DE

By: Ecker Owen

According to a fairly recent survey conducted by the United States government, some 25.7 percent of Americans traveled to the beach over the preceding twelve-month period. Moreover, in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, the beach season typically is considered to be between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Therefore, many people from the surrounding areas and states take a week off of work in the summertime, travel to towns along the beach with their friends and families, and then go back to their normal existences after their vacations have concluded. But in all of this seasonal transiency, there are several questions that the average vacationer would never even bother think about: what happens to beach communities during the other approximately nine months out of the year, and who continues to live in those places during that non-summer time period? The fact remains that a sizeable number of individuals live in beach communities during non-peak months. Furthermore, like other, more static communities, beach communities require the existence of local governments to provide services and write ordinances that protect their constituents. Obviously, these municipal governments necessitate the presence of elected officials to execute the governing process. However, problems arise over the question of whether individuals existing within these communities for short periods of time should have the right to vote in these municipal elections.
[Read more…] about In a Battle Between the Delaware General Assembly and a Municipality, The Legislature Won: How A New Delaware Law Prevents Municipalities from Establishing Burdensome Registration Requirements for Municipal Elections

By: Owen Ecker

In the wake of Citizens United v. FEC, Delaware took it upon itself to counteract the perceived “opening of the floodgates” ushered in by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of corporate third party political expenditures. As the state’s first major alteration in campaign finance laws for over two decades, House Bill 300, established to generate a greater amount of disclosure from third party advertisers, passed both houses of Delaware’s General Assembly by large margins (about 65 percent in the House of Representatives and 100 percent in the Senate) in 2012. Thereafter, the Governor of Delaware signed the Delaware Elections Disclosure Act (the “Act”) into law, which became effective in 2013. However, litigation ensued over the Act’s constitutionality, with one lawsuit making its way up to the Supreme Court.