Understanding Election Law and Voting Rights

Understanding Election Law and Voting Rights is a valuable supplement to any casebook, and a concise but thorough treatise that provides students in law, political science, and other fields a detailed yet accessible introduction to (or review of) election law.

Understanding Election Law and Voting Rights can also be used as a primary coursebook for a seminar, providing students with a core understanding of each area of election law and permitting instructors to use class time to explore a few cases in detail.

Readers will come away from the book not only knowing the holdings of cases and the meanings of important statutes, such as the Voting Rights Act, but also appreciating the contending views of free speech, equality, judicial authority, and political fairness that are present throughout the subject's many topics.

This student-friendly treatise explains election law from the beginning to the end of the electoral process, starting with the right to vote and continuing through districting, campaigning (including campaign financing), the counting of votes, and the challenging of election results. Throughout the text, the authors explain election-law concepts in language that is easy to understand, even for readers without a background in constitutional law or political science.

The second edition adds or expands coverage of political gerrymandering, the independence of state legislatures in prescribing the methods of congressional and presidential elections, speech inciting violence, speakers' disclosure obligations, and the use of race in districting.