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Election Law
Class Term:
Fall Term 2024-2025
Catalog Number:
5170
Professor(s):
Professor
Lecture
Credits:
3 (3 Contact, 0 Field)
Priority:
General Enrollment Course
Full Year Course:
No
Category:
Standard Courses
Grading Details
2 Quizzes during the semester: 20% (10% each)
Description
Election law is a hot topic in the U.S. today. Opinions about what our federal, state and local election laws require -- and should require -- are sharply divided. This course introduces key issues in U.S. election law in historical, political and (to a limited extent) international contexts. Topics include voting qualifications and limits on voting (e.g., residency requirements, poll taxes and age qualifications), how race, gender and property have shaped voting rights and participation, the highly decentralized and diverse structures of U.S. election administration, how concerns and claims of fraud shape election law, districting and the concept of vote dilution, partisan gerrymandering, and limits on campaign spending and speech. We will look at some of the dramatic legal conflicts that emerged around the 2020 presidential election over election structures like voting by mail, extended voting time periods, and ballot counting procedures, and over the power of state legislatures, state courts and federal courts to shape voting structures and ratify or undermine election results. And we will consider how current concerns about election integrity and restricted voting access at once raise new legal issues and connect with longstanding legal and political schisms. This is an introductory course that surveys a wide range of election law issues and structures. We will do one in-depth case study, however, of laws that ban voting based on criminal conviction. Felony voting bans highlight the sharp differences in voting rights among different states, offer a telling example of the way U.S. voting qualifications interact with racial inequality, and reveal how election law on the books does not entirely define election administration or the bounds of political participation.