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Update October 3, 2017: The full transcript has been released for the oral argument in Gill v. Whitford. Check out the transcript below. The Supreme Court heard oral argument Tuesday in Gill v. Whitford, a case out of Wisconsin that challenges the state's gerrymandered legislative districts. Gill v. Whitford is significant because it is the first case that a federal court ruled electoral maps unconstitutional not on the basis of race or class discrimination, but political discrimination. The d

Lost is all the discussion of the Mission Valley Stadium site is the question of what to do with the stadium? The Soccer City plan includes a new 36,000 seat soccer stadium. SDSU is announcing plans for a slightly larger stadium about the same size. Both plans will require that the current stadium be demolished AGED AND OUTDATED? The impression that the stadium is old and obsolete at 50 years of age, and on the surface seems to be true. There is also a Charger’s hangover in which many forme

On September 19, the state of Wisconsin filed its reply brief in Gill v. Whitford, 16-1161, the case over whether extreme partisan gerrymandering violates the U.S. Constitution. The hearing will be October 3, 2017. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link. Editor's note: This update originally published on Ballot Access News and has been republished with permission from the author. Photo Credit: Steven Frame / shutterstock.com

Everybody hates gerrymandering. That’s the takeaway from a new poll that finds dramatic majorities of Americans in favor of limiting the ability of politicians and partisans to draw their own districts. The survey – a bipartisan poll conducted by Democratic researcher Celinda Lake and Republican analyst Ashlee Rich Stephenson – found that 71 percent of Americans would like the Supreme Court to define a standard that ends extreme partisan gerrymandering. This cuts across party lines: 80 percent

Crazy times in America these days.  The wrathful hurricanes pounding the South and the East Coast and the wildfires devouring the Northwest echo our storm-tossed politics. Everything is turned upside down, everything is fevered, everything is being washed away. And yet (and this is the craziest thing of all) nothing seems to change. Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan once observed, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. True that. If you’re an independent, you can lick your fi

US Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) are joining the legal fight against partisan gerrymandering. McCain and Whitehouse filed a joint amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the case, Gill v. Whitford -- the first case in which a federal court ruled electoral districts unconstitutional not on the basis of race, gender, or socioeconomic class, but because of political discrimination. In this case, the court ruled that Wisconsin legislative districts were so partisan th

Remorse of a Troubled Youth In 1971, at 19, William Powell wrote The Anarchist Cookbook. The book has been found at bombings, and school shootings, ever since. It is hard to believe that the author of this infamous book left the country almost immediately afterward, to be a school teacher. He forgot about his book to the best of his ability. “I haven’t read it since I wrote it,” he said, in a documentary film that came out in late 2016. He denied that he ever knew that his book was the go-to

Alabama Election Results It's going to be about another month before we know who will represent the GOP in the Alabama Senate race to go head-to-head with Democrat Doug Jones. The race is for Attorney General Jeff Sessions' former US Senate seat. Two Republicans advanced to a runoff on September 26. Roy Moore, a former state Supreme Court Justice and Senator Luther Strange, who is serving as Sessions' replacement, will square off. Moore received 39.8% of the vote compared with Strange, who r

This week on A Civil Assessment we meet the award-winning election journalist Lulu Friesdat. T.J. and Lulu discuss her history reporting on elections, her documentary “Holler Back” about voters who did not vote in 2004, the annual tech conference DEF CON where hackers broke into election machines in under 2 hours, bipartisan election security, the Wisconsin, Georgia, and Florida recounts, and more. Lulu walks us through how hackers easily hacked a number of different election machines, much of

In 2016, Donald Trump complained on the campaign trail that the presidential election in America was "rigged." He said: "The process is rigged. This whole election is being rigged. These lies spread by the media without witnesses, without backup, or anything else, are poisoning the minds of the electorate. No witnesses, no back up, no anything else... The whole thing is one big fix. It's one big fix. One big fix. It's one big ugly lie. It's one big fix. The press can't write the kind of thing