The legal architecture around politics: redistricting challenges, ballot access disputes, campaign finance doctrine, certification litigation and constitutional restraints on executive action. Each piece explains a ruling's reasoning and its reach. For attorneys, election administrators and reporters covering courts and campaigns together.
Coverage of the courts in politics: redistricting suits, ballot access cases, campaign finance rulings and constitutional limits on executive power.
The 2022 law rewrote the 1887 Electoral Count Act — clarifying the vice president's role, raising objections, naming each state's certifying official and shortening the courts' clock.
Nathan Brooks
Five states recount everything; most set a margin trigger — 0.5 percent is the modal line — and the deadline to request is usually measured in days after certification, not election night.
Nathan Brooks
The private right of action at the heart of every vote-dilution lawsuit turns on three preconditions from a 1986 case — and on the results test Congress wrote in 1982.
Nathan Brooks
Roughly 99 percent of petitions are denied — the ones granted share a short list of features, and the Court's own rules tell you what they are.
Asha Venkataswamy
Before any court weighs a single ballot dispute, the plaintiff must show a concrete injury traceable to the defendant that a favorable ruling can fix — the threshold that decides most election cases without reaching the merits.
Nathan Brooks