Today's Supreme Court opinion marks a very bad day for American democracy, and one that was totally avoidable. Make no mistake: the Supreme Court had ample ways (I count at least six) to have avoided deciding the issues in the case. The case will affect not just...

I have taken a very quick look at the opinion of the three judge court in the Coleman election contest. Here are some initial thoughts.

1. A reasonable tone and tenor. This is a careful, unanimous opinion the a "tripartisan" 3-judge court. It makes findings of fact and conclusions...

It is a sign of how pathetic and dysfunctional our system of election administration is that once again news outlets are running their stories on armies of lawyers, potential election machine breakdowns, fear of voter fraud, and the potential of an election meltdown in Ohio or elsewhere leading to post-election...

My latest Findlaw guest column, "Eight Years After Bush v. Gore, Why is There Still So Much Election Litigation and What Does This Mean for Voter Confidence in the Electoral Process?", is now available. My column begins:

With Election Day just a few weeks away, newspapers and blogs...

I'm usually not watching cable news in the morning, but I was watching MSNBC this morning and the lead story was ACORN and voter fraud (this was well before they turned to Michael McDonald's erudite analysis of the electoral map). The report, on the most pro-Democratic of the three news...

What explains the Republicans' fixation on ACORN in recent days? From Sen. McCain's campaign manager to GOP luminaries to the McCain campaign's own new web ad, ACORN appears to be target #1 of the GOP campaign against Senator Obama, surpassing even a focus on William Ayers. The...

Before Part 1 of the the Gibson-Palin interview aired, ABC News teased it by making it about war against Russia. Ben Smith, however, correctly notes that in this respect she was stating the obligation of mutual defense of NATO members.

It seems to me the lede should have...

Today's New York Times features this front page story, which begins: "After months of record-breaking fund-raising, a new sense of urgency in Senator Barack Obama's fund-raising team is palpable as the full weight of the campaign's decision to bypass public financing for the general election is suddenly upon it."...

An initial reaction to the McCain VP pick: does it not accentuate the talk about McCain's age in a way that a more experienced VP choice would have neutralized?

I've seen a lot of coverage about whether Palin would be ready in the event of the the death...

A quick Google search shows that a number of commentators (including Andrew Sullivan and Dahlia Lithwick) have already compared presumptive Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to withdrawn Bush Supreme Court appointee Harriet Miers.

To be sure, there are parallels, including criticism of both by David Frum...

This post follows up on an earlier post linking to AP and Politico stories on the campaign finance controversy surrounding anti-Obama ads being run by a new group, American Issues Project. (There's a separate question whether the ads are accurate, and Sen. Obama's campaign has released a response ad...

Today's Supreme Court opinion in FEC v. Davis nominally deals with a relatively tangential portion of the McCain-Feingold law; but the 5-4 decision has much broader implications, laying the groundwork for striking down limits on spending by corporations and unions. It also could make public financing plans less effecting...

You can find his video announcement here. The news is currently the lead story on the NYT website.

I find Senator Obama's decision completely defensible and unsurprising. The system is broken. We cannot expect opt ins by successful candidates, especially in the internet age which...

Via TPM comes this interview in the Boston Herald in which Sen. McCain says that there's nothing he can do to stop 527 attacks on Sen. Obama. As TPM notes: "Obama's finance team has explicitly instructed donors not to give money to those groups. McCain, by contrast, seems...

Today's NY Times editorializes that Senator Obama, should he be the Democratic nominee, should opt into the public financing system in the general election:

Earlier in the campaign, Mr. Obama vowed to accept the tighter alternative of public subsidy and its spending limitations -- a not-so-shabby $85 million...

Here it comes on a lazy Friday afternoon:

TPM Muckraker has the details. The letter from von Spakovsky is here. More from AP and Roll Call on the President "reluctantly" accepting the withdrawal.

I think this almost certainly breaks the logjam for FEC nominations. I expect...

Today's 4-3 decision of the California Supreme Court striking down under the California Constitution a California statute limiting "marriage" to opposite-sex couples could help John McCain in the fall. (More coverage of the opinion itself at How Appealing.) The decision is based upon the California Constitution, which can...

As a political junkie, I've been focused on the close race in Indiana, but another important political story, perhaps not coincidentally, dropped at the same time: President Bush has made a move to break the impasse over Federal Election Commission nominations. But rather than jettison the controversial nominee to the...

Today's much anticipated decision in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board is a significant win for those who support stricter voter identification laws, even if they support such laws for partisan purposes. It will encourage further litigation, because it relegates challenges to laws imposing onerous burdens on a small...

The voluntary public financing system for U.S. presidential candidates, established in the post-Watergate era, is in its last throes. As it collapses, presidential candidates have been calculating---and recalculating--the advantages of opting in or out.

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has accused Sen. Barack Obama, the likely (though...