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9 Election L.J. 1 (2010)

handle is hein.journals/enlwjr9 and id is 1 raw text is: The Party Line Daniel H. Lowenstein and Richard L. Hasen T o the relief of nearly everyone-except perhaps some election lawyers looking at their 401(k)s- the 2008 elections went pretty smoothly. As in 2004, there was litigation and controversy in the months leading up to the election, but little post-election liti- gation. The main post-election controversy involved the disputed Minnesota Senate race between Repub- lican incumbent Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken. We have featured some of the court opinions from that controversy in the back of the book in recent issues. In addition, controversy continued to swirl regarding campaign finance issues (with Barack Obama becoming the first candidate to opt out of the voluntary public financing system for presidential candidates in the general election) and voter registration issues (including controversy over the voter registration activities of the group ACORN). Soon after the 2008 elections concluded, Election Law Journal issued a call for papers on issues re- lated to the 2008 elections, and the three articles in this issue are products of that call. We expect to publish additional articles resulting from this call, including coverage of the Coleman-Franken dis- pute, in future issues of the Journal. Of all the issues of election administration that have received attention since the 2000 election, probably none is more meaningful to the ordinary voter than the avoidance of excessive voting lines. Two articles in this issue address that question. A necessary first step in prevention of excessive wait- ing times for voting is to find out when lines form and what causes them. These and similar questions are not as simple to answer as might at first seem. Indeed, a rather elaborate technology, known as queuing theory, has grown up for the study of lines in general. Douglas Spencer and Zachary Markovits draw on that technology and describe an empirical study they ran in three California counties in 2008. Their findings are helpful, but perhaps more im- portant is the template they provide for researchers and election officials in other parts of the country to begin to develop a comprehensive and sophisti- cated understanding of voting lines. Tocqueville's observation that few important ques- tions in America avoid the attention of the courts has been as true for voting lines as for most other sub- jects. As Justin Levitt describes, most of the litiga- tion over excessive wait times until recently has oc- curred on or after Election Day, when there is little or no opportunity to take preventive action. But pre- election litigation presents problems of its own. Levitt explores some of these problems and analyzes pos- sible means that courts might take to cope with them. When election administration goes smoothly, vot- ers and researchers alike can turn their attention to the more interesting questions of who wins elections and why. The 2008 presidential election is of partic- ular interest, because of its many distinguishing char- acteristics. Prominent among these were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that by the time of the election had lost their popularity; the economic difficulties that suddenly became a crisis less than two months before the election and resulted, among other things, in widespread mortgage foreclosures; and the fact that for the first time one of the major-party candidates was an African American. In this issue, Seth Hill, Michael Herron and Jeffrey Lewis compare voting results in counties that were influenced by these cir- cumstances to varying degrees, as a means of dis- covering the effects they had on the outcome. They conclude that if these circumstances had been differ- ent-most importantly, if the rate of mortgage fore- closures had been closer to normal-the presidential outcome might have been quite different than it was. The issue concludes with book reviews by Ray La Raja and Mark Rush, as well as our back of the book selection, the D.C. Circuit's recent, important, and controversial decision in the EMILY's List case. 1 ELECTION LAW JOURNAL Volume 9, Number 1, 2010 © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089/elj.2010.9101 Editorial

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