Douglas M. Spencer
Connect with Douglas
About Douglas
Spencer is an election law scholar whose research addresses the role of prejudice and racial attitudes in voting rights litigation, the empirical implications of campaign finance regulations, and the ways that election rules and political campaigns contribute to growing inequality in America. Spencer has worked as an expert witness in voting rights and campaign finance cases and, prior to law teaching, was a law clerk at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, an election monitor in Thailand for the Asian Network for Free Elections, and a researcher for the Pew Center on the States’ Military and Overseas Voting Reform.
Contributions
How Surveys Can Strengthen the Voting Rights Act
No Jargon Podcast
In the News
Publications
Finds that speech-chilling effects of disclosure requirements are negligible, and that, on average, less than one donor per candidate is likely to stop contributing with the visibility of campaign contribution increases.
Lays out a path for the courts, in partnership with the Department of Justice, to reform Section 2 of the VRA so that it fills much of the gap by the Supreme Court's evisceration of Section 5, presuming Congress does not reinstate a preclearance coverage formula. Argues that by adopting evidentiary presumptions whose application in any given case would be determined using national survey data and a common statistical model, the courts could greatly reduce the cost and uncertainty of Section 2 litigation.
Proposes a new, legally defensible approach to coverage base on between-sate differences in the proportion of voting age citizens who subscribe to negative stereotypes about racial minorities and vote accordingly.
Explores the impact of Citizens United on political spending, and finds that while independent expenditures increased across all states afterwards, the increase was more than twice as large in states whose bans on corporation and union spending were invalidated by the Supreme Court's decision.