Author: bakhtawar

The cert petition in Lieu v. FEC is designed to get the Supreme Court to address an issue addressed by the D.C. Circuit in the earlier SpeechNow case but never addressed by the Supreme Court: is it constitutional for Congress to limit contributions to political committees that make only independent expenditures (so-called super pacs)? Some heavy hitters on the cert … Continue reading Big (Quixotic?) Push to Get Supreme Court to Hold that Congress Has the Constitutional Power to Outlaw Super PACs Continue Reading →

Gretchen Helmke, Mary Kroeger, and Jack Paine have posted this new draft paper. Here is the abstract: If politicians and their political parties generally want to stay in power, why would they ever forgo using anti-democratic tactics to win elections? We analyze a game-theoretic model to explain democracy by deterrence, which specifies how fear of … Continue reading “Democracy by Deterrence: Strategic Self-Entrenchment in U.S. Elections” Continue Reading →

In this short piece, Derek Mueller makes an important point: the Supreme Court did not hold, in Bush v. Gore, that the Electoral Count Act mandates that all state counting or recounting processes in the presidential election must end by the so-called “safe harbor” date in the Act. Instead, the Court (rightly or wrongly) interpreted Florida law, as … Continue reading Derek Muller on Bush v. Gore and the Electoral Count Act Continue Reading →

I linked yesterday to my forthcoming article with Jowei Chen on the implications of race-blind redistricting. In this post, I thought I’d provide some additional detail about our methods and findings. First, to conduct a non-racial line-drawing process, we used a computer algorithm like the ones featured in several recent gerrymandering cases. For each state we examined … Continue reading Race-Blind Redistricting and Minority Representation Continue Reading →

An ex-congressman once convicted as part of the infamous Abscam investigation in the 1980s is facing new corruption charges for allegedly bribing a Philadelphia elections official to stuff ballot boxes. Michael “Ozzie” Myers, who was famously caught on a hidden FBI microphone years ago declaring “money talks in this business and bulls— walks,” was charged … Continue reading “Ex-congressman from Abscam scandal faces new vote-buying charges” Continue Reading →

Joe Biden on Thursday night warned donors that President Trump will try to “indirectly steal” the 2020 election by making a case against mail-in ballots, a voting method that many are expected to use to avoid exposure to the coronavirus during November’s election. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee asked donors attending a virtual event to spread the word … Continue reading “Biden predicts that Trump will try to ‘indirectly steal’ the election” Continue Reading →

David Ignatius WaPo column: What can U.S. citizens do to help protect the integrity of our November presidential election, after President Trump’s refusal last Sunday to pledge he’ll accept the outcome and his unfounded claims that the election could be “rigged”? Be prepared, is the obvious first requirement. Knowing there’s likely to be a challenge to November’s results, … Continue reading “How to safeguard against the worst possible outcomes in November” Continue Reading →

This lively discussion reviewed the Supreme Court’s key cases decided in the October 2019 term, drawing a large audience for the virtual presentation, recorded via Zoom. Moderated by Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science Richard Hasen, the all-star panel of Supreme Court jurists, journalists and legal scholars included Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished … Continue reading Watch Archived Video of Meaty and Interesting July 23 Conversation: 10th Annual UCI Law Supreme Court Term in Review Continue Reading →

NBC News: In mid-2019, researchers at Facebook began studying a new set of rules proposed for the automated system that Instagram uses to remove accounts for bullying and other infractions. What they found was alarming. Users on the Facebook-owned Instagram in the United States whose activity on the app suggested they were Black were about … Continue reading “Facebook ignored racial bias research, employees say” Continue Reading →

NBC News: In mid-2019, researchers at Facebook began studying a new set of rules proposed for the automated system that Instagram uses to remove accounts for bullying and other infractions. What they found was alarming. Users on the Facebook-owned Instagram in the United States whose activity on the app suggested they were Black were about … Continue reading “Facebook ignored racial bias research, employees say” Continue Reading →