Election Law @ Moritz

Commentary

Judicial Review of Electoral Mechanics After Crawford


Chris ElmendorfMay 6 (Chris Elmendorf)
Last December, I published an article that advanced two descriptive claims about nature of the Supreme Court’s Storer-Burdick (or “electoral mechanics”) jurisprudence. The first claim, which I thought perhaps so obviously true as to be uninteresting, was that in spite of the Court’s nominal rejection of “litmus paper tests” in favor of open-ended balancing in this area, the Court’s decisions actually manifest a strong preference for simple, formal threshold tests by which challenged requirements may be sorted into the twin categories of presumptively permissible and presumptively impermissible (and subjected to lax review or strict scrutiny accordingly). My second claim, which I thought more provocative, was that Burdick misleads where it indicates that that scrutiny levels are to vary with the severity of the burden on the plaintiff’s rights of political participation.

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Daniel P. Tokaji
Equal Vote is the nationally-acclaimed blog by Daniel P. Tokaji that focuses on election reform, the Voting Rights Act and the Help America Vote Act.

About Us

Election Law @ Moritz is a web publication that covers developments in the law of election administration-- laws dealing with voter registration, voter ID, early and absentee voting, provisional balloting, poll workers and polling place procedures, recounts and election contests, and other related issues.  Our primary target audience includes lawyers and legal scholars who focus on these issues, as well as journalists in the elections field.  Through our work, we hope to help this audience better identify and understand the true issues confronting the world of election administration. 

The Election Law @ Moritz website was officially unveiled July 20, 2004, after extensive development by faculty here at Ohio State.  It consists of a number of features that have accumulated over the years, including a daily-updated chart of major pending cases, weekly to bi-weekly opinion comments, front page "What's New" items covering election law-related events, recount coverage following the biennial federal elections, a series of interactive maps that use a system of color coding to compare post-election processes (counting, recounting, and election lawsuit processes) across all 50 states, a now-archived searchable reference guide known as the e-Book on Election Law, and other materials.  In addition, the EL@M team is responsible for a number of non-website related projects, including sponsorship of various symposia and conferences and authoring various law review articles and other publications.  Publications include From Registration to Recounts: The Election Ecosystems of Five Midwestern States, a book sponsored by the Joyce Foundation that describes the election systems of Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin.  Another book is forthcoming that will describe and analyze post-election processes in all 50 American states.

Election Law @ Moritz is the product of a wealth of election law expertise at the Moritz College of Law.  The current director of EL@M, Edward Foley, is an expert in many areas of election law, including campaign finance and provisional balloting.  Daniel Tokaji, whose Equal Vote blog has focused attention on voting machine technology, examines voting rights issues especially as they concern minority and disabled voters. Peter Shane, one of the nation's leading scholars on the law of the presidency, is an expert on the Electoral College. Donald Tobin has published much-noticed articles on the relationship of tax law and campaign finance, testifying before the Federal Election Commission on this topic. Steven Huefner studies state election laws, including term limits and campaign finance, as part of his path-breaking scholarship on state legislatures.  In addition, a host of other Moritz professors address election law issues as ancillary components to research agendas that focus on other areas of law.  We are unaware of any other law school in the nation with as large a team in this field. 

Disclaimer:  Election Law @ Moritz is nonpartisan. We do not endorse, support, or oppose any candidate, campaign, or party. Opinions expressed by individuals associated with Election Law @ Moritz, either on this web site or in connection with conferences or other activities undertaken by the program, represent solely the views of the individuals offering the opinions and not the program itself. Election Law @ Moritz institutionally does not represent any clients or participate in any litigation, but individuals affiliated with the program may from time to time in their own personal capacity engage in pro bono representation of clients other than partisan candidates or organizations.