I blogged about this case back in August when the initial decision came out. See Vote Swapping / Vote Pairing Decision
Back in August, the Ninth Circuit held, as I’ve argued for seven years that vote-pairing websites are constitutionally protected and that California Secretary of State Bill Jones violated the First Amendment when he threatened to prosecute the operators of vote pairing sites. See, e.g., The Other Election Controversy of Y2K: Core First Amendment Values and High-Tech Political Coalitions, 82 Washington University Law Quarterly 143, 240-241 (2004) (“The secretaries of states’ actions . . . implicate core First Amendment values to such an extent that strict scrutiny must apply.”); The Constitutionality of Online Vote Swapping, 34 Loyola L.A. L. Rev. 1297 (2001).
The state, (not to let them damn citizens git all uppity with their pesky First Amendment rights) sought en banc review. Today, the 9th Circuit denied the petition. However, it was not without 12 pages of accompanying histrionics from three judges.
I love this issue. I should. I wrote my masters degree thesis on it, and the 9th cited my article in its August opinion.
Yeah, I’m biased.
A hearty hat tip to How Appealing.
