Nicholas Stephanopoulos
Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Harvard Law School. Aligning Election Law: global.oup.com/academic/product/al…
- My symposium piece on a new form of PR -- ranked-list proportional representation -- is now up on the Wisconsin Law Review website. RLPR is a hybrid of ranked-choice voting and open-list PR that, I argue, has a number of desirable properties. wlr.law.wisc.edu/wp-content/u...
- I think the resolution of the North Carolina case actually puts the genie back in the bottle. If a Trump-appointed conservative judge wouldn't greenlight changing the rules after the election, in some places but not others, who will? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
- Justice Souter was one of the modern Court's greatest justices on election law issues (behind only Justice Kagan, in my book). In Crawford, he correctly reasoned that heavy voting burdens, even on a small number of people, can't be justified by phantom fears of voter fraud.
- What a searing indictment -- by a panel including two Trump-appointed judges! "The 2020 redistricting cycle in Alabama ... did not have to turn out this way. We wish it had not, but we have eyes to see the veritable mountain of evidence that it did." electionlawblog.org/wp-content/u...
- This is a big victory for democracy in New York. On-cycle local elections have *much* higher turnout. Even more importantly, on-cycle voters are more demographically and politically representative of the entire eligible electorate. www.syracuse.com/news/2025/05...
- This concession comes six months too late and only after a shocking, dogged effort to disenfranchise thousands of North Carolina voters who did everything right when casting their ballots in November. www.wcnc.com/article/news...
- This confirms that this was never a serious proposal meant to be implemented. The Trump administration was never going to require passports — which Republicans are less likely to possess — to register to vote.
- NEW: Court filings reveal the Justice Department does not plan to appeal a lower court order blocking Trump from adding a proof of citizenship requirement on federal voter registration forms as litigation continues. From: @jaknutson.bsky.social
- I'm proud of @electionclinic.bsky.social and all the other lawyers who successfully fought the effort to subvert North Carolina's state supreme court election. They convinced a Trump-appointed district court judge that the state courts' attempt to toss out validly cast ballots was unconstitutional.
- Viewpoint diversity is an admirable goal for a university to pursue on its own. In America, though, the First Amendment forbids the government from requiring diversity (or homogeneity, or any distribution) of viewpoints. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/a...
- Congrats to Colorado, which is on the verge of passing a state voting rights act. State VRAs have proliferated in recent years. They're an excellent way to protect voting rights more aggressively than the federal VRA (as construed by the federal courts). www.denver7.com/news/politic...
- Linking election funds for states to abolishing DEI is unlawful. That’s not a condition that Congress imposed. It’s also unconstitutional, the condition having nothing to do with the money. And the money is so paltry that no state will feel coerced anyway. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
- The efforts to subvert the results of the NC supreme court election are like an election law issue spotter. Changing the rules after the election? Check. Unequal treatment of voters in different counties? Check. Disenfranchising voters for no good reason? Check. electionlawblog.org?p=149687
- This is a disgraceful demolition of one of the DOJ's most cherished offices: the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division. The federal government is now an enemy -- not a guardian -- of the right to vote. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
- I was pleased to contribute to this NYT feature on the Trump administration’s disregard for the law. If the President doesn’t like the law, he’s free to try to change it. What he’s not allowed to do, in our system, is ignore it. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/o...
- This was always going to be the fate of this EO, which is unlawful six ways to Sunday. The EO would also disparately harm *Republicans* by generally requiring a passport to register to vote. Which is why it's hard to believe the EO was written with the expectation it would ever go into effect.
- Are we meant to believe that (illegal) foreign contributions to U.S. political campaigns are limited to ActBlue and don't apply equally to WinRed? Where in the world is the evidence for that?
- Congress’s next campaign finance law should close this loophole that allows unlimited donations to presidential inaugurations. The risk of corrupt quid pro quos is obvious. E.g., one donor giving $4M and getting appointed as ambassador to Britain the same day! www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/u...
- North Carolina's state supreme court is trying to subvert the recent election for that body in which Justice Riggs was narrowly reelected. This new lawsuit, brought by @electionclinic.bsky.social and other attorneys, aims to stop this shockingly antidemocratic effort. www.hlselectionlaw.org/conley
- Republicans evidently believe that Congress *can* extensively regulate elections. Good to know for when a future Democratic Congress tries to regulate elections in ways that actually promote democratic values.
- This is an ELB guest post by a team of students in @electionclinic.bsky.social. Trump's executive order on elections cherry-picked some practices used by foreign countries. This post provides a fuller picture of those countries' electoral systems. electionlawblog.org?p=149321
- I’m proud of my colleagues @nikobowie.bsky.social and @beidelson.bsky.social for their eloquent condemnation of the administration’s threats against Harvard. Harvard has the law and justice on its side. Don’t give in! www.bostonglobe.com/2025/04/04/o...
- It’s hard to think of a clearer violation of the due process principle that election rules can’t be changed after an election is underway — let alone after voting is over but before the results are finalized. electionlawblog.org?p=149314
- Reposted by Nicholas StephanopoulosFrom 91 professors at Harvard Law School: a letter to our students. tinyurl.com/letter-to-ou...
- This data suggests that Trump’s EO about elections (if it were implemented despite its illegality) would hurt Republicans. Democrats are more likely to possess a passport, the main form of citizenship documentation identified by the EO. playingwithelectiondata.substack.com/p/so-much-to...
- So proud of my old firm. *This* is how you respond to authoritarianism: through defiance, not surrender. www.jennerfirm.com
- Reposted by Nicholas Stephanopoulos[Not loaded yet]
