Marquette Law Review Volume 95 Article 6 Issue 2 Winter 2011 Administering Election Law Saul Zipkin Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr Part of the Law Commons Repository Citation Saul Zipkin, Administering Election Law, 95 Marq. L. Rev. 641 (2011). Available at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol95/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Marquette Law Review by an authorized administrator of Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 10-ZIPKIN.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 3/20/2012 2:06 PM ADMINISTERING ELECTION LAW * SAUL ZIPKIN In recent years, commentators have expressed heightened concern about the harms to democratic legitimacy caused by political actors making decisions about the electoral process on partisan or incumbent- protecting bases. This concern has been recognized in a number of judicial opinions, but has not taken form in election law doctrine. This Article argues that administrative law presents a well-developed doctrinal resource for addressing concerns about democratic legitimacy in the electoral process. Administrative law trades off some direct electoral control for some demonstrated expertise and shores up the democratic element through lines of accountability to the legislature, the executive, and the public. The resulting framework seeks an optimal balance in effective democratic governance. Despite the institutional differences between administrative law and election law, both confront the central challenge of securing democratic legitimacy in contexts of governance by state actors who are shielded from robust accountability mechanisms. In connecting the treatment of democratic values across the administrative law and election law settings, reflecting the operation and selection of government, I contend that these settings demand similar models of governmental decisionmaking. This approach calls for regulation of elections on a standard of instrumental rationality as to the means of reaching politically determined and constitutionally valid ends, thereby promoting the effective operation of the democratic process. To illustrate this approach, I sketch a framework for adapting administrative law tools to the election law setting, with examples from current controversies in the field. * Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. I am grateful to Eric Berger, Ned Foley, Sam Issacharoff, Tricia Seith, Marc Spindelman, and Dan Tokaji for conversations about this project and comments on drafts. I greatly benefited from presentations at faculty workshops at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and the University of Nebraska College of Law. 10-ZIPKIN.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 3/20/2012 2:06 PM 642 MARQUETTE LAW REVIEW [95:641 I. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 642 II. ELECTION LAW AND THE CONCERN ABOUT SELF-DEALING ........ 647 A. Democratic Legitimacy Concerns in Election Law ................. 647 1. The Districting Process ....................................................... 648 2. Election Administration ..................................................... 649 3. Campaign Finance ............................................................... 652 4. Political Parties .................................................................... 653 5. Other Election Law Settings .............................................. 655 B. Rights and Structural Claims in the Election Context .............. 656 III. DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW .................................................................................................... 660 A. Legal Legitimation in Public Law ............................................. 661 1. You Can’t Do That: Rights Violations .............................. 663 2. You Can’t Do That: Structural Claims .............................. 665 B. The Administrative Law Model ................................................. 668 1. Democratic Governance ..................................................... 671 a. Legislative Accountability .............................................. 671 b. Executive Accountability ................................................ 673 c. Popular Accountability ................................................... 677 2. Expert Governance ............................................................. 679 IV. CONNECTING ADMINISTRATIVE LAW AND ELECTION LAW ........ 686 A. Differences ................................................................................... 686 1. Accountability Through Elections .................................... 686 2. Institutional Competence ................................................... 690 B. Democratic Judgment ................................................................. 692 V. AN ADMINISTRATIVE MODEL FOR ELECTION LAW ........................ 698 A. Adapting the Administrative Law Framework ........................ 700 B. Voter Identification ..................................................................... 702 C. Districting ..................................................................................... 704 VI. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 707 I. INTRODUCTION Democratic ideals shape the legal treatment of state action in numerous ways. Courts accord a presumption of constitutionality to statutes enacted by the legislature,1 and a number of doctrines reflect a 1. See, e.g., United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 607 (2000) (describing, as a “presumption of constitutionality,” that “[d]ue respect for the decisions of a coordinate branch of Government demands that we invalidate a congressional enactment only upon a plain showing that Congress has exceeded its constitutional bounds”). 10-ZIPKIN.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 3/20/2012 2:06 PM 2011–2012] ADMINISTERING ELECTION LAW 643 preference for decisions made by the political branches.2 In contrast, concerns arise when non-elected actors make decisions for the polity. Hesitations about judicial review are familiar,3 as are doubts about the legitimacy of actions taken by administrative officials.4 In these settings, state actors who are not directly accountable to the public through elections are justified as legitimate authorities only in particular settings characterized by procedural protections and limitations as to substance. The context of elections complicates this framework because the usual deference to elected officials clashes with the need to ensure the propriety of the process by which those same officials are chosen. Deference to political oversight of the electoral process threatens circular justification, suggesting that those making decisions about the electoral process are democratically accountable via the very election procedures being challenged. In egregious situations, like the severely malapportioned state legislatures at issue in the early one person–one vote decisions, the federal courts have intervened in the electoral process in order to promote accountability.5 However, the courts have not settled on what, if anything, to do in settings of less dramatic harm. In recent years, commentators and judges have displayed heightened concern about political actors making decisions about the electoral process on partisan or incumbent-protecting bases, and have called for greater policing of this dynamic.6 Such arguments have been advanced in a variety of election law contexts, including election administration, the redistricting process, campaign finance law, and political party regulation, but the concerns they raise have not been well integrated into election law doctrine or into the broader framework of constitutional law. As a result, despite awareness of district lines drawn to dissuade challengers or to maximize partisan gains, campaign finance 2. See infra notes 89–92 and accompanying text. 3. See, e.g., ALEXANDER M. BICKEL, THE LEAST DANGEROUS BRANCH: THE SUPREME COURT AT THE BAR OF POLITICS 16–17 (1962) (explaining the counter- majoritarian difficulty). 4. See generally Richard B. Stewart, The Reformation of American Administrative Law, 88 HARV. L. REV. 1667 (1975) (discussing the means of legitimating agency action through administrative law). 5. See Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 545, 586–87 (1964) (striking down a state districting scheme with a disparity in population of up to 41-to-1 between districts); cf. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 680 n.39 (2008) (Stevens J., dissenting) (noting that the Court’s involvement in the oversight of legislative districting “was justified because the political process was manifestly unable to solve the problem of unequal districts”). 6. See infra Part II (discussing these arguments). 10-ZIPKIN.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 3/20/2012 2:06 PM 644 MARQUETTE LAW REVIEW [95:641 laws that make it difficult to effectively challenge incumbents, election administration provisions that constrain the ability of certain voters to vote, and ballot access rules that limit the capacity of third parties to appear before the voters, election law doctrine has generally allowed for these manipulations. Though the right to vote might be thought to provide a robust vehicle for judicial oversight of the electoral process, challenges to the operation of the democratic process often prove