Book Review Hasen, Plutocrats United Assignment | Essay Help Services

Listed three other people’s book reviews to use as an example. Please no plagiarism, one of the papers is the actual book you will be reviewing. Although due in two days, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or two and would appreciate it sooner.Give Me Data!
A Law Professor’s Cure-All for All that Ails U.S. Elections
Heather Gerken’s The Democracy Index flows from the simple and obvious premise that we don’t know that much about election administration and we should know much more. Anyone old enough to remember the Florida recount in 2000 or any number of much more obscure stories since can attest that there sure seem to be some big problems with the way U.S. elections are administered. Gerken, a professor of law at Yale, argues that we can begin to solve these problems by gathering comprehensive data on election administration to create a “Democracy Index” that ranks states (and localities) by their performance running elections as US News & World Report ranks colleges and universities. The resulting publicity will force poor performers to up their games and help everyone better understand where the strengths and weakness in their systems lie, helping them to improve. Hurray!
It is hard to argue with the central premise that more information is good. More information is good. Unfortunately, Gerken never really provides much insight as to what sort of information she means. For example, on pages 45-7 she reports data compliance rankings from the Electoral Assistance Commission (EAC), which requested information from states on thirteen categories of election administration. One its face, the scores are shocking: more than a third of the states provided less than half of the data requested, and most did pretty poorly. But what are the thirteen categories the EAC requested? And, for that matter, what year or years does this chart cover (for reports delivered in 2007)? Gerken doesn’t really say beyond a
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few broad strokes – “information on such important topics as voter registration, balloting, voter machines…”
This is a big problem because understanding what sort of data is useful and might be collected is the thing that any would-be election reformer must know before arguing to gather more information. Undoubtedly there is useful data to be had, but undoubtedly there are also big, possibly insurmountable obstacles to collecting some of the most important information. For instance, one of Gerken’s principles (p. 30) is that everyone eligible to register to vote who wants to can do so. How are we to measure desire to register to vote? The answer on p. 131 mainly involves polls, but polls are both historically unreliable on subjects involving civic virtue and very difficult to parse by state. Or, she extolls the “elegant simplicity” of the CalTech/MIT measure of residual vote rate (p. 31) when it is evident that some of the things we would like to build into it – including whether a potential voter was turned away at the polls or whether spoiled ballots are counted by all jurisdictions – may not be counted at all.
While Gerken is undoubtedly right to argue for more data, however vague she may be on the data she wants, she is wrong to assert that there will be a magical, “here-to-there” effect of a Democracy Index. Her view is that providing a scorecard on how states and localities perform in administering elections will force them to do better, but there is literally no evidence to believe that is true. Rather, everyone already knows that places like Cleveland (Cuyahoga County) have done a crappy job running their elections. People who live in Cleveland know it, and at least the ones who live in the affected areas certainly don’t like standing in line for hours to vote. Why does it go on? It is not entirely clear, although a mixture of partisanship (in this case at the state level) and local resources must go into it. (The race to
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the bottom argument makes no sense at all.) Either way, Cleveland’s shame obviously has not galvanized anyone to make its elections better run.
Would laying that shame out in black and white (the right color scheme for the worst offenses in Cleveland and elsewhere) via a Democracy Index make it more likely that Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, or Ohio would invest in its elections system? It is hard to see why, especially if the analogy offered is US News & World Report’s rankings of colleges and universities. Does anyone, let alone a faculty member from a perennially high-ranked institution, know of any colleges or universities that have consciously and successfully gamed those rankings? I am not even sure that this is possible, and I’m certainly far from sure that higher education has improved in general since those ratings have appeared. This strikes me as a really bad analogy.
Here is a different model, one perhaps closer to Gerken’s actual skill set than speculating about market forces: what if she and other election lawyers got together to sue (the crap out of) jurisdictions like Cleveland that have consistently and demonstrably lagged on key indicators. In the case of Cleveland and many other big cities, we already know of outdated and failure-prone machines being more likely to be deployed in heavily minority neighborhoods. We already know that the ratio of machines to voters is different by neighborhood within Cleveland and, at least in 2004, across Ohio. Sue for Voting Rights Act violations. Sue for 14th Amendment Equal Protection violations. If you really want to inspire jurisdictions to make their elections better, force them to make their elections better if only to avoid the expense of court. Of course, Gerken’s not a political scientist and has a somewhat hazy idea of what data to collect and how to collect it; similarly, I am not a lawyer which probably makes my legal advice equally suspect. Still, I think would-be data gatherers – and I
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would number myself among them – would have a better chance developing useful data out of a lawsuit than a set of carefully worded letters asking elections officials to help.
My bottom line here is that this is a useful book for reminding readers that the administration of U.S. elections is (hopelessly? insanely?) decentralized and that that has left many corners of our country with practices that most Americans would find unacceptable. Shining a light on those practices by inventing a standard set of metrics by which to evaluate how elections are conducted is a good and an obvious idea, even if it figuring out what those metrics might be is much harder than Gerken imagines. But assuming that the information by itself will have transformative power, especially while accusing others of being naïve, is more than a bit starry-eyed.

Gena Rising
PLSC 481C – Electoral Reform
Plutocrats United: A Book Review
In Plutocrats United , Richard Hasen details the basics of campaign finance and proposes
a solution to solve for dirty money being contributed to political campaigns (Hasen, 2016). He
describes the campaign finance era American society is in as post- Citizens United, making the
distinction that the way in which campaigns are operated now must be made in light of this
monumental and detrimental court ruling (Hasen, 2016). To solve the dilemma, Hansen (2016)
claims that neither side of the political spectrum is correctly operating and the solution must be
to limit campaign contributions. In this review, I will analyze the sections of the book and
evaluate the feasibility of the recommendation the author proposes.
Citizens United v. FEC was a monumental court ruling. It made restrictions on campaign
contributions from corporations unconstitutional as it ruled that they were protected by the first
amendment (Hasen, 2016). Plutocrats United is then structured in four parts that cover the
“Problems,” “Solutions,” “Objections,” and “Changing the System” (Hasen, 2016)) that revolve
around the challenges and meaning of campaign finance post- Citizens United . The sections cover
the ground that they need to as they paint the picture from the ground up–before Hasen details
his recommendations for change the reader then has the base knowledge they need to know
before digesting reform proposals (Hasen, 2016). For example, he explains other monumental
court decisions that are important to know such as Buckley v. Valeo and McCutcheon v. Federal
Election Commission.
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One of Hasen’s main arguments is that the political left and right both circumvent the
primary issue of the “ Citizens United era” (2016). The Supreme Court stood by the notion that
“corruption and its appearance are the only reasons to constitutionally restrict campaign funds.”
Thus, he believes that the key both sides of the political spectrum are missing is the balancing of
political inequality along with free speech (Hasen, 2016) . However, Hasen (2016) does not give
any due diligence to the party that promotes anti-corruption more than the other.
Hasen claims that progressives often agree with the notion the Supreme Court has stood
by but they have a broader perception of corruption (Hasen, 2016) . This is discussed as if
viewing more things as corrupt is a negative characteristic. However, I argue that a broader
scope of corruption is better. Actions are only viewed as corrupt if there is evidence that they are.
Therefore, if more things are viewed as corrupt there likely will just be more corruption being
caught and prevented. For example, Hasen claims early on that campaign donations cannot bribe
politicians and that this is just a progressive talking point (2016, p. 3). However, politicians need
money to run campaigns to be able to reach their goal of being elected. If they desperately need
the money and they obtain it through a donation from someone with special interests, they would
then be more likely to accommodate those interests through legislation if elected to pay them
back in a sense and ensure they donate again in the future. This should be seen as corruption.
On the other side of the spectrum, Hasen argues that the political right believes that
campaign contribution limits are to ensure safety for the incumbents’ seats and to suppress
political activity (Hasen, 2016) . However, the focus should have been placed higher on the way
in which they engage with corruption and the concept of corruption. The right typically sees the
illuminance of corruption as the left overreacting, when corruption needs to be caught to
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preserve our democracy and the threat thereof should not be taken lightly. It is also concerning
that the right does not take corruption as seriously as the left when a member of their party
committed one of the most corrupt political acts in history: see Watergate.
To attempt to solve these dilemmas, Hasen presented a proposal for campaign finance
that is creative and well-detailed but ultimately unrealistic. Hasen argues for a reframing of the
issue at hand (Hasen, 2016) . He believes that the Supreme Court ought to put limits on money in
politics in order to ensure those with masses of wealth and thus power does not distort the
political process (Hasen, 2016) . With this mechanism in place, the government would be
ensuring better political discourse and democracy (Hasen, 2016) . Ultimately, the solutions he
proposes are likely not plausible due to the notion that each state would first have to culturally
accept that campaign contributions can sway elections or else there would be backlash. It is still
a partisan issue that would need to be addressed.
Plutocrats United serves to educate the reader well enough to start becoming critical of
campaign finance regulations and lack thereof in the United States. Through elaborating on
important court cases and more background, Hasen makes it clear reform needs to happen. I do
not believe his proposed solution would be feasible, nor agree with his opinions on the left and
the right, but his book is a great place to learn and to be able to think critically.
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References
Hasen, R. L. (2016). Plutocrats united . Yale Univ Press.

Liam Cassidy
Jamieson Hall’s book CyberWar is a forensically driven delve detailing the length of and
motivations for Russian hacking and propaganda based interference in the 2016 US Presidential
election. During the days leading up to the election the topic of russian “fake news” was
widespread. Jamieson discusses at length the actions russian “trolls’ ‘ or cyber soldiers went to in
order to perpetrate these crimes including committing a vast array of crimes, not limited to just
fraud and identity theft. They also touch upon the rationale for such crimes. On page 4 they give
4 possible outcomes capable of being produced by their interference stating that all but one being
a positive gain for the Russians. The third outcome they theorize however to me seems as though
it wouldn’t be a win for russia. This claim that Clinton still wins, the country moves on and the
Russians have a template to reuse in 2020 elections I believe is not only a failure for the Russians
as then the impact of their interference is then proven to be incapable of producing widely visible
ripples through the US but it also downplays the effectiveness of the US led intelligence
agencies which Jamieson divulges were rather successful at identifying the sources of such
misinformation. The greatest success the Russians had was not tricking the US government but
the voters themselves. It’s fair to say that the greatest success of this electoral interference was in
the discrediting of other actually valid news sources. Then presidential candidate Donald Trump
coined the term fake news which he used rather liberally towards any piece of information he
deemed damaging or contrary to his viewpoints. Jamieson and Hall make a cogent point that the
biggest impact of this interference was in how it shaped debate and political dialogue in this
country. Jamieson uses general polling data as well as an in depth analysis of media coverage of
the election to elucidate the reader about the impact of this russian campaign.
CyberWar provides detail on the interference of a linkage of the Kremlin to these hackers to
wikileaks to the general public of the US. She does a good job of creating an easy to follow web
of russian motivations and actions. This book also follows the trail of Russian motivations and
actions and uses it to craft a sound argument. That argument being that it is undeniable that the
Russians purposefully encroached on the American election cycle with an eye on delegitimizing
the American president and America’s long standing ideal of preserving election legitimacy.
The book also makes the greater point that through their interference Russia set the stage for a
Trump victory and without the targeting of american voters and widespread net of
misinformation a Trump victory seemed as unlikely as the election analysts were saying it was.
Through tapping into democrats servers Russians gained access to emails and sensitive
information regarding the Clinton campaign. By filtering the initial information leaks through
wikileaks, thousands of bot accounts and fraudulent social media accounts, Russians were able to
successfully influence american voters’ opinions while casting doubt on the media coverage of
the election and the candidates. In October 2016 Clinton vastly outspent Trump on TV
advertisements, appearing on television nearly two and a half times more frequently. Clintons
inability to combat the russian influence and Trump’s last minute $39 million ad campaign
probably swayed many last minute undecided voters. The specific targeting of states such as
Michigan Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida were also largely contributing factors to Trump’s
late surge in such key electoral college states. The late October disclosure of James Comey’s
report on Clinton also further furthered the rhetoric pushed by Trump and the Propaganda
campaigns.
The crux of this book boils down to the argument about whether the russian interference had an
impact on the election. Jamieson doesn’t make the argument that it is likely the Russians
succeeded in changing the course of the election but rather that it most certainly did. After a hard
look at the evidence which she provides and the case she builds, readers will be left with a wider
understanding of the timeline and procedures of how Russia has attacked the US election system
and potentially how and why they will try again in 2020. Jamieson does not make the case that
the Russian interference and propaganda campaign was not the sole determining factor in the
outcome of the 2016 but rather that Russia definitely conducted these attacks. She also makes
the point that if the American public and intelligence agencies are not vigilant and reactive
enough it is likely to happen again in the 2020 election. She also mentions that Clinton’s
shortcomings and missteps during her campaign were also contributing factors to the election
outcome. Trump embraced the uncertainty and chaos the Russians created while Clinton was
struggling to combat it. The passive stance of President Obama, not condemning the Russians
and using his bully pulpit to counteract the interference allowed for the propaganda,
misinformation and targeting to be more effective. A near perfect storm of circumstances, an
unlikeable and untrusted candidate, and a mishandling of her campaign all led to Clinton’s
surprising 2016 defeat. Jamieson posits that the Russian interference had a significant impact on
the electorate as response was slow and inadequate. It’s impossible to know exactly how
responsible each factor was in determining the 2016 presidential election however Jameison does
a great job of detailing all potential aspects and naming the interference as a major culprit that
the United States must be better equipped to deal with moving forward.