Election-Campaign Law

Alabama: Neighbor-to-Neighbor Canvassing Tool

Posted on October 03, 2008
The Alabama Democratic Party announces: This year we have an unprecedented opportunity to elect Democrats from the top of the ticket to the bottom. The political winds are at our backs and we can change America for the better, but...

Florida: email rumors about voting

Posted on October 03, 2008
The Miami Herald reports: You can't wear a campaign T-shirt when you go vote. Your driver's license must exactly match your voter registration card. New voters who run afoul of Florida's new ''no-match'' law can't vote at all. None of...

Montana: University students protest GOP vote suppression

Posted on October 03, 2008
The Missoulian reports: About 18 people, most of them University of Montana students, rallied outside the Republican Party’s Missoula office Thursday, accusing the GOP of trying to suppress their votes. The protest, organized by Forward Montana, a nonprofit that encourages...

Alabama: Secretary of State will provide copy of voter list to political parties

Posted on October 03, 2008
The Huntsville Times reports: Secretary of State Beth Chapman agreed Thursday to give the Alabama Democratic and Republican parties updated voter lists as part of a settlement reached in Montgomery County Circuit Court. ... The Democratic Party sued Chapman after...

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Alabama: Rev. Glasgow sues over ban on in-prison voter registration (court docs attached)

Posted on October 02, 2008
The Dothan Eagle reports: The NAACP Legal Defense Fund expects a federal court to overturn Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen’s recent decision to prevent the Rev. Kenneth Glasgow’s drive to register eligible prisoners to vote...

"Voting goes to court"

Posted on October 02, 2008
The Chicago Tribune reports: In a furious, multistate campaign raging far from television cameras and cable TV chatter, scores of lawyers are arguing over the voting rights of perhaps millions of Americans who plan to cast ballots in the presidential...

Alabama: Governor disfranchising thousands (document attached)

Posted on October 02, 2008
The Birmingham News reports: Eligible Alabama voters are being wrongly denied the right to cast a ballot in the coming election because of the way Gov. Bob Riley's administration defines a crime of moral turpitude, state court administrators said Wednesday...

Alabama: Rev. Kenneth Glasgow sues to get in-jail voter registration

Posted on October 01, 2008
The NAACP Legal Defense announces: The NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) filed a lawsuit today in federal court on behalf of Reverend Kenneth Glasgow to allow him to resume registering eligible voters currently incarcerated in Alabama's correctional facilities...

Alabama: state representative asks prison chief to allow registration

Posted on September 30, 2008
The Huntsville Times: A legislator on Monday asked Alabama prison Commissioner Richard Allen to reconsider his decision that banned a minister from registering inmates to vote. Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, said no court orders or laws prohibit the registration of...

Alabama: GOP candidate seeks pledges to contribute, before state law allows fundraising

Posted on September 30, 2008
The Mobile Press-Register reports: Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim James has mailed out a letter encouraging "pledges" of financial support to his campaign, eight months before state law says fundraising can begin. In a letter dated Aug. 20, the campaign says...

Minnesota: networks sue over exit-polling restriction

Posted on September 30, 2008
The Star-Tribune reports: The nation's major television news networks and the Associated Press filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Minnesota on Monday, arguing that a new law that keeps exit pollsters at least 100 feet away from voting...

Ohio: early voting overlaps with registration period

Posted on September 30, 2008
The Port Clinton News Herald reports: Early voting for the 2008 November election gets under way today in Ohio and runs through Monday. The ballot casting comes on the heels of state and federal courts clearing the way for a...

Arizona: scan and email ballots allowed today

Posted on September 30, 2008
AP reports: Starting Thursday, voters who are registered in Arizona but live overseas will be able to vote online through a unique Web-based system. The Secretary of State's Military and Overseas Voting system will allow registered voters to apply for...

Report on removal of US Attorneys

Posted on September 29, 2008
The Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General has released the report on the firing of the U.S. Attorneys. Of interest to election lawyers will be the following: Page 176 (all page references are to the PDF pagination) begins a...

Debate One: Democracy Corps reports on a small focus group

Posted on September 27, 2008
Democracy Corps reports on reaction to last night's debate: With Barack Obama gaining momentum, John McCain needed to change the dynamic in the race during tonight’s debate and to shift the focus of the campaign onto friendlier terrain. Instead, Democracy...

Pulpit Freedom Sunday

Posted on September 26, 2008
The New York Times reports: Defying a federal tax law they consider unjust, 33 ministers across the country will take to their pulpits this Sunday and publicly endorse a candidate for president. They plan to then send copies of their...

"Know Your Rights as a Voter"

Posted on September 25, 2008
The Campaign Legal Center has compiled a primer on the rights of voters which is being circulated nationwide by various grassroots organizations and has been provided to congressional offices and party committees. -- The Campaign Legal Center: Know Your Rights...

Alabama: voter registrars falling behind

Posted on September 25, 2008
The Birmingham News reports: State Democratic Party leaders charged Wednesday that thousands of would-be voters are having a hard time registering to vote and may find themselves unable to cast ballots Nov. 4. Joe Turnham, chairman of the Alabama Democratic...

Scenarios for a 269-269 tie

Posted on September 23, 2008
The Washington Times has an article beginning: President Obama, with Vice President Palin? President Biden? President Pelosi? Call them the "Doomsday" scenarios -- On Nov. 5, the presidential election winds up in a electoral-college tie, 269-269, the Democrat-controlled House picks...

It's the biology, stupid

Posted on September 19, 2008
Nell Greenfieldboyce reports on NPR: John Hibbing, a researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has been studying whether people's political beliefs might be linked to biological traits such as their startle reflex. He says traditionally, political scientists have assumed that...

"Independent Political Groups Return With 527 Ads"

Posted on September 19, 2008
Peter Overby reports on NPR: As the Nov. presidential election draws nearer, ad by independent political groups are already on the air. John McCain and Barack Obama have said that these groups should stay out of the election process. But...

Alabama: prison commissioner bows to the will of the GOP and stops voter-registration drives

Posted on September 19, 2008
AP reports: Alabama's prisons commissioner has stopped a drive to register inmates to vote so they can cast absentee ballots from inside state prisons. Richard Allen's decision to halt the program Thursday afternoon came after opposition from the Alabama Republican...

Predictions of "an election day mess"

Posted on September 18, 2008
A Washington Post story begins: Faced with a surge in voter registrations leading up to Nov. 4, election officials across the country are bracing for long lines, equipment failures and confusion over polling procedures that could cost thousands the chance...

Mississippi: Governor to move Senate race to top of ballot

Posted on September 18, 2008
AP reports: Republican Gov. Haley Barbour agreed Thursday to move a special election for Trent Lott's old Senate seat to near the top of the November ballot, ending a dispute that had threatened to delay the start of absentee voting....

United Kingdom: great idea, except it's illegal

Posted on September 17, 2008
The Liberal Democrats came up with this great idea. Here's the way the Press Association described it: Voters will be bombarded with a quarter of a million automated telephone calls featuring a recording of Nick Clegg as part of a...

Alabama: voter-registration drive in jails

Posted on September 17, 2008
A Montgomery Advertiser story begins: Alabama inmates are registering to vote from prison in a precedent-set­ting effort organized by activist groups with the blessing of state corrections officials. Nearly 80 prisoners had filled out registration forms during drives at two...

Easy voter registration and information

Posted on September 10, 2008
Vote for Change has a quick and easy-to-use web site that allows you to fill out a voter registration form, request an absentee ballot, find your polling location, and get polling-day information (hours of voting, etc.)....

Virginia: McCain will campaign at Fairfax school, in violation of school policy

Posted on September 09, 2008
A Washington Post report begins: Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are holding a campaign rally at Fairfax High School tomorrow morning in violation of a school system policy, prompting some teachers and community leaders...

Veterans Affairs will allow voter registration drives

Posted on September 09, 2008
A New York Times report begins: The Department of Veterans Affairs said Monday that it would no longer ban voter registration drives among veterans living at federally run nursing homes, shelters for the homeless and rehabilitation centers across the country...

Texas: the NAMUDNO challenge to the Voting Rights Act docketed in Supreme Court

Posted on September 08, 2008
SCOTUSblog reports: Urging the Supreme Court to curb Congress’ powers to enforce the voting rights declared by the Constitution’s Fifteenth Amendment, a public utility district in Texas on Monday filed a sweeping challenge to the constitutionality of the extension of...

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