NVRI E-News: October 20, 2005
October 25 Panel Discussions in DC to Discuss Spending Limits
Dear Friends of NVRI,
More than ten years into NVRI's founding, our efforts to have the Supreme Court look again at campaign spending limits have come to fruition. As we told you in our previous e-news, the Court on September 27 decided to review the case of Vermont's spending limits, thus opening up a discussion about one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions in the past thirty years - Buckley v. Valeo. Our website has many resources about this issue, and we hope you will look through them. We'll be updating the site soon, with a broader set of materials and analyses of the campaign spending limits issue.
If you're in Washington, D.C., you can also hear what should be a fascinating pair of panel discussions, on October 25, from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm at American University. NVRI's John Bonifaz will debate James Bopp on the legal arguments around this case, while Chellie Pingree (Common Cause), Cleta Mitchell (attorney at Foley & Lardner and counsel to numerous Republican candidates and campaigns), Jamin Raskin (Professor of Law at American University's Washington College of Law), and former FEC Chair Bradley Smith will discuss broader implications of the case. Charles Lane of the Washington Post will moderate the first session, and Juan Williams of NPR the second.
The debates are a next round of the similar debate held in August, and subsequently broadcast on C-SPAN. To watch that debate, check the streaming video on NVRI's website. (We'll let you know if this new debate will also be broadcast on C-SPAN).
The program is co-hosted by American University's Center for Democracy and Election Management, AU Washington College of Law's Program on Law and Government, the National Voting Rights Institute, and U.S. PIRG. To RSVP, send an e-mail to [email protected].
We hope to see you there. (A flier for the event is attached).
Best,
Stu
Stuart Comstock-Gay
Executive Director
National Voting Rights Institute
www.nvri.org