For  five years now I have posted to this site, each week and most days, and I have enjoyed the opportunity that a blog affords to engage regularly with a committed and often lively audience for election law issues. 

     The time has come for an adjustment in the schedule and in the content of the blog.  In place of daily takes on reports in the press or on opinions expressed in the blogosphere or elsewhere, postings will be less frequent and the topics will be more developed and not as often keyed to daily press or blog traffic.  There will be more book reviews, and more attention to research and theoretical work.  Significant legislative, regulatory and judicial actions will be covered—but maybe a few days later, not the day of or after, their occurrence. 

     The reason for the change is, in part, that the time available to me for writing has grown ever scarcer, but also that the time spent on daily blogging is lost to more extensive, fully considered treatment of election law issues.  In the last years, I could (or tried to) manage both the more complete and formally presented pieces, in professional journals and on the site, and the quickly produced blogging that joins in the argument of the day.  Doing both, and doing them to any standard of reasonably consistent quality, are not now possible. 

     As election law in various aspects passes through major transitions, through change and re-thinking, it just seems (to me) that whatever time can be found is best spent on examining the change and participating in the re-thinking.  A great deal of the regular traffic on these issues is becoming numbingly familiar—and the "yes, it is speech", "no, it is not" tit-for-tat in campaign finance debates is one example—and it is neither obviously useful nor, with exceptions, likely to change minds.  Or to be particularly interesting.

     We will continue to send out alerts:  you will see fewer of them, but I hope that they will link to something worth reading.

Bob Bauer