Election Law and the Presidency: An Introduction and Overview

Americans now fully appreciate that presidential candidates are vying for a majority of the Electoral College votes, rather than the individual votes of constituents. Modern campaigns are organized around this goal, and commentators are focused on this reality. As a result, there has been an increased cry to reform the electoral process. After all, if every other public official in the land is elected by receiving more votes than their competitors, why should the President of the United States be elected in this apparently undemocratic fashion? The process appears even more unusual in that electors are chosen pursuant to state law rather than according to any standardized national rules. For example, Maine and Nebraska voters choose their electors by a combination of statewide and congressional district results, while the remaining forty-eight states and Washington, D.C., award their electors to the candidate who wins statewide. Further, all states award their electors to the candidate with a plurality of votes—irrespective of the margin of victory.8 However peculiar the American presidential election system appears, it is exactly how our Founders wanted it

Could Terrorists Derail a Presidential Election?

The article begins by expressing surprise that there is no safeguard for regularly scheduled elections and that if an election would have to be cancelled or postponed it is unknown what would happen. It then discusses what happened to elections during 9/11/2001 and the lack of statutory guidance ensuing from there, and discusses how some states have addressed the problem of an affected election, and questions what would happen to the presidential election in the face of such events. It questions whether Congress should attempt to legislate for such an event and gives a suggestion for what can be done in the event of a failed election on the part of Congress and some guidelines for that action and concludes by stating that Congress must address this issue

Excessive Judicialization, Extralegal Interventions, and Violent Insurrection: A Snapshot of Our 59th Presidential Election

The Symposium included in this issue of the Fordham Law Review provides scholars and lawyers with the opportunity to think about some of the most provocative issues related to the way we elect our chief executive. When first conceived, this Symposium was meant to expand and elevate the discourse. Many of the participating authors have thought and written about these matters for years. It was our hope that, after fifty-nine presidential elections, we could shape the debate—and perhaps reform the law—for our next presidential election, our country’s sixtieth. Little did we realize at the inception of this project that the 2020 election would become so extraordinarily challenging—that our constitution, our laws, and the very norms that sustain our electoral process would be subject to the most severe stress test in one hundred and fifty years. Even after the election was resolved, there remains an ongoing debate as to the legal and extralegal issues that surfaced during the campaign and afterward and what they portend for the future of our democratic republic

Excessive Judicialization, Extralegal Interventions, and Violent Insurrection: A Snapshot of Our 59th Presidential Election

The Symposium included in this issue of the Fordham Law Review provides scholars and lawyers with the opportunity to think about some of the most provocative issues related to the way we elect our chief executive. When first conceived, this Symposium was meant to expand and elevate the discourse. Many of the participating authors have thought and written about these matters for years. It was our hope that, after fifty-nine presidential elections, we could shape the debate—and perhaps reform the law—for our next presidential election, our country’s sixtieth. Little did we realize at the inception of this project that the 2020 election would become so extraordinarily challenging—that our constitution, our laws, and the very norms that sustain our electoral process would be subject to the most severe stress test in one hundred and fifty years. Even after the election was resolved, there remains an ongoing debate as to the legal and extralegal issues that surfaced during the campaign and afterward and what they portend for the future of our democratic republic