William & Mary Law School | Election Law Society
By: Nate Burchard
On October 25, 2016, the William & Mary Election Law Society Speaker Series hosted attorney Will Consovoy. Consovoy is an appellate attorney and founding partner of Consovoy McCarthy Park LLC, co-director of the George Mason University School of Law Supreme Court Clinic, and former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
By: Kelsey Dolin
On September 22nd, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the second round of Virginia Democrats’ challenge of the State’s voter ID law. The appellants contend that the law unfairly burdens minorities and young people’s ability to vote because these groups are less likely to possess the requisite photo ID. The District Court previously upheld the law.
[Read more…] about 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Hears Virginia Voter ID Challenge
By Ashley Eick
As a slew of lawyers scurried around trying to organize their maps and evidence, Judge Payne sat calmly in the center of a three-judge panel. In late May of 2014, high-powered lawyers boiled down mountains of statistics, diagrams, and expert opinions into a two-day bench trial. They needed to convince Judge Payne and two Fourth Circuit judges to rule that the General Assembly primarily used race to concoct Virginia’s fantastically shaped 3rd congressional district. Against all odds, they succeeded.
Although all the attention and spotlight has been on Alabama, Virginia has been facing its own mudslinging, partisan wrangling, racial packing lawsuit. Three plaintiffs – Dawn Curry Page, Gloria Personhuballah and James Farkas – have challenged the constitutionality of Virginia’s 3rd congressional district as a racial gerrymander in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. They allege that the General Assembly “packed” black voters into the 3rd district, Virginia’s only minority-majority district, to dilute minority influence in the surrounding predominantly white districts. In the enacted plan, the black voting-age population increased from 53.1 percent to 56.3 percent while it decreased in every adjacent district. Furthermore, African-Americans “accounted for over 90% of the added voting age residents.” [Read more…] about What a Pain for Payne: Virginia’s Racial Packing Lawsuit