On January 19, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Federal Election Commission v Ted Cruz for Senate, 21-12. The issue is a law that limits the amount of money a federal candidate may receive in donations after the election, when he or she has gone into debt before the election and the purpose of soliciting donations is to retire the debt. The law limits such post-election donations to $250,000. See this story. The lower court had struck down the limit. The law applies equally to candidates who won or lost the election.

One can hear the audio of the argument using this link.

On January 13, William (Bill) Mohr died at the age of 62. He was the Constitution Party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2020, and had been state chair of the Michigan party. See this obituary. Thanks to Thom Holmes for this news.

Protect Democracy has issued a scholarly report titled “Advantaging Authoritarianism: The U.S. Electoral System & Antidemocratic Extremism.” Scholars involved with the report are Arend Lijphart, Jack Santucci, Jennifer Gandhi, Larry Diamond, Lee Drutman, Yascha Mounk, and Cynthia McClintock.

The paper says “This paper does not advocate for any specific suites of reforms”, but does recommend ranked choice voting, proportional representation, multi-member districts, and enlarging the size of the U.S. House. The report points out that the U.S. House has more constituents per member than any other lower-chamber legislative body in the world, except for India.

The report notes that the U.S. is the only nation that forces parties to choose their nominees in government-administered primaries, but it does not suggest that the U.S. switch to the common world standard of letting parties choose their own nominees through their own meetings. The report does suggest the U.S. primaries would be improved if ranked choice voting were used in primaries. Thanks to Michael Drucker for the link to the report.