America Votes!: A Guide to Modern Election Law and Voting Rights

Updated and expanded to include the most current issues in this area, America Votes! Second Edition provides key information and important perspectives on election law questions which the courts are currently addressing or about to address. The chapters run the gamut from nuts-and-bolts questions about running elections (what safeguards should jurisdictions put in place to make sure that the vote totals generated by vote-counting machines are accurate?) to larger questions about the best methods for democratic governance (should states be allowed to band together and appoint presidential electors in line with the winner of the national popular vote?). Even questions such as how a third party or independent candidate should be able to gain access to the ballot raise important technical and philosophical questions. Many chapters in this book discuss both the requirements for compliance with the Voting Rights Act (including its protections for racial, ethnic and language minorities) as well as the wisdom and logic of those provisions. The Act raises complex issues of both statistical nuance and democratic theory. A timely resource for lawyers, professors, election officials, and state and local government election administrators and poll workers, America Votes! Second Edition provides a snapshot of key election and voting rights issues from the perspective of practitioners highly experienced in a wide variety of areas including redistricting, Voting Rights Act, registration, ballot access, reform measures, and much more.

About the Author :
Ben Griffith's federal and state civil litigation practice traces back to his early civil trial work in the Mississippi Delta with his late father and law partner, Ellis Griffith. That work began to reach into other states during the late 1970's. Ben's civil litigation practice is now based in Oxford, Mississippi and extends to representing state agencies, counties, cities, school boards, elected officials, nongovernmental entities and other private sector insureds and their insurers in federal and state civil litigation throughout Mississippi and in other jurisdictions. He has been associated to represent defendants in federal and state civil litigation in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C. With Oxford, Mississippi as a base for an expanded multi-state practice, Ben's work focuses on defense of state and local governments, agencies, and school districts in civil rights, voting rights, election law, governmental tort liability, and First Amendment litigation, representation of commercial entities and other private sector insureds in premises security litigation, public entity insurance coverage disputes, and environmental law with a focus on water resources management. He served as Board Attorney for the Bolivar County Board of Supervisors for 21 years from 1983 through 2003, and continues to serve as Board Attorney for the 17-county Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Joint Water Management District, a position held since 1989. He has been recognized by his peers through inclusion in Best Lawyers in America in the field of Municipal Law and Mid South SuperLawyers in the field of Municipal Law each year since 2006. He serves as Adjunct Professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law and teaches the Municipal Law Practice Skills Course.