Skepticseye.com

And has had a pretty good track record on this issue - see the links at their site, here.

and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful, one-hundred percent.

However, you wouldn’t know all I meant, or said, by reading the Politico. The Politico called to see whether I would comment on an anti-voter caging proposal now before Congress. I obliged, and made the following points:

- if a state permits challenges to voters, than it makes little sense to deny challengers the ability to do research on whom to challenge (that is, caging mail returns to review who may have moved from the precinct);

- opponents of caging are really opposed to partisan challengers in polling places at all, and one wonders why that isn’t the focus of reform;

- perhaps that reticence has something to do with a subconscious realization that partisan challengers, some places, perform a valuable function, and we might not want a federal law banning them. They are, in one-party jurisdictions, perhaps the only monitors around not allied with incumbents and the majority party. This is where the machine comment came in - that historically challengers protect abuse of voters by “historically Democratic” machines. I think I then allowed that the Platt machine wasn’t Democratic.

My point was that, with all we hear about abuses involving partisan challengers in polling places, we shouldn’t lose sight of their intended purpose - and the purpose they may continue to serve. Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got ’til its gone.

- finally, the reporter related some accounts of partisan poll workers abusing voters, confronting them, and whatnot. I observed that many jurisdictions do not permit challengers to address voters directly, so this would violate state rules (maybe federal law, too, depending). If the rules aren’t being followed, how is adding a “caging” law to the mix going to help, I queried.

The reporter who wrote the story had a word limit, and was entitled to use the quote he did. But that squib shouldn’t be taken as a complete summary of my views. I think some good friends know that . . .

The Court had fun thinking about the scope of “preclearance” yesterday.  As a refresher, under the Voting Rights Act, jurisdictions that used certain restrictive practices, and had a minority of the voting age population registered to vote, were required to have any of their changes in voting practices “precleared” by the Department of Justice, (or sanctioned by a judge).  The scope of this requirement has been interpreted broadly, to cover not just laws regulating voter qualifications, but redistricting and other more attenuated regulations of elections.

This case involved whether the Governor could appoint a replacement on a county commission, or whether a special election must be held.  The special election had been precleared — a return to the appointment process had not, even though state law provided for appointments.

Governor Riley sees politics at work:

“The plaintiffs’ problem with my appointment of Commissioner Chastang has nothing to do with race.  They simply wanted a different African American on the Mobile County Commission,” said Governor Riley.  “The plaintiffs want to take a federal civil rights statute aimed at preventing racial discrimination in voting practices and use it instead to further a partisan political agenda.  I hope the Supreme Court will stop this effort to pervert the aims of the Voting Rights Act.“

Imagine using voting rights law for political ends.  Is nothing sacred?

Ed Whelan wrote yesterday about the significance of the Washington State primary case as further evidence the Roberts Court takes Salerno seriously.

In other words, when litigants challenge a law’s constitutionality facially, they should be prepared to demonstrate its unconstitutional sweep in virtually all applications. I wouldn’t try to rely on cases that fudge this standard; Planned Parenthood v. Casey being but one example. (There, the Court found a spousal consent law unconstitutional, not by considering its burden on everybody, but only on those women who wouldn’t otherwise want to tell their spouses about their abortion decision). It would seem to me that with the Court paying more attention to the spirit of Salerno, litigants don’t get to redraw the sweep of the law to exclude people subject to, but not complaining about, the law at issue.

This is a critical component of the Crawford litigant’s case. Most voters have the government ID that Indiana wants them to produce. The Crawford litigation is all about the unconstitutional burden the ID requirement places on a small subset of people. But the case is proceeding as a facial challenge to the statute. These litigants want to say that the proper measure of the law’s facial sweep is the population burdened by the law. This Casey-like approach won’t work now - presuming the Court is at all consistent.

Justice Thomas, writing for the Court, upheld the Washington State primary election system enacted by initiative in 2004. (HT Hasen!)

Why, pray tell? Well, mostly because the challengers fashioned their claim as a facial challenge. One can’t successfully argue that party labels could confuse voters in a facial challenge, because one is expected to show that the law is unconstitutional in essentially all its applications. Salerno on steroids.

Scalia and Kennedy dissented. They dislike the Court’s “wait and see” approach. Deference is hell, sometimes.

Does this decision suggest that the Indiana Voter ID challenge (also a facial challenge) is toast.  Yes, it does.

So investigators are looking at Spitzer’s use of his fundraising consultant as a front for travel and other expenses to out of town locations where he might frolic a bit?  Do fundraising contractors usually front their clients the money?

Such an arrangement is unusual, said several people with considerable experience in the financial dealings of campaign committees, including one who had worked on a prior Spitzer campaign. They said fund-raising consultants usually insist that the campaign pay directly for flights, hotels and ballrooms because they do not want to be without that money while waiting for reimbursement or to get stuck with the bill.

(He IS Governor.  One might expect he’d be good for it.)  More practically, it makes honest reporting easier for the poor kid who gets to sit with the compliance software, hour after hour. More:

Several people briefed on the government’s investigation have said in recent days that the authorities were going to examine whether Mr. Spitzer had used campaign funds in connection with his reported meetings with prostitutes. Both New York and federal law prohibit the personal use of campaign funds.

He’s rich, he’s self-righteous, and he (may be) using his campaign account for this?   The one source of funds that has to be transparent to the public for years to come.

What an amazing thing.

Close aides to the governor suggested on Tuesday that the mood in the Spitzer home was tense . . .

I’ll bet. Why?

Investigators reviewing the scope of Mr. Spitzer’s involvement with prostitutes said on Tuesday that just in the past year he had had more than a half-dozen meetings with them and had paid tens of thousands of dollars to the ring, one law enforcement official said.

A person with knowledge of the service’s operations said that Mr. Spitzer had begun meeting with the prostitutes of the Emperor’s Club about eight months ago and had had encounters in Dallas as well as Washington. A law enforcement official said Mr. Spitzer also had an encounter with a prostitute in Florida. On some trips of several days’ duration, Mr. Spitzer scheduled more than one visit with a prostitute, this person said.

In his Washington visit with the prostitute, Mr. Spitzer is said to have used an alias to book one of his rooms at the Mayflower Hotel, the name of a close friend, the financier George Fox.

Mr. Fox released a statement yesterday that said he was surprised and disappointed by Mr. Spitzer’s misuse of his name

Mr. Hedgehog was unavailable, I guess.  Here’s a handy review of the Mann Act, just as a refresher. Meanwhile:

Authorities were seeking the testimony of the woman known as Kristen, who worked for the Emperor’s Club service and is identified in the criminal complaint as having met with the governor last month in Washington…

After her encounter with Client 9, the prostitute told the booker for the agency that it had gone well, and the booker told her that he, in an apparent reference to Client 9, sometimes asked the women “to do things that, like, you might not think were safe.”

“Unsafe?” Like what? Smoking a cigarette? (Maybe that’s why he wanted to see them outside New York.  They wouldn’t be at any Mets games, in any case.)

A developer sends a newsletter urging a “yes” vote on a ballot measure.  But in Wisconsin:

State law requires groups that spend more than $25 advocating a yes or no vote on a referendum to register. Because it’s a city referendum, Geneva Lake Development is required to register with the city clerk.

Communication by a registered group requires the statement: “Paid for by” the name of the group and the group treasurer.

City Clerk Diana Dykstra said Geneva Lake Development has not registered.

Explain to me, please, how a $25 registration threshold for interests making independent expenditures is tailored at all to any legitimate state interest . . . especially since here there is no doubt as to the source of the newsletter.

A forgotten caucus.  A late night call.

A very cool mp3 podcast from the wonderous Dayvid Figler.

Given all the designers in L.A. you’d think this wouldn’t happen.  The “Courage Campaign” is on this issue like white on rice.  But, well, the election has been held.  What distortions exist due to ballot design are now history.

It remains the case that there’s no good after-the-fact remedy for voter confusion from ballot design.  And I think it probably isn’t too hard to make the case that pre-election ballot review is presently less than thorough, especially if one is depending on party officials and state employees to vindicate the interests of independent voters.

One would think the state could design a ballot that parties would accept and showing an indicia of party support, but that “decline to state” voters could, you know, understand.