Election Laws

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whose campaign to limit the power of public employee unions aroused the ire of labor groups across the country, will face a recall election later this spring, the state's Government Accountability Board ruled Friday. The board, which enforces state election laws, voted 5-0 to order the election. The decision had been expected because the board had certified that there were more than enough petition signatures to force the vote. At stake will be Republican Walker's political future and that of Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, also a Republican.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whose campaign to limit the power of public employee unions aroused the ire of labor groups across the country, will face a recall election later this spring, the state's Government Accountability Board ruled Friday. The board, which enforces state election laws, voted 5-0 to order the election. The decision had been expected because the board had certified that there were more than enough petition signatures to force the vote. At stake will be Republican Walker's political future and that of Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, also a Republican.

Iraqi lawmakers ended a governmental crisis Sunday by passing an election law just before a midnight deadline, after intense wrangling among the sides and, according to several participants, late phone calls from President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. The law paves the way for national elections to be held most likely by the end of February, according to U.N. officials and Iraqi lawmakers. The vote is considered a test of Iraq's democratic ambitions as American combat troops here are scheduled to start their withdrawal this spring.

Barack Obama may have won this crucial state three years ago on the Sunday before election day when "souls to the polls" drives brought a surge of blacks and Latinos to cast ballots after church. Florida had opened the polls two weeks early, and even so, long lines across the state prompted the governor to issue an emergency order extending the hours for early voting. Propelled by waves of new voters including college students, Obama eked out a win with 51%. It will be different next year, a result of changes in the voting laws adopted by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Barack Obama may have won this crucial state three years ago on the Sunday before election day when "souls to the polls" drives brought a surge of blacks and Latinos to cast ballots after church. Florida had opened the polls two weeks early, and even so, long lines across the state prompted the governor to issue an emergency order extending the hours for early voting. Propelled by waves of new voters including college students, Obama eked out a win with 51%. It will be different next year, a result of changes in the voting laws adopted by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Gov. Paul E. Patton pardoned his chief of staff and three others charged with breaking election laws during his 1995 campaign. The men were pardoned two days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal of a state ruling that reinstated their 1998 indictments. Atty. Gen. Ben Chandler alleged that the four colluded to help Patton's campaign get around spending limits by having the Teamsters pick up some expenses.

If you thought post-Watergate crackdowns on fat cats had forced George Bush and Michael S. Dukakis to rely mainly on federal funds to run their presidential campaigns, you haven't heard about all the "soft money" from the likes of Nicolas Salgo, Nathan Landau and the Atlantic Richfield Co. Salgo, a former ambassador to Hungary and now a special ambassador in the State Department, has contributed $503,263 to the Republican Party.

After operating for three years under an election law that has spawned confusion and lawsuits, the Irvine City Council will hear a recommendation tonight on how to fix the law before the next council election. The proposed solution is aimed at making the election process "clear, understandable, constitutional and accepted by the public," Councilwoman Paula Werner said last week. The problem arose in 1987 when voters changed the election law to allow for the direct election of the mayor.

A federal judge halted a referendum on a change in election law in suburban Cicero, Ill., after the Justice Department argued the measure was designed to keep Latino candidates off the ballot. The town established a pattern of discrimination against Latinos as its Latino population grew to 60% or more, said Michael Zwibelman, a Justice Department attorney. "They threaten the political power of the non-Hispanic officials of the town of Cicero," Zwibelman said in urging U.S.

The Texas law that Tom DeLay is accused of violating dates to the era of the robber barons and has been widely emulated in other states concerned about corporate influence in politics. It bans the use of corporate funds on behalf of state political candidates. Such laws -- including bans at the federal level -- have withstood legal challenges that they violate the free-speech rights of corporations. Nonetheless, it is far from clear whether Rep.

The Supreme Court seems poised to overturn a modest effort by the state of Arizona to increase the candidate choices placed before voters and reduce the corruption associated with large special-interest campaign contributions. The conservative justices who were skeptical of the law and its rationale at Monday's oral arguments should think again. Upholding the law would not violate their convictions about campaign finance. The Arizona law provides a lump sum to candidates who agree to accept public financing and to abide by restrictions on fundraising and limits on how much they can give to their own campaigns.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in McComish vs. Bennett, a high-stakes case about public financing in American political campaigns. The court's ruling could affect public financing systems in numerous states and municipalities across the country, including programs in Los Angeles and several other California jurisdictions. At issue is a provision in Arizona's clean elections law that triggers matching funds for candidates participating in the public financing program when their privately financed opponents (or independent groups backing them)

Following a wave of corruption scandals, Arizona's voters in 1998 embarked on an ambitious experiment in campaign funding aimed at diminishing the influence of special interests. The voters passed the Citizens Clean Elections Act, which allowed candidates to fund campaigns with money from the state ? so long as they forswore contributions from private sources. The act created a level playing field for rich and not-so-rich candidates, but it also unleashed a flood of complaints that it was a waste of government money and unfair to savvy fundraisers.

The Muslim Brotherhood announced Tuesday that it would form a political party to run candidates for Egypt's parliament, while a committee of judges and legal scholars started work on amending the nation's constitution. But the country's military rulers ordered the committee to complete work in less than two weeks, suggesting that constitutional changes in the short term would not be as extensive as many critics of the old system had hoped. The Brotherhood, one of the oldest Islamic movements in the Middle East, has long been officially banned from Egyptian politics, though members have been allowed to run for parliament as independent candidates.

Democrats and their allies, moving to counter millions of dollars flowing to Republican campaigns from groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have accused the international business organization of using foreign money to influence American elections. The effort to paint conservative political groups as fronts for multinational corporations and foreign billionaires gathered steam this week after an affiliate of the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress charged that the chamber was using funds from foreign corporations to finance its political operations in Washington.

FBI agents arrested a Commerce councilman early Thursday after a grand jury indicted him and two family members for allegedly trying to hide illegal campaign contributions. Robert Fierro, 39, the mayor pro tem of the industrial suburb, is also charged with telling a friend to lie to the FBI. Fierro's sister-in-law and campaign treasurer, Ana Perez, was charged with lying to the grand jury. Along with the politician's wife, Linda Fierro, 36, she was charged with witness tampering.

Federal elections officials have sued the California Democratic Party in U.S. District Court, saying that the group violated election laws in a 1992 ballot initiative campaign against Gov. Pete Wilson's welfare proposals. The Republican governor had argued that his Proposition 165 would help prevent welfare dependency and avoid prolonged budget stalemates. Democrats characterized it as a Wilson "power grab" disguised as welfare reform. California voters rejected the measure 53% to 47%.

Proposed legislation to block foreign companies from contributing money to U.S. elections could end up affecting well-known companies such as Chrysler, Anheuser-Busch and Citgo, according to legal experts and company representatives. The legislation is a reaction from key House and Senate Democrats to a Supreme Court decision in January that struck down a portion of the nation's campaign funding laws, allowing corporations to freely contribute to political campaigns. The high court's 5-4 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission seemed to open the way for U.S. subsidiaries of foreign corporations to also contribute to campaigns.

The most heated controversy over the recent Supreme Court ruling striking down parts of the nation's campaign-funding laws has focused on whether the decision frees foreign corporations to pour money into American elections. President Obama raised this specter Wednesday in his State of the Union address, saying the ruling would "open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections." A day later, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.