The Truth About Voter Fraud

Allegations of election-related fraud make for enticing press. Many Americans remember vivid stories of voting improprieties in Chicagoland, or the suspiciously sudden appearance of LBJ's alphabetized ballot box in Texas, or Governor Earl Long's quip: "When I die, I want to be buried in Louisiana, so I can stay active in politics." Voter fraud, in particular, has the feel of a bank heist caper: roundly condemned but technically fascinating, and sufficiently lurid to grab and hold headlines. Perhaps because these stories are dramatic, voter fraud makes a popular scapegoat. In the aftermath of a close election, losing candidates are often quick to blame voter fraud for the results. Legislators cite voter fraud as justification for various new restrictions on the exercise of the franchise. And pundits trot out the same few anecdotes time and again as proof that a wave of fraud is imminent.Allegations of widespread voter fraud, however, often prove greatly exaggerated. It is easy to grab headlines with a lurid claim ("Tens of thousands may be voting illegally!"); the follow-up -- when any exists -- is not usually deemed newsworthy. Yet on closer examination, many of the claims of voter fraud amount to a great deal of smoke without much fire. The allegations simply do not pan out

A Citizen's Guide to Redistricting

Provides a detailed overview of states' rules and processes for redrawing federal, state, and local legislative districts. Illustrates possible motives behind redistricting, effects on elections, implications for legislation, and reform recommendations

Confronting the Impact of Citizens United

Perceived corporate dominance has spurred a recent populist backlash, on both the political left and political right. In this atmosphere, the Supreme Court\u27s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, granting corporations the right to spend directly on express political advocacy, has become the target of a particularly heated critique

Intent Is Enough: Invidious Partisanship in Redistricting

When the Supreme Court last seriously grappled with partisan gerrymandering, all nine Justices concluded that an excessive injection of politics in the redistricting process violates the Constitution, but failed to agree on what is excessive (or who should decide). Commentators have since offered no shortage of assistance, offering various models to resolve exactly “how much is too much.” This effort is a sprint to answer the wrong question. It is perhaps the question Justices have asked, but not the one best illuminating the problem. This Article suggests an alternative: not “how much,” but “what kind.” The Court wants to distinguish egregious unconstitutional partisanship from normal politics. In this endeavor, the nature of the intent, not the magnitude of the impact, matters more. A pivotal case from the October 2016 Term reveals that the invidious intent of a state actor to subordinate others based on perceived partisan affiliation constitutes a constitutional violation, no matter the severity of any resulting injury. Testing for this intent provides the screening device the Justices seek. Furthermore, this analysis reveals that the scholarly community’s quantitative tests to assess gerrymandering are valuable, but not for the reason most think: not because they show the threshold of impact necessary for a violation, but because they offer suggestive evidence of invidious intent

Race, Redistricting, and the Manufactured Conundrum

Race and redistricting each lie at the core of recurring contests over American political identity. It is therefore perhaps no surprise that cases concerning the role of race in redistricting have offered the Supreme Court a steady diet. In 2017, for the fourth time in four decades, the Court struck North Carolina districts based on the legislature’s misuse of race. And the North Carolina legislature, proclaiming the whole business too complicated, simply threw up its hands. This petulance is likely performance. The law of race and redistricting is resistant to shortcuts and stereotypes, but that does not render it intractable, particularly for those actually drawing the lines. For legislators, confronting race in the redistricting process is most difficult if you’re not actually trying. This piece traces the law of race and redistricting from the perspective of a redistricting body, distilling the present state of the doctrine to a few core elements. It then places the Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncements within this doctrinal framework, and interrogates the portent of the latest developments as a trail marker of developments to come. As the next redistricting cycle approaches, the most vexing issue is likely not that the Court’s statements on the law are inscrutable, but that some redistricting bodies may not yet be ready to listen.

The Partisanship Spectrum

In a polarized political environment, allegations of excessive partisanship by public actors are ubiquitous. Commentators, courts, and activists levy these allegations daily. But with remarkable consistency, they do so as if “partisanship” described a single phenomenon. This Article recognizes that the default mode of understanding partisanship is a descriptive and diagnostic failure with meaningful consequences. We mean different things when we discuss partisanship, but we do not have the vocabulary to understand that we are talking past each other. Without a robust conceptualization of partisanship, it is difficult to treat pathologies of partisan governance. Indeed, an undifferentiated approach to partisanship makes it difficult to distinguish the features from the bugs in our political system. Moreover, the failure to understand partisanship impairs our ability to confront the partisanship we care about most. Most observers attempt to constrain unwanted partisanship through substantive rules and structural design. But parsing the spectrum of partisanship shows that these tools are neither necessary nor sufficient to address partisanship in its most disparaged forms. Conversely, analysts have failed to appreciate the power of strong situational norms to combat the least justifiable partisanship. Contrary to conventional wisdom, officials seem to refrain from this form of partisanship far more often than they succumb to it, and norms may provide the explanation. Because these norms are socially constructed, the way we talk about partisanship matters. And we are likely getting the discussion very wrong, undermining exactly what we would hope to preserve. This Article attempts to flesh out the distinctions that have been heretofore elided. It develops a typology of partisanship, and then engages that conceptual structure to assess the various tools by which forms of partisanship—including the most pernicious portions of the partisan structure—may be addressed

Resolving Election Error: The Dynamic Assessment of Materiality

The ghosts of the 2000 presidential election will return in 2012. Photo-finish and error-laden elections recur in each cycle. When the margin of error exceeds the margin of victory, officials and courts must decide which, if any, errors to discount or excuse, knowing that the answer will likely determine the election’s winner. Yet despite widespread agreement on the likelihood of another national meltdown, neither courts nor scholars have developed consistent principles for resolving the errors that cause the chaos. This Article advances such a principle, reflecting the underlying values of the electoral process. It argues that the resolution of an election error should turn on its materiality: whether the error is material to the eligibility of a voter or the determination of her ballot preference. In developing this argument, this Article offers the first transsubstantive review of materiality as a governing principle. It then introduces the insight that, unlike the evaluation of materiality in other contexts, the materiality of a voting error may be reassessed over time. This dynamic assessment of materiality best accommodates the purposes of a decision rule for election error. Indeed, the insight is most powerful when the stakes are highest: when an election hangs in the balance. Finally, this Article discusses the pragmatic application of the materiality principle, including the invigoration of an underappreciated federal statute poised to change the way that disputed elections are resolved, in 2012 and beyond

Socioeconomic Inequalities and Molecular Risk for Aging in Young Adulthood

Diverse manifestations of biological aging often reflect disparities in socioeconomic status (SES). In this paper, we examine associations between indicators of SES and an mRNA-based aging signature during young adulthood, before clinical indications of aging are common. We use data from wave V (2016–2018) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a nationally representative study of adults aged 33–43 years, with transcriptomic data from a subset of 2,491 participants. Biological aging is measured using 1) a composite transcriptomic aging signature previously identified by Peters et al.’s out-of-sample meta-analysis (Nat Commun. 2015;6:8570) and 2) 9 subsets that represent functional pathways of coexpressed genes. SES refers to income, education, occupation, subjective social status, and a composite measure combining these 4 dimensions. We examine hypothesized mechanisms through which SES could affect aging: body mass index, smoking, health insurance status, difficulty paying bills, and psychosocial stress. We find that SES—especially the composite measure and income—is associated with transcriptomic aging and immune, mitochondrial, ribosomal, lysosomal, and proteomal pathways. Counterfactual mediational models suggest that the mediators partially account for these associations. The results thus reveal that numerous biological pathways associated with aging are already linked to SES in young adulthood

Socioeconomic inequalities in molecular risk for chronic diseases observed in young adulthood

Many common chronic diseases of aging are negatively associated with socioeconomic status (SES). This study examines whether inequalities can already be observed in the molecular underpinnings of such diseases in the 30s, before many of them become prevalent. Data come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a large, nationally representative sample of US subjects who were followed for over two decades beginning in adolescence. We now have transcriptomic data (mRNA-seq) from a random subset of 4,543 of these young adults. SES in the household-of-origin and in young adulthood were examined as covariates of a priori -defined mRNA-based disease signatures and of specific gene transcripts identified de novo . An SES composite from young adulthood predicted many disease signatures, as did income and subjective status. Analyses highlighted SES-based inequalities in immune, inflammatory, ribosomal, and metabolic pathways, several of which play central roles in senescence. Many genes are also involved in transcription, translation, and diverse signaling mechanisms. Average causal-mediated effect models suggest that body mass index plays a key role in accounting for these relationships. Overall, the results reveal inequalities in molecular risk factors for chronic diseases often decades before diagnoses and suggest future directions for social signal transduction models that trace how social circumstances regulate the human genome