Robert F. Bauer is a partner with Perkins Coie LLP. In 30 years of practice, he has provided counseling and representation on matters involving regulation of political activity before the courts and administrative agencies. He has served national party committees, candidates, political committees, individuals, federal officeholders, corporations and trade associations, and tax-exempt groups. Mr. Bauer was counsel to the Obama campaign and served as White House Counsel to President Obama. In 2013, President Obama named Mr. Bauer Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration (“PCEA”).
Professor Doug Chapin is the Director of the Election Reform Information Project, the Program for Excellence in Election Administration, and the Election Academy at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He came to the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota after 10 years at The Pew Charitable Trusts where he served as Director of Election Initiatives for the Pew Center on the States. Under his leadership, Pew’s elections team successfully lobbied for enactment of military and overseas voting reform in Congress and state legislatures; enlisted dozens of states and technology partners like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook to provide official voting information online and via mobile technology; and worked with election officials, academics, and technical experts to design and implement efforts to upgrade the nation’s voter registration systems. Prior to serving at Pew, Professor Chapin was an attorney in private practice specializing in election and ethics law. He served as elections counsel to the Democrats on the U.S. Senate Rules Committee from 1997 to 2000, where he focused on federal election legislation and participated in the review of the disputed 1996 Senate election in Louisiana.
Judd Choate is Director of the Division of Elections at the Colorado Department of State, and the President of the National Association of State Election Directors. Prior to joining the Colorado Department of State, Mr. Choate practiced election law at the Denver firm of Kelly Garnsey Hubbell & Lass. He also served as a law clerk for Colorado Supreme Court Justice Alex J. Martinez and as a summer clerk for Judge Timothy Tymkovich of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Prior to law school, he served as a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska, where he taught courses on campaigns and elections.
Benjamin L. Ginsberg is a partner with Jones Day. Mr. Ginsberg represents candidates, parties, corporations, trade associations, advocacy groups, vendors and donors in the political process. He has served as national counsel to the Bush and the Romney presidential campaigns, and played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount. Mr. Ginsberg advises clients on major election law issues, federal and state campaign finance, government investigations, ethics, gifts, pay-to-play and redistricting. He has been Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration (2013-2014); a lecturer at Stanford Law School (Winters 2017, 2015, 2014); a lecturer at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (Fall, 2005); an Adjunct Law Professor at Georgetown University (1993, 1994); and a former newspaper reporter for the Boston Globe, Riverside Press-Enterprise, and Berkshire Eagle.
Professor Richard L. Hasen is Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Professor Hasen is a nationally-recognized expert in election law and campaign finance regulation, and is co-author of a leading casebook on election law. From 2001-2010, he served as founding co-editor of the quarterly peer-reviewed publication, the Election Law Journal. He is the author of over 100 articles on election law issues, published in numerous journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Stanford Law Review and the Supreme Court Review. He was elected to The American Law Institute (“ALI”) in 2009 and served as an adviser on ALI’s law reform project, Principles of Election Law: Resolution of Election Disputes. Hasen also writes the often-quoted Election Law Blog, which the American Bar Association (“ABA”) Journal named to its “Blawg 100 Hall of Fame” in 2015. His newest book, The Justice of Contradictions: Antonin Scalia and the Politics of Disruption, will be published in 2018 by Yale University Press.
Professor Samuel Issacharoff is the Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law in New York, New York. His wide-ranging research deals with issues in civil procedure (especially complex litigation and class actions), law and economics, American and comparative constitutional law, and employment law. He is one of the pioneers in the law of the political process. His Law of Democracy casebook (co-authored with Stanford Law School’s Pamela Karlan and New York University School of Law’s Richard Pildes) and dozens of articles have helped create this vibrant new area of constitutional law.
Waldo Jaquith works for 18F, an office within the General Services Administration that collaborates with agencies to fix technical problems, build products and improve how government serves the public through technology. Mr. Jaquith’s previous projects include The State Decoded, Ethics.gov, and US Open Data. Mr. Jaquith has over two decades of experience with open data including building open source software, creating communities, and developing websites. He won the 2011 Knight News Challenge, was named a “Champion for Change” by President Obama, and worked for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where he created Ethics.gov. He is the former Director of U.S. Open Data.
Professor Pamela S. Karlan is the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School. A productive scholar and an award-winning teacher, Professor Karlan is also Co-Director of the school’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where students litigate live cases before the Court. Professor Karlan is one of the nation’s leading experts on voting and the political process. She has served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, an assistant counsel and cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. There, she received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service, the department’s highest award for employee performance, as part of the team responsible for implementing the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor. Professor Karlan is the co-author of leading casebooks on constitutional law, constitutional litigation, and the law of democracy, as well as numerous scholarly articles.
Dr. Caroline E. Kirkpatrick is Director of Educational Services in the Office of the Executive Secretary at the Supreme Court of Virginia. She oversees education for the state judicial branch for judges, substitute judges, district court clerks, circuit court clerks, hearing officers, special justices, and judicial branch employees. An accomplished speaker, she regularly presents at national and regional conferences on matters involving judicial education as well as collaborates with nationally-recognized partners, including the National Judicial College, the State Justice Institute and the American Judges Association. She is a Certified Court Manager and a Certified Court Executive and is certified to teach courses through the Institute for Court Management. She is President of the National Association of State Judicial Educators, and has served as Co-Chair of its Education and Curriculum Committee, as well as served in the role of President for the Mid-Atlantic Association for Court Management.
Seamus Kraft is the founder of the OpenGov Foundation. Mr. Kraft seeks to build new means for successful democracy in the digital age by focusing on facilitating the communication of public information. Since February 2013, he has built The OpenGov Foundation into a dedicated six-person team producing cutting-edge civic software used by elected officials and citizens in governments across the US. Seamus is also a co-creator of the Free Law Founders, a coalition of leaders working to open the processes and information of government to access and innovation for all. Prior to creating The OpenGov Foundation, Seamus served as Digital Director and Press Secretary for The US House Oversight Committee, where he built one of the most successful digital communications operations in government.
The Honorable Terry P. Lewis (retired) served as a judge on the Second Judicial Circuit Court of Florida. He was appointed to that court in 1998 by Governor Lawton Chiles, after serving as a Leon County Court Judge from 1989. Judge Lewis is best known for overseeing the Florida recount during the 2000 US presidential election. Judge Lewis has been involved in a variety of election matters, including, notably, his work during Bush v. Gore and more recently in Romo v. Detzner (redistricting litigation).
Christy McCormick is a Commissioner with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. She was nominated by President Barack H. Obama and confirmed by unanimous consent of the United States Senate on December 16, 2014 to serve on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (“EAC”). Prior to her appointment with the EAC, Commissioner McCormick served as a Senior Trial Attorney in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, a position she held from 2006 until joining the Commission. In that role, Ms. McCormick was responsible for investigating and prosecuting violations of federal voting statutes, including the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (“UOCAVA”) and the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (“MOVE”). Ms. McCormick was detailed by the Deputy Attorney General to be Senior Attorney Advisor and Acting Deputy Rule of Law Coordinator in the Office of the Rule of Law Coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq from 2009 to 2010, where she worked on the Iraq national elections and on rule of law matters. Ms. McCormick was a U.S. elections expert in Iraq observing and monitoring the 2010 Iraq National elections, providing assistance and advice to the Independent High Electoral Commission and witnessing an extensive 12-day election recount. She was a rule of law liaison to the Kurdish Regional Government and a liaison to rule of law advisors at the Provincial Reconstruction Teams.
Professor Aviel D. Rubin is Technical Director of the Johns Hopkins University (“JHU”) Information Security Institute. His primary research area is computer security, and the focus of his latest research is security for healthcare IT systems. He is also Director of the Health and Medical Security (“HMS”) Lab at JHU. In addition, Professor Rubin founded Harbor Labs, a company that provides security consulting, professional training, and technical expertise and testimony in high-tech litigation. Professor Rubin is a frequent speaker on Information Security, including TED talks about hacking devices, testimony in Congressional hearings, and a high-level security briefing at the Pentagon to the Assistant Secretary of the Army and a group of generals. Prior to joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins, Mr. Rubin worked in the Secure Systems Research Department at AT&T Labs in the area of cryptography, network security, Web security and secure Internet services.
John Hardin Young is of counsel with Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock, P.C. His primary areas of practice are administrative and regulatory law, electoral dispute resolution, and electoral processes and recounts. Mr. Young is a Senior Global Electoral Dispute Advisor to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, and Managing Director of the Center for the Mediation of Electoral Disputes. He is the Chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Election Law and Past Chair of the ABA Board of Governors, and the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. He is also the Editor of International Election Principles (ABA, 2008). Mr. Young is an Adjunct Professor at William & Mary Law School where he teaches International & Comparative Election Law. He has also taught Election Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Alternative Dispute Resolution at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School. Mr. Young has served as Special Counsel to the Democratic National Committee, and Co-Chair of the National Lawyers Council.