Ari Berman in the Nation and Naomi Shavin in TNR.
I would be very cautious about saying voting restrictions had any determinative effect on election outcomes—we have a hard enough time figuring out how much they affect voter turnout.
Ari Berman in the Nation and Naomi Shavin in TNR.
I would be very cautious about saying voting restrictions had any determinative effect on election outcomes—we have a hard enough time figuring out how much they affect voter turnout.
Charlotte Observer on the convicted mayor who forgot felon voting was illegal. (Cue Steve Martin)
The Economist on the latest in the voting wars.
538:
We don’t know final turnout numbers for Tuesday’s elections for the same reason we don’t have official winners in the Senate races in Alaska and Virginia: Ballots remain uncounted.
Nonetheless, enough data is in for Michael P. McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida, to make preliminary estimates of turnout. And what they show is a steep decline from recent national elections. McDonald estimates that just 36.6 percent of Americans eligible to vote did so for the highest office on their ballot. That’s down from 40.9 percent in the previous midterm elections, in 2010, and a steep falloff from 58 percent in 2012.
That’s the lead story in this week’s Electionline Weekly.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Scott, et al. v. Schedler, et al., issued a ruling partially upholding a district court’s ruling after trial that Louisiana violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by failing to properly provide voter registration services to its public assistance clients.
Plaintiffs in the case, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., (LDF); Project Vote; Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP; and Louisiana attorney Ron Wilson, previously secured, after a vigorously contested trial, a ruling that Louisiana failed, as required by Section 7 of the NVRA or the “motor voter law,” to offer mandatory voter registration services to the state’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens during benefits transactions providing social services.
“While the Fifth Circuit was correct to recognize Louisiana’s failure to provide voter registration for clients who receive benefits in person, it did not fully recognize the scope of Louisiana’s violation of the National Voter Registration Act,” said Natasha Korgaonkar, Assistant Counsel for NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a separate organization from the NAACP.
A ballot measure aimed at tightening ethics laws and changing term limits in Arkansas bucked expectations and passed with 53 percent of the vote. The measure, officially called Issue 3, bans lobbyist gifts to state officials, prohibits direct corporate and union contributions to candidates and lengthens the time period before former lawmakers can become lobbyists (from one to two years).
Those anti-lobbying and campaign finance reforms appeared to be headed for defeat because they were linked to an unpopular provision that sought to extend term limits for state lawmakers. Polling by Talk Business Research and Hendrix College showed that most likely voters supported the ethics reforms, but opposed a package that also included term-limit extensions.
As of now, the ban on direct corporate and labor union contributions remains constitutional, though opponents have continued to try to get the Supreme Court interested in revisiting the question. (Citizens United involves corporate spending indepenedent of candidates.)
Embracing the irony of setting up a super PAC that would spend big money in order to fight super PACs and other groups that spend big money, Harvard professor Larry Lessig and GOP strategist Mark McKinnon went all-in on the idea voters would kick megadonors to the curb.
Tuesday, voters shrugged and cast their ballots for business as usual, leaving Mayday and Lessig — who emerged as its public personae — facing questions about the disconnect between its bold predictions and results….
Lessig did not respond to multiple phone calls from POLITICO in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election. That’s a marked change from earlier, when he and his allies assiduously courted media coverage – to great effect.
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the top Republican on the Senate Rules Committee survived a tough re-election battle Nov. 4 and may now be in line to take the chairmanship of the Rules panel, with the Republican takeover of the Senate.However, Roberts also may be in line for the chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee — a post the veteran Kansas lawmaker would be likely to take.If Roberts does not take the Rules Committee chairmanship, next in line for the post in terms of seniority would be Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), who is currently the top Republican on the Agriculture Committee but may be in line to be chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.Other veteran Republicans on the committee also may have options to head other panels, creating a murky outlook if Roberts does not end up chairing the panel. Further down the seniority list on the committee are Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.).
[Bumped to the top -- on my way to this event.]
I am very excited to participate in this event for the University of Chicago Legal Forum. (I’ll be presenting a paper on uniformity in election administration.) Here are the details:
Legal Forum Symposium: Does Election Law Serve the Electorate?
Date:Friday, November 7, 2014 - 9:00am - 3:30pm
Contact info (email or phone):The Symposium will take place in Room V, from 9:00 a.m.- 11:45 a.m. and continue after lunch and the keynote from 1:45 p.m. – 3:30 p.m..
The keynote speaker at this year’s event will be Cass Sunstein, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law.
The keynote will take place at 12 p.m. in Room II
PANELS
Governance, Polarization, and the Role of Election Law: 9 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Voters and Redistricting: 10:45 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Campaign Finance: 1:45 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
Rules and Regulations: 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.Participants
Richard Briffault, Columbia Law School
Josh Chafetz, Cornell University Law School
Guy-Uriel Charles, Duke University School of Law
Edward Foley, The Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law
Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Richard Hasen, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Ellen Katz, University of Michigan Law School
Nolan McCarty, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Michael Morley, Barry University School of Law
Nathaniel Persily, Stanford Law School
Michael Pitts, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
James Sample, Hofstra University School of Law
David Schleicher, George Mason University School of Law
Nicholas Stephanopoulos, University of Chicago Law School
David Strauss, University of Chicago Law School
Zephyr Teachout, Fordham University School of LawAll events are open to the public.
For more information, please contact Erica Jaffe at ericajaffe@uchicago.edu
For special assistance or needs, please contact Lucienne Goodman at 773-702-0877.
Faculty:
NPR:
Early returns indicated the progressives’ grass roots strategy would be successful. By the end of election night, Butt had captured the mayor’s race with more than 51 percent of the votes cast, and the Chevron-backed candidate, City Councilman Nat Bates, garnered just over 35 percent.
As a distraught Bates told the Richmond Confidential, “It’s a bloodbath, obviously. I think the citizens will suffer.”
Butt, who had accused Chevron of trying to buy the Richmond Council election, was ecstatic over his David versus Goliath victory.
“To take on a campaign that’s funded with $3 million and our modest campaign budget was about $50,000,” he said, “but we had a lot of grassroots help and we pulled it off.”
So True the Vote was right after all, not a photoshop:
The company that supplies Bexar County with iVotronic ballot machines acknowledged Wednesday that a glitch caused an electronic ballot to display the wrong name for the Republican candidate in the race for Texas governor.
Personally, I’d love to junk the remaining DRE machines being used in elections in this country and go to nationally mandated precinct scanned optically scanned ballots.
But Tom Steyer tells Peter Overby he will be back in 2016.
A Virginia Republican congressman and the state’s GOP are claiming they’ve received reports of faulty polling machines in almost two dozen locations, with voters intending to vote Republican accidentally selecting the Democratic candidate instead. But the voter registrar in his district is reporting considerably fewer irregularities.
Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) is running for re-election against Democrat Suzanne Patrick, a retired commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves. Rigell said at a press conference Tuesday morning that he’d received reports from 25 people in 19 precincts across the 2nd District who had tried to cast votes for him, but had their votes initially redirected to Patrick. The voters were ultimately able to switch their votes back.
Republicans and Democrats alike reported problems Tuesday using touch-screen voting machines in Virginia Beach and Newport News, with some claiming they almost cast ballots for candidates they did not support…
The extent of the “calibration issues” is unclear. Virginia Department of Elections Commissioner Edgardo Cortes said 32 of Virginia Beach’s 820 AccuVote TSX machines were pulled from service by 3:30 p.m. Another four were discontinued in Newport News, where most votes were recorded on paper ballots.
MORE from AP.
Must-read Nick Confessore NYT:
Over the last year and a half, the conservative outside groups retooled and revamped, borrowing lessons about how to exploit voter data, opposition research and advertising learned from their less moneyed but more effective Democratic counterparts during 2012.
As federal courts opened new avenues of influence for the wealthy and lenient enforcement effectively neutered what few legal and regulatory restraints remain on big-money politics, they took advantage of every available tool. To shield donors from scrutiny, they moved most of their spending through nonprofit groups not subject to federal disclosure requirements. To be more nimble, they created subsidiaries devoted to specific races. They begged donors for money, overcame internal rivalries that lingered through Election Day, and ultimately deployed at least $300 million in a favorable political environment, helping drive the 2014 midterms to become the costliest in history.
All told, the political network overseen by the conservative billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch appeared to be the largest overall source of outside television spending on behalf of Republicans. Seven Koch-backed groups spent roughly $77 million on television advertising in the midterm elections, officials said, including eleven Senate races. Koch groups appeared to be the biggest outside spenders on television in Arkansas, Iowa and Louisiana, airing a combined $25 million in ads. Republican candidates won Arkansas and Iowa, and the party’s candidate is favored to win a coming runoff in Louisiana.
American Crossroads and its affiliated nonprofit group spent $50 million on political advertising, and at least $20 million more on so-called issue ads, a spokesman said. The groups dominated outside spending in Alaska, where the Crossroads groups put about $7 million into television advertising, and Colorado, fielding close to $14 million, which helped crush Senator Mark Udall, the Democratic incumbent who was once favored to win.
All told, Republican outside groups spent about $205 million on television advertising, according to a Democrat tracking media purchases, while Democratic groups spent $132 million.
Joe Trotter for CCP.
TV ad spending in state Supreme Court elections by outside groups, political parties, and candidates has surged to more than $13.8 million since January, surpassing the $12.2 million spent on TV advertising in the 2010 midterm elections, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice and Justice at Stake of estimates provided by Kantar Media/CMAG.
The 2014 judicial elections delivered a new round of special interest money, attack ads, and partisan politics into America’s courtrooms, shattering several state records and increasing political pressure on state justices. For the first time, a powerful national political group, the Republican State Leadership Committee, systematically invested in Supreme Court and lower court contests across the country — an effort that was unsuccessful in almost all its targeted states, including North Carolina, Missouri, Tennessee, and Montana.
Additionally, voters endorsed a ballot measure that would serve to head off contested judicial elections in Tennessee and rejected a Florida initiative that would have given the governor the power to prospectively appoint replacements for sitting justices before the end of his or her term.
Press release: “Wyoming Liberty Group attorneys Benjamin Barr and Steve Klein filed an amicus curiae (friend-of-the-court) brief in the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals at Dallas, arguing that a political contributor’s convictions for organized crime, bribery and money laundering for campaign finance violations unconstitutionally abridge his First Amendment rights.”
Important Ken Vogel analysis that surely won’t be the last word on this topic:
Establishment Republican money finally got what it paid for — an electoral wave.
After two cycles during which conservative megadonors’ record spending was plagued by flawed candidates and internecine squabbling, their side’s big money operatives got to do some gloating on election night.
Conservatives tweaked their playbook to spend bigger and earlier to crush tea party insurgents and define Democratic candidates. And Republicans won most of the Senate races in which they prosecuted that plan — including Iowa, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Of all the candidates they backed, only Walter Jones (R-NC) and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) succeeded. And I don’t know that MayDay money mattered in those races. Would like to learn more.
Over the past few months my colleagues Katherine Jensen, Ken-Hou Lin and I have been trying to examine whether voter ID laws are good or bad for democracy by collecting data on concealed handgun license applications. While these applications may seem an odd choice for examining whether voter ID laws may disenfranchise anyone, they actually point to the likelihood of persistent racism within the process of obtaining state-issued IDs.
That early Pete Peterson lead disappeared. In the end, Padilla won by 5 points.
A ballot issue that would bar people from registering to vote on Election Day was defeated Tuesday.
The initiative sought to make the Friday before Election Day the deadline for late voter registration. In early results, voters turned away the referendum, 57 to 43 percent.
Opponents said the Republican-backed measure would deny some people the right to vote. Proponents said it would ease congestion at polling places on Election Day.
NYT:
Some longtime voters in Texas reported on Tuesday that they were refused a ballot because they lacked newly required photo identification. In North Carolina, voters who showed up at the wrong precinct were unable to vote, reflecting a new policy. And in Georgia, hundreds of frustrated people called a hotline to say they were unsure if their voter registrations had been processed, some of the thousands of would-be new voters who reportedly faced uncertainty.
In many cases, the accounts seemed to reflect concerns raised by civic groups and civil rights leaders that new photo identification requirements in several states and cutbacks in early voting and same-day registration in others would deter significant numbers of people from participating in the elections.
FairVote has a useful roundup.
Josh Blackman asks the question that was first on my mind when I woke up to the red wave.
WaPo: “U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner declared victory late Tuesday over Republican challenger Ed Gillespie in race that dented the former Democratic governor’s indomitable image…Gillespie declined to concede. ‘Let’s just stay together for a few more days, maybe longer,’ he said, calling for patience and adding that he wants to be ‘respectful of the voters.’”
Pete Peterson (R) leads very narrowly, with 15% of the vote in.
This is the only statewide race in CA where a Republican still has a chance to win.
If these numbers hold up in the morning, I expect we will see a concession rather than a recount.
Big news from Montana:
The Republican State Leadership Committee spent hundreds of thousands on ads and mailers for VanDyke, while Mike Wheat appeared in ads paid for by Montanans for Liberty and Justice, a group primarily funded by Montana trial lawyers.
According to recent estimates, outside groups spent nearly $1 million on ads during the race, compared to just $165,000 raised by the candidates themselves.
About $400,000 was raised to either tout VanDyke or denounce Wheat.
A nugget in this must-read WaPo report, Battle for the Senate: How the GOP woke up while Democrats were feeling the drag:
Despite his deep aversion to super PACs, Obama in early 2012 reluctantly sanctioned Priorities USA, a super PAC set up to back his reelection, and allowed White House and campaign officials to appear at the group’s fundraisers. But Reid and Senate Democrats thought the president was not giving the same level of support for Senate Majority PAC.
Lawyers negotiated for months over legal minutia, with Obama’s counselors insisting that the president appear only as a guest and do no donor solicitation, which would have violated federal law. After Obama appeared at two Senate Majority PAC events — June 17 in New York and July 22 in Seattle — the president’s lawyers demanded that no staffer follow up with the donors for at least seven days.
These contingencies were so strict, Krone argued, that it would be fruitless to involve the president at all. “They were setting the rules as they saw fit,” he said. “For some reason, they hid behind a lot of legal issues.”
The White House maintains that it was prudent in protecting the presidency and avoid any appearances of a quid pro quo. The senior White House official voiced displeasure with Senate Majority PAC’s methods: “They were calling Obama donors who we had long relationships with and making asks that annoyed the donors.”
The Times-Dispatch reports. Given that (at this moment) the #VASEN could go to a recount, this is good news.