My new article, "Redistricting Without Tradeoffs," is now live on @columlrev.bsky.social. www.columbialawreview.org/content/redi... The piece argues that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, tradeoffs in redistricting are generally weak to nonexistent. We can usually have our cake and eat it too.

REDISTRICTING WITHOUT TRADEOFFS - Columbia Law Review

Introduction The law of redistricting is based on the potential for tradeoffs among line-drawing criteria. Better performance along one dimension—compactness, partisan fairness, minority representatio...

columbialawreview.org

HLS's @electionclinic.bsky.social and @wilmerhale.bsky.social filed a suit alleging that the odd timing of Colorado Springs's local elections violates the Colorado VRA. This odd timing is responsible for a large racial disparity in turnout in local elections. www.hlselectionlaw.org/coelectionti...

Reducing Racial Discrimination in Voting in Colorado Springs — Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School

hlselectionlaw.org

Voting. Midterm elections. Current issues. Tune in to #Lawyer2Lawyer with host J.Craig Williams @legaltalknet.bsky.social‬ and special guest, @profnickstephan.bsky.social @hls.harvard.edu legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/law...

After the Virginia result last night, @planscore.org's model predicts a nearly unbiased House if the electoral environment is like 2024. If the national vote is more like D+5 (per current polls), the model still predicts a modest pro-Republican skew. planscore.org#!predict6D-u...

PlanScore

PlanScore is a first-of-its-kind gerrymandering scoring service for new district plans, allowing users to upload maps and instantly receive projected data about their partisan consequences. You can al...

planscore.org

Come work with @ruthgreenwood.bsky.social and me! Apply to be a Clinical Instructor in Harvard Law School's Election Law Clinic. The job offers amazing opportunities to litigate novel election law theories and train the next generation of election lawyers. careers.harvard.edu/job/clinical...

Clinical Instructor, Election Law Clinic

careers.harvard.edu

Very nice to see Andrew Gelman - who helped develop the "Gelman-King" bias of district maps - conceding that the metric doesn't work in uncompetitive states. Other scholars defended the measure's use in Utah, but the court saw through these claims. statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/13/c...

This major new volume on campaign finance is now out. My contribution (papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....) argues that, even if legislative quid pro quos are rare, quintessential corruption remains common in the context of government contracts. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

You can now explore different electoral scenarios on @planscore.org. For Dems to capture the House, they need to win the popular vote by about 1 point. The House's bias is tiny if 2026 is like 2024 (or more pro-Rep), but grows if 2026 is a better Dem year. electionlawblog.org?p=154769

2026 Scenarios for the U.S. House Election #ELB

Another PlanScore update that may be of interest to ELB readers: There’s a new “2026 Scenarios” feature that allows users to see how the U.S. House map as a whole would perform under different elector...

electionlawblog.org

This NPR segment on which population counts for redistricting (www.npr.org/2026/03/09/n...) quotes a 2021 paper I wrote with Jowei Chen. We found that changing the unit of apportionment would have significant racial -- but more muted partisan -- effects. www.californialawreview.org/print/democr...

The next redistricting battle might be who is counted in state legislative districts

A Republican push to alter the census may lead to a radical shift in redistricting for state legislatures — drawing districts that don't take into account children and non-U.S. citizen adults.

npr.org

What explains the Court's stay in the Staten Island case? 1. The Court could think that race-conscious districting is inherently unlawful. That's what Alito says in his concurrence (contradicting his own opinion in, e.g., Milligan). But no other justice joined Alito.

Check out this very cool update to @planscore.org: You can now move a slider back and forth to simulate how a map would perform under any electoral environment. For more, see this post by @mike.teczno.com: medium.com/planscore/pl...

PlanScore’s New Midterm-Ready Vote Predictions

This week, the 2026 mid-term election season is kicking off in earnest with U.S. House primaries in Arkansas, Texas, and North Carolina…

medium.com

How much worse can gerrymandering get? Will the Supreme Court strike down a landmark voting rights law? We asked two experts.

Chat: How a Supreme Court case could turbocharge gerrymandering

How much worse can gerrymandering get? Will the Supreme Court strike down a landmark voting rights law? We asked two experts.

bit.ly

An informative interview with @justinlevitt.bsky.social & @profnickstephan.bsky.social. Among other things, they discuss how the Supreme Court could make seemingly small changes to the Voting Rights Act that make VRA§2 redistricting lawsuits virtually impossible without deeming it unconstitutional

Votebeat@votebeat.org · 6mo ago

How much worse can gerrymandering get? Will the Supreme Court strike down a landmark voting rights law? We asked two experts.

After Bost, standing could largely disappear as an issue in election law cases -- at least if plaintiffs can get a candidate to join the suit. If only we had known this in Whitford, the whole history of partisan gerrymandering might be different.

I wrote this essay for NYU's democracy project on the critical need to curb "misalignment" in American politics. Notably, misalignment is pervasive even when (as in 2024) the presidential candidate preferred by voters wins the election. democracyproject.org/posts/curbin...

Curbing Misalignment in American Politics

A broad range of views on democracy to help break the stalemate caused by partisan conflict.

democracyproject.org

I just posted "Redistricting Without Tradeoffs," forthcoming in @columlrev.bsky.social, on SSRN. The article relies on huge sets of computer-generated district maps to show that tradeoffs between redistricting criteria are much less common than is often thought. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Watch how gerrymandering has changed the partisan skew of the U.S. House and state legislatures with the newest PlanScore update!

Check out this cool new feature on PlanScore, showing the U.S. House's aggregate bias over time. Here's 2024 (with estimated scores for the states that have redrawn their maps since then): planscore.org#!2026-ushouse

PlanScore has been updated to include 2024 scores for all congressional, state senate, and state house plans. Check it out: planscore.org#!2024-stateh...

PlanScore

PlanScore is a first-of-its-kind gerrymandering scoring service for new district plans, allowing users to upload maps and instantly receive projected data about their partisan consequences. You can al...

planscore.org

Victory in our New York VRA case against Newburgh! The Court of Appeals unanimously held that the town lacks capacity to facially challenge the statute. So our case continues to trial, and the dilution of the town's minority voters' influence may still be fixed. www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/Decis...

What an irony it would be if Republicans, by initiating this unnecessary and unprecedented mid-decade redistricting war, ended up costing themselves the House.

Texas Tribune@texastribune.org · 9mo ago

Breaking: Federal court blocks Texas from using new congressional gerrymander in 2026 midterms.

Possibly of more interest to election law folks: The court really understood the various measures of partisan fairness. It correctly dismissed the state's preferred metrics, partisan bias and the mean-median difference, as inapplicable in an uncompetitive state like Utah.

Politico@politico.com · 9mo ago

Utah judge denies GOP-passed congressional map

My response to Sachs and Kleinfeld's article advocating parents voting for their children is now up. My idea is to have young adults -- not parents -- vote on behalf of children due to their greater partisan and ideological similarity. ndlawreview.org/give-young-a...

Some more problems with this CA racial gerrymandering claim: - The suit's main evidence is some commentary by a mapmaker. But it's the LEGISLATURE'S intent that counts here, not what a line-drawer may have thought. electionlawblog.org?p=152920

The Complaint Filed By Republicans Against the Maps Created by California's Prop 50 Raising Racial Gerrymandering and Intentional Discrimination Claims Faces an Uphill Battle, Especially Given 2026 Ti...

You can find the complaint here. The main argument in the case is that plaintiffs engaged in a racial gerrymander by making race the predominant factor in drawing district lines without s compelling r...

electionlawblog.org

Nice story about the "billionaires' brief" filed by @electionclinic.bsky.social arguing on behalf of Mark Cuban and others that Maine's limit on Super PAC donations doesn't materially burden their speech and serves critical state interests. www.sportico.com/law/analysis...

Mark Cuban Joins Legal Fight Against Dark Money and Super PACs

Through a brief authored by the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, Mark Cuban and 4 other billionaires argue in favor of Maine's SuperPAC law.

sportico.com

HLS's Election Law Clinic filed this amicus brief yesterday on behalf of Mark Cuban and other wealthy Americans, urging the First Circuit to uphold Maine's limit on Super PAC contributions. Not all rich people want to distort elections in their favor! www.hlselectionlaw.org/s/20251029_F...

To clarify, this lawsuit is under the NY Constitution, NOT the NY Voting Rights Act (which only applies to political subdivisions in NY). The suit argues that the NY Constitution should be read to adopt the same vote dilution standard as the NYVRA.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 9mo ago

“Lawsuit Plunges New York Into the National Gerrymandering Fight” electionlawblog.org?p=152785

Some more concerns about the SG's proposal in Callais: 1. At present, the first Gingles prong focuses on the availability of remedies. The SG's proposal would make it a probe for racial predominance -- the crux of the distinct theory of racial gerrymandering. electionlawblog.org?p=152738

More Concerns About the SG’s Proposal in Callais #ELB

I’ve already discussed a number of problems with the SG’s proposal in Callais (that plaintiffs’ demonstrative maps be required to achieve jurisdictions’ political objectives). Upon further reflection,...

electionlawblog.org

This is a nice story about our ongoing anti-competitive gerrymandering suit against Wisconsin's congressional map. I like the demonstrative map in the piece -- look how much more competitive WI's districts could be! urbanmilwaukee.com/2025/10/22/d...

Another problem with the SG's proposal in Callais is that it's refuted by Section 2's legislative history. Lots of participants in the '82 hearings thought of the SG's idea that political goals excuse racial vote dilution. And they all believed the idea didn't apply. electionlawblog.org?p=152656

Section 2’s Legislative History Refutes the SG’s Proposal #ELB

I’ve previously noted a number of problems with the SG’s proposal in Callais, under which demonstrative maps would have to achieve the enacted plan’s political goals in order to satisfy the first Ging...

electionlawblog.org