Election Law as Ideology: Toward a New Historiography of Democracy as a Function of Law

• Author: David Leeds
• Position: Leeds graduated cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center with exceptional pro bono pledge recognition and currently serves as the Region II Legal Honors Fellow at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ('HUD')
• Pages: 607-636

NOTES

Election Law as Ideology: Toward a New

Historiography of Democracy as a Function of Law

DAVID LEEDS*

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608

I. THEORIES OF DEMOCRACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610

A. THE TENSION BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND LIBERAL CAPITALISM . . . 610

B. THE INCOHERENCE OF LIBERAL RIGHTS THEORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611

C. SPURIOUS NEUTRALITY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613

II. THE POLITICAL THEORY OF ELECTION LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614

A. VOTING RIGHTS LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614

1. Residency-Based Disenfranchisement: Holt Civic Club

v. Tuscaloosa (1978) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617

2. Photo Identification Requirements: Crawford v. Marion

County Election Board (2008) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 619

B. CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621

1. The Unfettered Right to “Independent” Campaign

Expenditures: Citizens United v. FEC (2010) . . . . . . . . . 623

2. Restrictions on Public Campaign Financing: Arizona

Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett

(2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 624

C. REDISTRICTING LAW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 626

1. Unrepresentative Legislative Arrangements: Holder v.

Hall (1994) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 630

* Georgetown Law, J.D, 2022. © 2023, David Leeds. Leeds graduated cum laude from Georgetown

University Law Center with exceptional pro bono pledge recognition and currently serves as the Region

II Legal Honors Fellow at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”). The

views expressed in this Note do not necessarily represent the views of HUD or the United States.

607

2. Partisan Gerrymandering: Rucho v. Common Cause

(2019) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 632

III. TOWARD A NEW THEORY OF ELECTION LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635

INTRODUCTION

And when I speak, I don’t speak as a Democrat, or a Republican, nor an

American. I speak as a victim of America’s so-called democracy. You and I

have never seen democracy; all we’ve seen is hypocrisy.

—Malcolm X

1

We’re not a democracy.

—Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)

2

Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee), TWITTER (Oct. 7, 2020, 9:34 PM), https://twitter.com/SenMikeLee/

status/1314016169993670656 [https://perma.cc/GY8A-8TJZ].

When advocates push for legal reforms expanding voting rights or reining in

the political influence of wealthy elites, they frequently allude to the need to “pro-

tect”

3

See, e.g., Protecting Our Democracy Act, H.R. 5314, 117th Cong. (2021); Michael Hais, Doug

Ross & Morley Winograd, Protecting Democracy and Containing Autocracy, BROOKINGS (May 10,

2021), https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/05/10/protecting-democracy-and-containing-autocracy/

[https://perma.cc/NCU2-XWDM]; PROTECT DEMOCRACY, https://protectdemocracy.org/ [https://perma.cc/

RM5L-YXVQ] (last visited Jan. 25, 2023).

democracy or push back against its “degradation.”

4

While these advocates

often demand changes that would make the United States’ electoral system more

inclusive and egalitarian, this language implies that democracy exists outside of

law. This rhetoric often overlooks the ways in which undemocratic principles are

baked into the very system of laws that create democratic rights for Americans in

the first place.

Election law in the United States presents a paradox for proponents of democ-

racy. Law creates the legal tools necessary for exercising democratic rights and

simultaneously limits those rights by excluding certain classes of people from

democratic processes and protecting social and economic hierarchies in the arena

of electoral politics. On the one hand, all democratic rights are necessarily crea-

tures of law. Election law creates the very rules and mechanisms that enable peo-

ple to play a role in the selection of their political representatives.

5

Despite the

belief espoused by certain theorists and philosophers that democracy is a social

arrangement that can prefigure the laws that give it shape, the opposite is actually

1. Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet, in THE PORTABLE SIXTIES READER 70, 79 (Ann Charters ed.,

2003).

2.

3.

4. See, e.g., Michael J. Klarman, The Supreme Court, 2019 Term—Foreword: The Degradation of

American Democracy—and the Court, 134 HARV. L. REV. 1, 178 (2020).

5. See Richard H. Pildes & Elizabeth S. Anderson, Slinging Arrows at Democracy: Social Choice

Theory, Value Pluralism, and Democratic Politics, 90 COLUM. L. REV. 2121, 2197–98 (1990).

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