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1 1 (January 6, 2025)

handle is hein.crs/goverxe0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Jimmy Carter: Electoral Context and Background on Campaign Finance and Elections Policy January 6, 2025 James Earl Jimmy Carter, Jr., the 39th President of the United States and former Georgia Governor, died on December 29, 2024. As Congress prepares for a state funeral, this CRS Insight discusses selected aspects of the former President's career and its relationship to elections and campaign finance policy. As President, Carter signed a significant amendment to federal campaign finance law. Although Carter did not have a major impact on federal policy related to election administration and voting during his presidency, substantial changes in American politics, political parties, and election law created the context for his political career and for his policy work afterward. Political and Policy Foundations in Elections Although Carter was a Democrat, the dominant party in Georgia before and during the 1960s, he was generally considered an outsider to the party establishment. In the Turning Point memoir of his 1962 State Senate campaign, Carter wrote that two federal court rulings on elections issues-Baker v. Carr and Sanders v. Gray -disrupted the party structure and fostered his first run for public office. The 1962 Supreme Court ruling in Baker v. Carr held that redistricting claims were subject to judicial review (justiciable). Soon after, in Sanders v. Gray, a federal district court invalidated Georgia's County Unit System as implemented. Georgia had used the county-unit method, which advantaged rural counties over more populous urban ones, in party nominating contests that were tantamount to election. (Legal analysis of these cases is beyond the scope of this Insight.) Practically, as Carter observed, both Baker and Sanders led to the State Senate special election that Carter eventually won-after challenging a local party boss and mounting legal appeals in a contentious Democratic primary. Carter wrote in Turning Point that the Baker and Sanders rulings would transform the political scene in Georgia and would shape the future of my life, including fostering his interest in elections policy. More generally, these rulings (and related developments throughout the 1960s) challenged electoral systems that diluted minority voting strength in the South prior to Congress's enactment of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965. Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov IN12478 CRS INSIGHT Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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