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A scan of recent days’ writing reveals two lines of argument about the Supreme Court’s failings in campaign finance. One holds that the Court’s understanding of politics is weak and leaves it helpless to grasp, in practical terms, the issues presented. It is suggested that Congress knows best; its members, also political candidates, are experts in the electoral process. Others argue that there is hope for the Court but it would require an improvement in the arguments it hears, and Professor Lessig and his allies continue to urge that the Justices be pressed on his “originalist” argument for an expansive view of the corruption—“dependence corruption”—that Congress should be empowered to control. There is more to add in each instance to round out what the proponents of these points of view have chosen to offer. The modern reform program does not generally invest much in the stalwart support of politicians. For the most part it is highly suspicious of pols. In gerrymandering, reform advocates contend that politicians invariably design districts to their narrow political advantage. In campaign finance, the Federal Election Commission is regularly reviled for being a hand-puppet of the two political parties who appoint Commissioners compliant with their wishes. Then there is ongoing accusation that elected officials fail or refuse to police their own ethics, through the legislative disciplinary bodies. In the House, this distrust led to the creation of the Office of Congressional Ethics as an “independent” enforcement mechanism structured to compensate for official fecklessness.

Colorado: Stakes grow in new Colorado gun control recall effort | Los Angeles Times

When a pair of Colorado lawmakers were recalled last month in a referendum on gun control, opponents had this to console them: At least, they said, the twin defeats did not alter the balance of power in Denver, the state capital. Now gun rights advocates are looking to change that. Organizers have received official go-ahead to start gathering signatures in a bid to oust state Sen. Evie Hudak, a Democrat from the Denver suburb of Westminister, who was the target of a failed recall petition drive earlier this year. The group, certified by Colorado’s secretary of State, has until Dec. 3 to collect just over 18,900 signatures to force a vote. The stakes: control of the state Senate, which Democrats hold by a tenuous 18-17 edge. Hudak, who is in her second term, was one of four lawmakers originally targeted after the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed a series of sweeping gun controls in response to mass shootings last year in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn. The measures, signed into law by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, include a requirement for universal background checks and a limit on ammunition magazines like the one used in the July 2012 theater shootings in Aurora, another suburb of Denver.

Editorials: Florida must be accurate this time on check of voter eligibility | Bradenton Herald

The integrity of America’s elections is paramount to our democracy. As Florida prepares to undertake another purge of voter rolls, though, last year’s botched attempt at cleansing registration records of noncitizens cannot be duplicated. Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner just finished a tour of the state to try to ensure the public that officials would perform better this time — and not send county elections supervisors flawed lists of eligible voters and minorities. Detzner’s just ended “Project Integrity” tour hinged on the admission of fault in 2012 and the promise of more solid data this time. But there’s reason to suspect another debacle.

Indiana: Carl Brizzi tells court that if Charlie White testified, it would have been a ‘disaster’ | Indianapolis Star

Defense attorney Carl Brizzi testified this morning that allowing former Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White to take the stand in his 2012 theft and voter fraud trial “would have been a disaster.” Brizzi had represented White in that case. White is now trying to erase his felony convictions for theft and voter fraud as he faces a one-year, home-detention sentence. White’s new attorney, Andrea Ciobanu, is trying to show that Brizzi provided incompetent counsel. This morning, she hammered Brizzi over why he didn’t allow anyone to testify in White’s defense. Brizzi, a former Marion County prosecutor, said White was tough to control during the proceedings in early 2012 and he believed White’s testimony would work against him. “It was all I could do to just keep him … to just maintain composure,” Brizzi said. As an example of White’s behavior, Brizzi described a newspaper interview he let White do as a “disaster.” Brizzi said if White had testified, deliberations would have been 30 minutes.

Indiana: Ex-elections chief wants convictions tossed | Associated Press

Indiana’s former elections chief was difficult to control and not allowed to take the stand at his 2012 voter fraud trial because he was a loose cannon, the attorney who defended him testified Tuesday. Carl Brizzi explained his defense strategy during a Hamilton County court hearing on ex-Secretary of State Charlie White’s petition to have his convictions overturned. White was sentenced to a year of home detention and was removed from office in February 2012 after a jury convicted him of voter fraud and other felony charges. The case stemmed from his use of his ex-wife’s home in Fishers as his voting address in 2010 while serving on the Indianapolis suburb’s town council and running for secretary of state. Prosecutors said White lived in a townhouse outside his council district with his then-fiancee but continued to receive his council salary and vote in his old precinct.

Editorials: Let’s not give Chris Christie a pass for election chicanery | Rob Richie/Salon.com

On October 16th – a Wednesday, no less – New Jersey voters are being asked to go to the polls to select a new U.S Senator to replace Jeffrey Chiesa, Gov. Chris Christie’s stand-in for the long-time Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg, who died earlier this year. Bizarrely, this oh-so-special election takes place just 20 days before these same voters will be asked to return to the polls for the regularly scheduled election for governor and state legislature. The cost to New Jersey taxpayers? Some $12 million. The adverse impact on voter turnout for having two separate elections in 20 days? Significant. The partisan calculation behind the election date? Blatant. It’s hard to know when we’ll hit bottom in shameless manipulation of our electoral laws by leaders of both major parties, but let’s hope it doesn’t get much lower than Gov. Christie’s “datemander.” When announcing his election schedule last spring, Christie justified the October 16th date with his professed belief that New Jersey voters needed as many days as possible with an elected Senator – then proceeded to appoint a Republican who for four months opposed most of the positions held by the man originally elected by those voters.

Ohio: Renewed Debate Over Absentee Voter Applications | ideastream

The debate over unsolicited absentee voter applications first heated up in the fall of 2011. Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald wanted to send these forms to every voter in his county, which gives those individuals a chance to request an absentee ballot. Secretary of State Jon Husted disagreed with FitzGerald because of the lack of uniformity it would bring among the other counties. As part of a compromise, FitzGerald agreed to hold off on sending out the applications and instead, Husted’s office mailed them to voters throughout the entire state for 2012’s presidential election. Now Republican Senator Bill Coley, of southwest Ohio, wants to lock down the rules on these applications in state law. His proposed bill says the Secretary of State can mail unsolicited applications for absentee voter ballots, but only on an even-numbered year and only if the General Assembly provides the money.

South Carolina: Two Spartanburg County lawmakers to push bill to close primaries | GoUpstate.com

Two Spartanburg County legislators plan to pick up the fight for closed primaries when they reconvene with their colleagues in January. Rep. Bill Chumley, R-Woodruff, and Sen. Lee Bright, R-Roebuck, said they plan to pre-file legislation that would close the primaries. South Carolina voters would have to register by party and vote only in their own party’s primary. “I think Republican-minded people should choose our candidate and not have it part of a partisan strategy of who the other party would like to run against,” Chumley said. Such legislation has died in the Legislature before, but the lawmakers said they are undeterred and are optimistic this year could be different. “It’s something the party’s been pushing for a while,” Bright said. “I’m starting to hear it from people outside the establishment.”

France: National Front party wins bellwether by-election | BBC

A candidate for the French far-right National Front (FN) party has won a by-election in the south-east, amid signs the party is gaining in strength. Laurent Lopez won a seat in the Var regional council, defeating the centre-right UMP with 53.9% of votes. Speaking on TV, FN leader Marine Le Pen said the results showed “a real desire for change by the French”. The party, once seen as a pariah in French politics, has made significant gains in popularity in recent months. It has been expanding its appeal to disillusioned Socialist and opposition UMP voters with promises on crime and illegal immigrants. Sunday’s run-off poll was for a seat in the town of Brignoles, near Toulon. Observers say the FN win there suggests the party may make gains in the 2014 municipal and European Parliament elections.

Ghana: Parties doubt EC’s ability to implement reforms | The New Statesman

Political parties in the country have cast doubt on the Electoral Commission’s ability to implement reforms following the challenges which confronted the 2012 polls. The Commission has come under criticisms by some political for its inability to deal effectively with some of the problems that bedevilled the elections, that some argue, could have been avoided. Speaking to Joy News on the sidelines of a workshop to discuss proposals for electoral reforms, some representatives of the political parties say the EC cannot be trusted to effectively carry out the reforms. MP for Manhyia East, Dr Matthew Opoku Prepmeh, who spoke for the New Patriotic Party, observed experience has shown that the Commission is not amenable to change.

Voting Blogs: The Maldives: a serial coup in progress? | openDemocracy

In the latest episode of what appears to be a serial coup in the Maldives, the country’s Supreme Court – apparently at the behest of allies of the former dictator, Islamists, and powerful business figures – threw out the results of the first round of presidential elections just hours before the scheduled date of the second round in which pro-democracy leader Mohamed Nasheed was expected to win handily. On October 10, the Court also invalidated all registered voters (the greatest number of whom had supported Nasheed) and called for the re-registration of everyone who wished to participate in a new presidential election, which they scheduled for October 19, only nine days later. This has raised concerns that the rushed and largely unsupervised re-registration process will allow anti-democratic forces to add the names of non-existent supporters of their candidates to the rolls while purging large numbers of Nasheed supporters. The Economist, noting that the police were getting “suspiciously strong powers of oversight” in the repeat election, observed that the impact of the ruling of the Court, dominated by appointees of a former dictator, is that “the crooked and the powerful are telling voters to go away and try again until they come up with a different result. ”

United Kingdom: Eight-year standoff over prisoner voting rights approaches resolution | theguardian.com

The United Kingdom’s standoff with the European court of human rights (ECHR) over prisoner voting is approaching a final resolution after eight years of political and legal controversy. The Strasbourg court first ruled in 2005 that a blanket ban preventing all prisoners from voting in elections was incompatible with human rights. That opinion has been unsuccessfully challenged in the upper appeals chamber of the ECHR several times, most recently by the attorney general, Dominic Grieve QC, when he supported an Italian case arguing an identical principle.

National: Judge Who Framed Voter ID Laws As Constitutional Says He Got It Wrong | The Nation

When the United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago issued a critical ruling defending the constitutionality of Voter ID laws, Judge Richard Posner authored the decision. The arguments Judge Posner made for upholding Indiana’s Voter ID law framed the some of the key underpinnings for the 2008 decision of the US Supreme Court that, since it was issued, has been employed as a justification for similar initiatives in states across the country. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, “a total of 34 states have passed voter ID laws of some kind.” Not all of those laws have been implemented, with a number of them facing court challenges. So it should count for something that Judge Posner now says that he was mistaken in his determination. Indeed, the judge’s rethink ought to inspire a national rethink — about not just Voter ID laws but the broader issue of voter rights.

National: Poll: Americans support fine-tuning election policy | USAToday

The capital’s shutdowns and showdowns have tested the patience even of the Senate chaplain. “Save us from the madness,” he prayed at the opening of one session last week. But how, exactly? The roots of the nation’s polarized and sometimes paralyzed politics, decades in the making, are too complex and far-reaching to be easily reversed or resolved. Even so, some political scientists and politicians argue that making simple changes — expanding who can vote in primary elections, for instance, or rethinking how legislative districts are drawn — could make a difference in the kind of government that follows. A nationwide USA TODAY/Bipartisan Policy Center poll finds a majority of Americans support a range of proposals aimed at easing hyper-partisanship and building confidence in elections. Some command the sort of broad bipartisan backing rare in national politics.

Editorials: No, overturning campaign contribution limits really would be a problem | Bob Biersack/Washington Post

Ray La Raja made some interesting points in his post last week about McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. I’m not as sanguine as he is about this case, and I think each of his points deserves a little more consideration. First, Ray argues that the current direct contribution limit for people giving to candidates ($2,600 per election) is very low. He goes so far as to note that $2,600 is about 0.18% of the $1.4 million or so the typical House winner spends in a campaign. There are a couple of nits to pick with this description. First, the $2,600 limit is, of course, a “per election” limit, and virtually every candidate for federal office participates in at least two elections (a primary and a general) in each cycle. So, the proper way to describe this boundary is that the existing limit is effectively at least $5,200 per candidate. That means that just under 300 people are able to fully fund the typical House winner under existing limits without a penny from PACs or parties or other campaigns — not exactly requiring a groundswell of support.

Voting Blogs: Navigating Debates about Redistricting | The Monkey Cage

People feel passionately about redistricting. They don’t like how it’s done, or how it’s disadvantaged their party, or both. So when political scientists come along to say “redistricting might matter less than you think”—for the outcomes of the 2012 House elections, for party polarization, for declining electoral competitiveness—people get cranky. For example:

Suck on it Monkey Cage and prove me wrong with maps.

So there’s clearly room for more thinking and discussion about the effects of redistricting. Here are 4 things I think are important to discuss or at least mention.

Arizona: Kansas and Arizona Ready Plans to Keep Voters from Voting in State Elections | AllGov

Threatening to upend a tradition of equality that dates back to the founding of the country, Republican political leaders in Kansas and Arizona are discussing plans to establish a multi-tier voting rights system for their states if they lose a voting rights case currently in federal court. The net effect would be to bar some U.S. citizens—mostly immigrants, racial minorities, the elderly, and the poor—from voting in state and local elections even as they cast ballots in federal contests. For the past several years, in response to ongoing demographic changes that are making the U.S. increasingly non-white and non-Anglo-Saxon, Republican-dominated state legislatures have passed a variety of laws making it harder to register or to vote. But this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Arizona law requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering because the national “motor voter” registration form demands only a signed oath of citizenship. The Court held that states cannot increase the federal voter registration requirements on the motor voter form, but they may ask the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to add requirements to it. Rebuffed by the EAC, Kansas and Arizona filed a court case to bend the EAC to their will, but in the likely event they fail, the tiered voting system is a backup plan.

Editorials: Seek bipartisan OK for online voter registration in Minnesota | Star Tribune

It’s high time for online voter registration to come to Minnesota, promising the convenience, accuracy and administrative cost savings it has already delivered in 16 other states, with two more state systems pending. It’s a shame that it arrived here under partisan and legal clouds that could threaten its staying power. Republican legislative leaders were quick to fault Secretary of State Mark Ritchie last week for initiating an online voter registration system without first obtaining explicit legislative permission to do so. Minnesota Majority — the voter fraud alarmist organization that pushed last year’s unsuccessful attempt to make a government-issued photo ID a voting requirement — said it is “consulting attorneys and considering legal actions” to block the new option. Ritchie had to see those clouds coming. The DFL secretary of state’s previous tangles with Republicans and their allies over ballot question wording and voter fraud served ample warning that a unilateral approach to online registration would meet with GOP criticism and possibly a court challenge.

Editorials: Yes, the new Pennsylvania Voter ID ad campaign is about confusing people | Philadelphia Weekly

The Inquirer noted yesterday that the Pennsylvania Department of State has decided to relaunch its $1 million Voter ID advertising campaign despite voters not needing to show identification at the polls for the upcoming November election. You remember: the “Show It” ads that popped up on TV in the summer and fall of 2012. Critics have contended they’re misleading and unnecessarily cost the taxpayers money since the voter ID law they’re meant to bring attention to is tied up in court. And the critics are right. Using government dollars to tell people to show identification at the polls this year is at best disingenuous. At worst, it’s a malicious attempt to use the idea of a voter identification law to keep eligible voters confused and at home on Election Day, perhaps proving this was the law’s intention all along.

Texas: Civil rights attorney on voter ID law: ‘Everybody knows somebody | KLTV

A national civil rights attorney made stops in East Texas Monday, visiting with communities about Texas’ new voter ID law. Sonia Gill is an attorney representing the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a group that has filed a lawsuit to repeal the recently implemented law. She said her priority during her stops in Longview and Mt. Pleasant today was to make sure voters know what to expect in upcoming elections. “When I go out and speak to some of the churches, everybody knows somebody who’s going to have a problem getting documents required to vote,” Gill said. Texas recently re-implemented the law, after the Supreme Court narrowly overturned part of the Voting Rights Act. Those provisions required Texas to clear any new voting laws with the federal government.

Washington: Voters to decide ‘initiative on initiatives’ | Capital Press

Washington state residents have plenty of experience voting on new law proposals, but next month they’ll decide on an “initiative on initiatives” that would make it easier to get such measures on the ballot. The proposal, Initiative 517, was sparked in part by a series of legal battles over local measures seeking to block red light cameras, including one case last year that went to the state Supreme Court. By requiring that voters be allowed to have their say on any proposal that qualifies for the ballot, even if a lawsuit has been filed against it, the initiative pushes back at cities that have sued — some successfully — to block local challenges to the cameras. “Initiative power is not subject to pre-election challenges,” said Mark Baerwaldt, a spokesman for the campaign. “It’s the way the will of the people is expressed.” The initiative also would give supporters a year, instead of the current six months, to collect signatures, and it would make it a misdemeanor to interfere with the signature-gathering process. Business groups and others have lined up in opposition, saying the proposal will affect their ability to deal with nuisances outside of their stores.

Wisconsin: Milwaukee man pleads guilty to five counts of voter fraud | Journal Sentinel

A Milwaukee man pleaded guilty Monday to illegally voting five times last year in West Milwaukee, when in fact he did not have residency there. Leonard K. Brown, 56, still faces a charge of voting twice in the November presidential election and making a false statement to an election official on election day. Those cases have been rescheduled for trial in January. His sentencing on the five convictions resulting from Monday’s pleas will be scheduled sometime after that trial. Brown was among 10 people charged in March with a variety of charges related to voter fraud. He is charged with voting twice in the Nov. 6 election — in person in Milwaukee on that date and by absentee ballot in West Milwaukee four days earlier.

Afghanistan: Votes sell for about $5 in Afghanistan as presidential race begins | Thomson Reuters

Sayed Gul walked into a small mud brick room in eastern Afghanistan, a bundle wrapped in a shawl on his back. With a flick, he plonked the package onto a threadbare carpet and hundreds of voter cards spilled out. “How many do you want to buy?” he asked with a grin. Like many others, Gul left a routine job – in his case, repairing cars in Marco, a small town in the east – to join a thriving industry selling the outcome of next year’s presidential elections. Gul, who had a long, black beard and was dressed in the traditional loose salwar kameez, said he was able to buy voter cards for 200 Pakistani rupees ($1.89) each from villagers and sell them on for 500 rupees ($4.73) to campaign managers, who can use them in connivance with poll officials to cast seemingly legitimate votes. From each card, Gul said, he made enough money to pay for a hearty meal like kebabs with rice, and maybe even a soda.

Editorials: Azerbaijan’s ‘AppGate’ | Al Jazeera

Few people honestly thought that Azerbaijan stood a serious chance of conducting a fair and free presidential election on October 9. As I have written extensively, since the beginning of the year, Azerbaijani authorities have been engaged in an unprecedented crackdown to silence all forms of criticism and dissent. The underlying climate simply did not allow for a fair competition – not to mention that Azerbaijan has not held a single authentically democratic election since Aliyev came to power in 2003. Still, the brazen nature of the electoral violations that took place surprised even close observers of Azerbaijan. A day before the election, Meydan TV, a satellite/Internet television station, broke the story that set the tone for the whole election, which became known as the “AppGate” scandal. Meydan TV exposed an apparent fault of the Central Election Commission’s mobile phone application to allow users to track election results. On October 8, Meydan TV discovered that the results section of the application was showing, giving incumbent President Ilham Aliyev 72.76 percent of the vote before a single vote had been cast.

Maldives: Supreme Court’s annulment verdict “troubling” given ongoing international criticism of judiciary: Bar Human Rights Committee | Minivan News

The UK’s Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC) has expressed concern at the annulment of the first round of presidential elections, stating that such a verdict was “particularly troubling in the context of the ongoing international criticism concerning the lack of independence of the Maldivian judiciary and the lack of adequate separation of powers.” The BHRC conducted independent observations of the trial of former President Mohamed Nasheed in the Hulhumale Magistrate Court earlier this year, a trial the MDP presidential candidate contended was a politically-motivated attempt to bar him from contesting the upcoming election. The BHRC concurred in its observation report: “BHRC is concerned that a primary motivation behind the present trial is a desire by those in power to exclude Mr Nasheed from standing in the 2013 elections, and notes international opinion that this would not be a positive outcome for the Maldives,” wrote observer Stephen Cragg on behalf of the BHRC, the international human rights arm of the Bar of England and Wales. In its most recent statement, the BHRC noted that the Supreme Court’s verdict to annul the September 7 election, in which Nasheed received 45.45 percent of the popular vote, “runs contrary to the conclusions of national and international election monitors, including the expert Commonwealth Observer Group, which confirmed that the electoral process was free, fair, well-organised and transparent. BHRC further notes with concern that the Court’s verdict appears to have been based on an unsubstantiated and as yet undisclosed police report.”

National: Judge: my voter ID ruling was wrong | Politico

A federal appeals court judge said Friday that he erred when writing a decision which served as a key precursor to the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling upholding the constitutionality of Indiana’s voter ID law. In an interview Friday on HuffPostLive, Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner said his opinion finding the Indiana law constitutional was mistaken, due to the court not having sufficient information about how the law could be used to prevent or discourage people from voting. “Do you think that the court got this one wrong?” HuffPo’s Mike Sacks asked. “Yes. Absolutely. And the problem is that there hadn’t been that much activity with voter identification,” Posner said. “Maybe we should have been more imaginative….We weren’t really given strong indications that requiring additional voter identification would actually disfranchise people entitled to vote.”

Editorials: The Supreme Court needs to get smarter about politics | Trevor Potter/The Washington Post

At one point during the oral argument Tuesday in the case of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, Justice Antonin Scalia remarked that he didn’t understand the legislation in question. “This campaign finance law is so intricate that I can’t figure it out,” he said. “It might have been nice to have the, you know, the lower court tell me what the law is.” Scalia meant to be playful. But as the argument progressed, it became clear that the justices really don’t know enough about money in politics. They expressed skepticism about “wild hypotheticals that are not obviously plausible” — when in fact we’ve already seen those scenarios play out. They talked a lot about the FEC’s “earmarking” and “coordination” rules, but they didn’t seem to recognize that those rules are impossible to police and that a dysfunctional FEC isn’t doing much policing anyway. And the conservatives on the court seemed to fail to understand what leads to corruption or the appearance of corruption — with Justice Samuel Alito going so far as to suggest that giving a very large check to a political fundraising committee isn’t inherently a problem, because the committee could take the money and burn it. “Well, they’re not,” replied Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. “They are not going to burn it.”

Arizona: Kansas: 2 States Plan 2-Tier System for Balloting | New York Times

Barred by the Supreme Court from requiring proof of citizenship for federal elections, Arizona is complying — but setting up a separate registration system for local and state elections that will demand such proof. The state this week joined Kansas in planning for such a two-tiered voting system, which could keep thousands of people from participating in state and local elections, including next year’s critical cycle, when top posts in both states will be on the ballot. The states are using an opening left in June by the United States Supreme Court when it said that the power of Congress over federal elections was paramount but did not rule on proof of citizenship in state elections. Such proof was required under Arizona’s Proposition 200, which passed in 2004 and is one of the weapons in the border state’s arsenal of laws enacted in its battle against illegal immigration. The two states are also jointly suing the federal Election Assistance Commission, arguing that it should change the federal voter registration form for their states to include state citizenship requirements. While the agency has previously denied such requests, the justices said the states could try again and seek judicial review of those decisions. “If you require evidence of citizenship, it helps prevent people who are not citizens from voting, and I simply don’t see a problem with that,” said Tom Horne, the Arizona attorney general.

California: Brown nixes Democrats-friendly initiative reform measure | Washington Post