Rick Hasen

@rickhasen

Professor, UCLA Law; Director, ; 2020 CNN, 2024 NBC/MSNBC Election Law Analyst;

624 Folgt67.285 Follower5.599 Posts

Website Website Bluesky

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Rick Hasen @rickhasen· 28d

Welcome to Texas I guess

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jul 7

Come to this @jessicahuseman.bsky.social piece for the ongoing federal threat to the integrity of American elections. But stay for DOJ's bumbling incompetence:

At least 13 other states, including Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, received letters containing identical language. More states likely received the letter as well but may not have immediately realized it; in several states, the Justice Department sent the letter to the generic email addresses listed on agency websites for use by the public.

“I had to go look for it,” said one state election official, who asked not to be named.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 30

My new one @slate.com: slate.com/news-and-pol...

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 24

I've lately been inundated with requests from book publicists (or fake book publicists) who know nothing of my work clearly used AI to write sycophantic junk.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 16

Just came across this picture of a young Jake Tapper in doing some book research on a 2008 ABC News political blog @jaketapper.bsky.social web.archive.org/web/20080706...

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 15

Here's the relevant part of the NYT reporting on Vance's advocacy for using the Insurrection Act against peaceful protestors in Minnesota:

The discussion came to a head in late January. Federal agents had shot and killed two U.S. citizens who had been voicing their opposition to the administration’s deportation policies in Minnesota — Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, on Jan. 7, and Mr. Pretti, an intensive care nurse, on Jan. 24. The ensuing protests had grown into the most intense unrest of Mr. Trump’s second term. Mr. Miller and other senior officials accused Ms. Good of “domestic terrorism,” and Mr. Miller called Mr. Pretti an “assassin.”

Yet a few days after the Pretti killing, and even as the administration was moving to de-escalate the situation, Mr. Vance walked into Ms. Wiles’s West Wing office shortly after 9 a.m. for the regular senior staff meeting, and took a seat at the end of her long conference table.

Attendance was lighter than usual. Mr. Miller sat to his right, his back to the windows overlooking West Executive Avenue. Mr. Scharf sat at the opposite end of the table. Mr. Warrington, the White House counsel, was beside the vice president. Ms. Wiles took her customary wingback chair near the fireplace. Her deputy, James Blair, took the other.

Mr. Vance got to the point. They needed to invoke the Insurrection Act, swiftly, to crush the unrest in Minnesota. It would be painful in the short term, he said, but the message it would send — that paid agitators could not get away with disrupting ICE operations — would make sure no one tried it again. (There was no evidence that either Mr. Pretti or Ms. Good had been paid activists.)

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 11

There must be *something* to explain why Josh Blackman is on the Judge Ross impeachment train for her sex in the office but very understanding and forgiving about Judge Ryan Nelson battering a man in a parking lot. Hmmm....can't put my finger on it....

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 11

TACO Thursday

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 11

Trump was at it again today, showing that he will make unfalsifiable voter fraud claims and turn his arguments on a dime. Now Republican Steve Hilton advancing in the CA GOV runoff is in fact evidence of voter fraud . thehill.com/homenews/adm...

“I started talking about Steve Hilton who’s a fantastic guy and I saw them say it was going to be two weeks before they knew, and I started hitting them,” he continued, recounting that he said “it’s going to happen to Steve Hilton.”

“And they approved Steve Hilton very quickly,” he said. “There was too much heat on them.”

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 9

www.ms.now/opinion/cali... Game. Over.

Think about election tallying this way. You have to be away from your television during the Super Bowl and so you record the game. When you watch it the next day — having avoided hearing the result in between — the game is already over. The winner was the same before you watched and after. It is the same with California’s election ballots: All the ballots were cast by Election Day, the election is over, and we just must wait to learn the final results.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 9

What is to be done about Trump's bogus claims of election fraud in California? www.ms.now/opinion/cali...

n the long term, California should still do what it can to speed up the vote count; that would help maintain confidence in elections. With enough resources thrown at the problem and commands from the Legislature, election officials can improve their ballot processing time. But serious progress is unlikely before November.

For this year, election officials, the media and even the public all play roles in assuring voters about the fairness and integrity of the process. California election officials have been quite transparent about their processes all along the way, and that should continue. Media outlets should stop reporting which candidate is “in the lead.” This is not an ongoing election; the election is over, and the results are simply “too early to call.”

In response to charges of “voter fraud,” ordinary people can share media, such as the two-minute exchange between Trump and Welker, which show the emptiness of the president’s claims.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 9

More from my @msnownews.bsky.social piece: www.ms.now/opinion/cali...

But Trump has shown his hand and he’s come up short. It is hard to overstate the importance of the exchange on Sunday between Trump and NBC News’ “Meet the Press” anchor Kristen Welker. Speaking about California’s elections, Trump said, “They’re crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked.” As Welker pushed him repeatedly for evidence, Trump could only repeat his entirely unsupported charges: “There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence.” In the end, he stormed out.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 9

My new one @msnownews.bsky.social: Trump’s latest ‘voter fraud’ claims may backfire on him in the fall; The pushback against his claims about California’s primaries will inoculate the public against similar unsupported charges in November’s midterms. www.ms.now/opinion/cali...

And he’s not alone. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters the “efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it’s impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong here.” Yes, the alleged voter fraud claimed by Trump and his allies is always the perfect crime: happening on a massive scale yet impossible to detect. It’s quite convenient to have a theory that is completely unfalsifiable.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Jun 5

AI wrote this

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· May 16

Here's what I told the NYT:

Professor Hasen also called the state’s position self-defeating.

“If the argument won,” he said, “it would signal that the very conservative Supreme Court would be extremely willing to second guess state court interpretations of their election laws as applied to federal elections — a trend that would no doubt hurt Democrats before the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.”

The most generous way to look at the state’s filing was as a political rather than a legal document, Professor Hasen said, one bound to lose but useful in other ways.

“I viewed this less as a chance for the state to get the justices to step in and more as a show of force for the party faithful,” he said, “to show that Democrats, like Republicans, are willing to go scorched earth in the new gerrymandering wars.”

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· May 15

but cf

poster for yes virginia there is a santa clause

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· May 15

From a Covid-era flyer in a book I just got from the UCLA library: “Please *do not microwave* this book”. !

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· May 14

No, he did not.

The application to vacate stay of execution of sentence of
death presented to JUSTICE ALITO and by him referred to
the Court is granted. The May 8, 2026 order of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, case Nos. 26–
70004 and 26–10354, granting a stay of execution is vacated.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· May 14

Here's something (the font change and placeholder for a disposition that would not apply to a dissent) that suggests this was rushed out the door (it comes at the end of J. Alito's dissent):

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· May 14

Justice Alito complaining about the Court granting a stay without any reasoning is, shall we say, rich? He's been in the majority in scores of such cases, many involving elections.

J USTICE ALITO , dissenting.The Court’s unreasoned order granting stays in this caseis remarkable.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· May 13

My new one @slate.com: Why is John Roberts in a Rush All of a Sudden? slate.com/news-and-pol...

First, and most crassly, these decisions could have been motivated by partisanship. They almost certainly advantage Republicans in the race for control of Congress, because Republicans can do more gerrymandering than Democrats at this stage of the election season—and it’s easier for them to do the sort of gerrymandering the court blessed in Callais.

Second, even if not consciously biased in favor of Republicans, the conservative justices could be the victims of motivated reasoning: They see the risks of changing election rules at the last minute much more clearly when Republicans are hurt than when they are helped. Witness Alito, concurring in the shadow docket order to immediately issue its final judgment in Callais, noting that any delay would allow an unconstitutional map to be used in an upcoming election.

Third, perhaps John Roberts sees the court as running out of time, and he wants to get many rulings in the books that change American politics in his preferred direction and forestall the move toward a multiracial democracy. He’s a 71-year-old chief justice now, not a 26-year-old staffer. The Supreme Court’s rulings in cases ranging from abortion to presidential immunity to the power of the government to fight climate change are growing increasingly unpopular. In the most important cases, the court is now splitting along not just ideological lines but party lines: All the conservative justices on the court have been appointed by Republican presidents, and all the liberals by Democrats.

Roberts well knows that Democrats and progressives are mobilizing against the court. The chief justice has complained about the public viewing the justices as political actors, but that is exactly what they are. People, including me, who had resisted Supreme Court reform, increasingly see it as the only way to save American democracy….

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· May 7

As I pointed out at MS NOW, when Jeffries characterized the party’s redistricting efforts as “a state of maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time,” he was echoing the exact statement that the NYT attributed to a Trump White House official www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/u... www.ms.now/opinion/supr...

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· May 7

“Judge denies Fulton’s request for return of 2020 ballots seized in FBI raid” (Link to Opinion); Now Updated with Analysis electionlawblog.org?p=155965 Here's my analysis:

The standard that Fulton County had to meet was a demanding one under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g): it had to show, among other things, that the federal government displayed a “callous disregard” for the county’s constitutional rights in seizing the ballots and related materials from the 2020 election. The district court applied case law from the 11th Circuit which appears to make it very difficult for a person whose property was seized by the federal government to get its return under 41(g).

Although this ruling is a disappointment in that it allows the federal government to continue to hold on the ballots when the allegations in the search warrant were based on discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, I do want to point to a part of footnote 26 that I consider very important in the event that the federal government tries to seize ballots in an election that is not already final and beyond a contestation period:

Importantly, the seizure at issue in this case did not interfere with the State’s ability to conduct the 2020 election or certify election results, nor have Petitioners shown that it will hinder the State’s ability to conduct future elections.

These issues are key: it’s a much more serious matter if a federal seizure of materials would interfere with the state’s ability to conduct elections or certify election results. Keep your eye on this standard.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· May 2

Just rereading my MS NOW piece from last October www.ms.now/opinion/msnb...

Now, in Callais, Roberts has engineered the chance to take down Section 2. In its extreme amicus brief, the Trump administration offers a number of ways for the court to deprive Section 2 of its power while potentially avoiding headlines saying that the court struck down another part of the VRA. The brief suggests that the court reject Gingles and reinterpret Section 2 so that it only applies to cases involving discriminatory intent, not effects. This would mangle Section 2’s text and ignore congressional intent, while giving Roberts and Reagan a much-belated victory.

The risks in the Callais case for minority voters are dire, with the case potentially leading to the bleaching of legislative bodies throughout the United States. But the risks are raised even higher by the timing. The court quickly reset the case for oral argument in October, potentially leading to a decision in time for states like Louisiana to re-redistrict and eliminate black, Latino, Asian and Native American opportunity congressional districts before voting in the 2026 midterm elections and thereby affect control of Congress. Trump’s Justice Department was granted permission from the Supreme Court to weigh in against the Voting Rights Act at oral argument, probably the first time that the United States has taken a position against the Act.

When Mr. Trump attacks democratic institutions, he does so in the manner of a car wreck — so flagrantly destructive as to command public attention. When the Supreme Court undermines our democracy, as it seems poised to do in Callais, it feels more like a slow poisoning: the attacks may be harder to notice, but they are just as deadly.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· May 1

🎶 We get fan mail 🎶

To bad Dick- the Supreme Court just gave King 👑 Trump a good reason to look forward to this Fall’s Midterm elections you liberal fucknut!!!

I must say this win in again for the ages for Conservatives and the death knell for disgraceful Democrats trying to steal more elections in the future!!

So keep pouting you jackass- you and your liberal scum in Academia finally have something to cry about…..get some tissues at Costco!!!

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Apr 30

Image of the cowardly lion from the wizard of oz

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Apr 30

My New One at Slate: Justice Alito is a Coward (and Possibly a Liar) slate.com/news-and-pol...

In the end, Justice Alito is afraid to stand up and say what his opinions necessarily imply: that Congress cannot do anything to protect minority voting rights short of banning intentional discrimination despite the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee, despite the Fifteenth Amendment’s ban on race discrimination in voting, and despite the fact that both amendments explicitly give Congress the power to enforce the measures by “appropriate legislation.”

Maybe Alito is worried that a ruling forthrightly saying what he is doing would sully the reputation of the court, which has already faced public criticism for killing off another key part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013’s Shelby County decision. Perhaps he is worried that a frontal kill of Section 2 would energize Democrats, leading to greater losses for Republicans in the midterm elections and in future elections.

Whatever the reason, Justice Alito lacks courage, a word which ironically has been embraced by the Trumpiest of judges and legal commentators to describe taking positions that are extreme, unpopular, and I would argue, in conflict with the rule of law.

No one is fooled by Justice Alito’s act of cowardice, unless it is Justice Alito himself. If that’s the case, he is more deluded than he seems to think the rest of us are.

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Apr 30

My New One at MS Now: “The Supreme Court’s redistricting ruling creates a dangerous choice for Democrats; Democrats could spread out minority voters who are reliable supporters to help capture more seats. But doing so would reduce minority representation in the House.” www.ms.now/opinion/supr...

Some Democrats may say this “cracking” of minority districts benefits all Democrats, including minority voters, because electing more Democrats gives Democrats more power to help minority voters and others. But Democrats who represent fewer minorities are less likely to champion the interests of minority communities than minority-preferred candidates. And the pressure that these minority-preferred candidates can bring to bear in Congress (such as through the Congressional Black Caucus) is crucial to encouraging the Democratic Party to be responsive to the needs of minority voters.

If appeal to higher values of fair representation does not move Democrats, self-interest might. A strategy of cracking could be self-defeating for Democrats. With diluted representation in Congress and other legislative bodies, Black voters will have less incentive to turn out to vote. That would decrease Democrats’ chances of winning election not just for these districts, but for statewide and federal races as well.

Democrats should never take for granted the continued support of large majorities of minority voters. If maximum warfare means dismantling minority opportunity districts, Democrats act at their own peril

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Apr 29

From the conclusion of my @slate.com piece: slate.com/news-and-pol...

So what’s to be done? The Supreme Court itself has shown itself to be the enemy of democracy. If and when Democrats retake control of the political branches, it will be incumbent on them not only to write new voting legislation protecting minority voters and all voters in the ability to participate fairly in elections that reflect the will of all the people. They will also have to consider reform of the Supreme Court itself, a conclusion I had been resisting until the Court made this unavoidable.

As I wrote in Slate last summer, when the Court rejiggered the question in Callais late on a Friday afternoon in August, “Court conservatives likely thought teeing up the issue of overruling Section 2 on a hot summer weekend would avoid public notice. But that’s a short-term strategy. … Any decision to strike down what’s left of the Voting Rights Act could kick off the start of a new civil rights movement and more serious talk of Supreme Court reform in the midst of crucially important midterm elections. Justices fundamentally hostile to the rights of voters place the court increasingly at odds with democracy itself.”

Rick Hasen @rickhasen· Apr 29

My New One at Slate: “The Supreme Court’s Conservatives Just Issued the Worst Ruling in a Century; This evisceration of the Voting Rights Act requires us to take SCOTUS reform more seriously.” @slate.com slate.com/news-and-pol...