Voting. Midterm elections. Current issues. Tune in to #Lawyer2Lawyer with host J.Craig Williams @legaltalknet.bsky.social‬ and special guest, @profnickstephan.bsky.social @hls.harvard.edu legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/law...

After the Virginia result last night, @planscore.org's model predicts a nearly unbiased House if the electoral environment is like 2024. If the national vote is more like D+5 (per current polls), the model still predicts a modest pro-Republican skew. planscore.org#!predict6D-u...

Come work with @ruthgreenwood.bsky.social and me! Apply to be a Clinical Instructor in Harvard Law School's Election Law Clinic. The job offers amazing opportunities to litigate novel election law theories and train the next generation of election lawyers. careers.harvard.edu/job/clinical...

Very nice to see Andrew Gelman - who helped develop the "Gelman-King" bias of district maps - conceding that the metric doesn't work in uncompetitive states. Other scholars defended the measure's use in Utah, but the court saw through these claims. statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/13/c...

This major new volume on campaign finance is now out. My contribution (papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....) argues that, even if legislative quid pro quos are rare, quintessential corruption remains common in the context of government contracts. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

You can now explore different electoral scenarios on @planscore.org. For Dems to capture the House, they need to win the popular vote by about 1 point. The House's bias is tiny if 2026 is like 2024 (or more pro-Rep), but grows if 2026 is a better Dem year. electionlawblog.org?p=154769

This NPR segment on which population counts for redistricting (www.npr.org/2026/03/09/n...) quotes a 2021 paper I wrote with Jowei Chen. We found that changing the unit of apportionment would have significant racial -- but more muted partisan -- effects. www.californialawreview.org/print/democr...

What explains the Court's stay in the Staten Island case? 1. The Court could think that race-conscious districting is inherently unlawful. That's what Alito says in his concurrence (contradicting his own opinion in, e.g., Milligan). But no other justice joined Alito.

Check out this very cool update to @planscore.org: You can now move a slider back and forth to simulate how a map would perform under any electoral environment. For more, see this post by @mike.teczno.com: medium.com/planscore/pl...

How much worse can gerrymandering get? Will the Supreme Court strike down a landmark voting rights law? We asked two experts.

An informative interview with @justinlevitt.bsky.social & @profnickstephan.bsky.social. Among other things, they discuss how the Supreme Court could make seemingly small changes to the Voting Rights Act that make VRA§2 redistricting lawsuits virtually impossible without deeming it unconstitutional

After Bost, standing could largely disappear as an issue in election law cases -- at least if plaintiffs can get a candidate to join the suit. If only we had known this in Whitford, the whole history of partisan gerrymandering might be different.

I wrote this essay for NYU's democracy project on the critical need to curb "misalignment" in American politics. Notably, misalignment is pervasive even when (as in 2024) the presidential candidate preferred by voters wins the election. democracyproject.org/posts/curbin...

I just posted "Redistricting Without Tradeoffs," forthcoming in @columlrev.bsky.social, on SSRN. The article relies on huge sets of computer-generated district maps to show that tradeoffs between redistricting criteria are much less common than is often thought. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Watch how gerrymandering has changed the partisan skew of the U.S. House and state legislatures with the newest PlanScore update!

Check out this cool new feature on PlanScore, showing the U.S. House's aggregate bias over time. Here's 2024 (with estimated scores for the states that have redrawn their maps since then): planscore.org#!2026-ushouse

PlanScore has been updated to include 2024 scores for all congressional, state senate, and state house plans. Check it out: planscore.org#!2024-stateh...

Victory in our New York VRA case against Newburgh! The Court of Appeals unanimously held that the town lacks capacity to facially challenge the statute. So our case continues to trial, and the dilution of the town's minority voters' influence may still be fixed. www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/Decis...

What an irony it would be if Republicans, by initiating this unnecessary and unprecedented mid-decade redistricting war, ended up costing themselves the House.

Possibly of more interest to election law folks: The court really understood the various measures of partisan fairness. It correctly dismissed the state's preferred metrics, partisan bias and the mean-median difference, as inapplicable in an uncompetitive state like Utah.

My response to Sachs and Kleinfeld's article advocating parents voting for their children is now up. My idea is to have young adults -- not parents -- vote on behalf of children due to their greater partisan and ideological similarity. ndlawreview.org/give-young-a...

Some more problems with this CA racial gerrymandering claim: - The suit's main evidence is some commentary by a mapmaker. But it's the LEGISLATURE'S intent that counts here, not what a line-drawer may have thought. electionlawblog.org?p=152920

Nice story about the "billionaires' brief" filed by @electionclinic.bsky.social arguing on behalf of Mark Cuban and others that Maine's limit on Super PAC donations doesn't materially burden their speech and serves critical state interests. www.sportico.com/law/analysis...

HLS's Election Law Clinic filed this amicus brief yesterday on behalf of Mark Cuban and other wealthy Americans, urging the First Circuit to uphold Maine's limit on Super PAC contributions. Not all rich people want to distort elections in their favor! www.hlselectionlaw.org/s/20251029_F...

To clarify, this lawsuit is under the NY Constitution, NOT the NY Voting Rights Act (which only applies to political subdivisions in NY). The suit argues that the NY Constitution should be read to adopt the same vote dilution standard as the NYVRA.

Some more concerns about the SG's proposal in Callais: 1. At present, the first Gingles prong focuses on the availability of remedies. The SG's proposal would make it a probe for racial predominance -- the crux of the distinct theory of racial gerrymandering. electionlawblog.org?p=152738

This is a nice story about our ongoing anti-competitive gerrymandering suit against Wisconsin's congressional map. I like the demonstrative map in the piece -- look how much more competitive WI's districts could be! urbanmilwaukee.com/2025/10/22/d...

Another problem with the SG's proposal in Callais is that it's refuted by Section 2's legislative history. Lots of participants in the '82 hearings thought of the SG's idea that political goals excuse racial vote dilution. And they all believed the idea didn't apply. electionlawblog.org?p=152656

The deputy SG drastically understated the number of districts that would be stripped of legal protection under the administration's proposal in Callais. He said about 15 districts would be affected -- the actual number is close to 70. electionlawblog.org?p=152614

Watch Archived Video of @law.ucla.edu Safeguarding Democracy Project Webinar: “Redistricting and Re-Redistricting Controversies and the 2026 Elections” www.youtube.com/watch?v=x063... @mcpli.bsky.social @profnickstephan.bsky.social Guy Charles and Moon Duchin

I wrote this ELB post on a less radical resolution to Callais that may be appealing to some justices. The idea is just to hold that compliance with Section 2 isn't a compelling interest that can justify what would otherwise be unlawful racial gerrymandering.

Would anyone still sue under Section 2 if the AG's proposal was adopted? You already need an alternative map (matching the challenged plan's partisanship) to win a racial gerrymandering claim. To win a Section 2 claim, you'd have to do that -- plus satisfy the rest of the Gingles prongs and the TOC.

Ironically, VRA plaintiffs would be better off if they had lost in Milligan. Alabama's "race-blind baseline" is legal nonsense. But it's much better for VRA plaintiffs than the SG's proposal -- under which southern states can just erase *all* minority representation.

As I recently wrote, the SG's "moderate" proposal to merely "modify" the Gingles framework would still end Section 2 as we know it. By requiring plaintiffs to match the partisanship of challenged plans, it would block essentially all Section 2 claims in the South. electionlawblog.org?p=152332

The stakes were lower than in today's Callais argument, but I had the opportunity to argue for the New York VRA's constitutionality yesterday before the NY Court of Appeals. Case summary: www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/summa... Plaintiffs' brief: static1.squarespace.com/static/60a55...

I just posted a new paper, "Aligning Constitutional Law," exploring how the alignment principle could be incorporated into constitutional (not just election) law. I'll be giving the Constitution Day Lecture at Drake University today on the same subject. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

@nedfoley.bsky.social has written this insightful article on Bracket Voting as a method of achieving what I call "alignment" between voters' preferences and elections' winners.

I filed this amicus brief in Callais today. The main argument is that Section 2 doesn't require a court-imposed time limit because -- thanks to the Gingles framework -- it's already inherently self-limiting. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24...

My article, "Election Law for the New Electorate," is out in the Journal of Legal Analysis. academic.oup.com/jla/article/... Here's the abstract: The American electorate is transforming—undergoing its most sweeping changes in half a century.

My new article, "Redistricting Without Tradeoffs," has found a home in @columlrev.bsky.social. Here's the abstract; I'll be posting the piece soon.

It's striking that members of the CA commission now agree that CA's congressional map should be redrawn if other states enact mid-decade gerrymanders. The goal here should be national partisan fairness. A redrawn CA map can serve that goal by offsetting gerrymanders elsewhere.

We filed this brief defending the constitutionality of the NY Voting Rights Act. I'll be arguing the case in the NY Court of Appeals in October. The issue is pretty important: If the NYVRA somehow violates the Equal Protection Clause, then so do all disparate-impact laws. t.co/3A2Vy4JvB4

My interview with election law expert @profnickstephan.bsky.social on #Texas Republicans' extreme partisan #Gerrymandering. Why the rare move threatens representation and the balance in the US House – and could spark widespread partisan redistricting. 👇

“The mugger asked for a billion dollars, the keys to my house, and my first-born. I got him to agree to $200M (for now). I’m such a savvy negotiator.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/n...

The decision to reargue Callais is confusing. The most plausible rationale for reargument is getting into the Section 2 merits of the preceding lawsuit. But this case simply isn't about Section 2. So it's a terrible vehicle for a blockbuster ruling about the VRA.

My reaction to the HLR leak is that they take article selection extraordinarily seriously. 400+ memos totaling 2000+ pages? And that’s just one stage of their process? Geesh. When I ran YLS’s international law journal, we just met and talked about submissions.

The unpopularity of the Republican megabill highlights the distinctions between different kinds of alignment (the subject of my recent book). In partisan terms, the unified Republican government aligns with voters' preferences. Voters wanted a Republican President and Congress.

This is one of many stories on how Trump could use the government’s power to injure Musk—without ever mentioning the legality of these tactics. They’d all be illegal! As with Trump’s attacks on Harvard, he can’t try to hurt Musk because of his political views. www.axios.com/2025/06/07/t...

This new suit brought by @electionclinic.bsky.social, Law Forward, and Stafford Rosenbaum LLP alleges that Wisconsin's congressional plan is an unconstitutional anti-competitive gerrymander. The plan mirrors its 2011 predecessor, which a federal court found had the aim of protecting incumbents.

While the court (plausibly) held that there was no impending attack on the FEC's independence and bipartisanship, the court agreed with @electionclinic.bsky.social's amicus brief (filed on behalf of @ellenlweintraub.bsky.social ) that these aspects of the agency are vital.