in Senator Barack Obama’s announcement on Sunday of his $150 million fund-raising haul in September, has focused...

Alabama: registration nears 3 million voters

Posted on October 20, 2008
The Birmingham News reports: Alabama election officials are bracing for an Election Day rush as voter registration levels hit a record of nearly 3 million people. The deadline to register to vote is Friday. Election officials across the state have...

RFK Jr: GOP "fixed" the 2004 election

Posted on October 20, 2008
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes in Rolling Stone: But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad3 never received their ballots...

Hebert connects the dots on Mukasey's actions and non-actions on protecting voters

Posted on October 20, 2008
Gerry Hebert, Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center, says, "Silence about protecting the right to vote is simply not acceptable." The fact that Mukasey has not said anything about the leaked reports that the FBI is investigating ACORN says....

Michigan: GOP admits scheme to use mortgage foreclosure lists in voter challenges

Posted on October 20, 2008
Emptywheel reports at Firedoglake.com: Democrats and Republicans have settled the suit seeking to prevent Michigan Republicans from using foreclosure lists to challenge voters. The MDP statement on the settlement says: An agreement announced today by Obama for America, the Republican...

Alabama: Loser in Monroeville complains of poll worker reading ballots

Posted on October 17, 2008
The Monroe Journal reports: Jack Botta has filed an official protest against poll worker Deloise Dailey in last Tuesday’s Runoff Election in Frisco City. “The difference in the vote totals was so great that this may not have been a...

Colorado: early voting forces campaigns into a marathon of GOTV

Posted on October 17, 2008
The New York Times reports: The presidential debate had barely ended Wednesday night when Kristin Marshall had her ballot on her lap, pen in hand, ready to vote. Three friends, all supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, had...

FBI investigates the ACORN voter registration drives

Posted on October 17, 2008
AP reports: The FBI is investigating whether the community activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election. A senior law enforcement official confirmed the investigation to The Associated Press on Thursday...

Alabama: "Feds threaten to sue state for unreported military voting stats"

Posted on October 17, 2008
The Birmingham News reports: The U.S. Department of Justice is threatening to sue the state of Alabama for not reporting military voting statistics in 2004 and 2006. In an Oct. 6 letter to Secretary of State Beth Chapman, the Justice...

Alabama: more voters than adults in six counties

Posted on October 17, 2008
The Birmingham News: Six Alabama counties have more people on their voting rolls than they do people of voting age, according to voter registration numbers and U.S. Census Bureau estimates. The curious statistic could be the result of a surge...

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