Election Law

This Piece argues that Americans need to shed their anti-partyism and take a second look at parties: Political parties are the only civic associations with the capacity to organize at a scale that matters and the only intermediaries that both communicate with voters and govern. The Piece, however, advances a fundamentally different orientation to party reform—one that pushes beyond a view of parties as vehicles for funding elections, policy-demanders,...

Introduction The Electoral College has resulted in the loser of the national popular vote winning the presidency five times in our history, including twice in the past two decades. Over the course of more than two centuries, it has become one of the two most popular subjects for constitutional amendment proposals. But be­cause of the […]

Introduction Professor Kang raises two fundamental worries about the associa­tional path to party reform in The Problem of Irresponsible Party Government, his response to my essay, Networking the Party: First Amendment Rights and the Pursuit of Responsive Party Government. First, he doubts the feasibility of reestablishing thick relational parties given social, techno­logical, and cultural changes […]

Introduction American party politics may be as nationally competitive as they have ever been, but at the same time they are perhaps as unresponsive to aver­age citizens as they have been in a long time. It is this paradox that Professor Tabatha Abu El-Haj creatively interrogates in her essay, Networking the Party: First Amendment Rights […]

Introduction Partisan gerrymandering has a lengthy history, as political parties in power have repeatedly sought to construct electoral districts in ways that disfavor the minority party and ensure majority-party dominance. While more recently it appears that Republicans have reaped more of the bene­fits of partisan gerrymandering, over the past fifty years, each major politi­cal party, […]