Marc Elias

Marc Erik Elias (born February 1, 1969)^[1] is an American Democratic Party elections lawyer.^[2] In 2020, he founded Democracy Docket, a website focused on voting rights and election litigation in the United States, and he left his position as a partner at Perkins Coie to start the Elias Law Group in 2021.^[3]

Elias served as general counsel for the

Born to a Jewish family in New York City, Elias was raised in Suffern, New York.^[7] He earned a Bachelor of Arts in government in 1990 from Hamilton College, at which he attended a class taught by Bernie Sanders.^[8] He then earned a master's degree in political science from Duke University and a Juris Doctor from Duke University School of Law.^[9][1]

Career

In 2004, Elias served as general counsel to John Kerry's presidential campaign.^[10]

Prior to creating the Elias Law Group in 2021, Elias was the head of the political law practice at Perkins Coie. He represented the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic Governors Association, and a number of Democratic members of Congress. He has represented the leadership of the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate. In 2020, Elias's employer, Perkins Coie, received $9.6 million from the Hopewell Fund and $11.6 million from Priorities USA Action. Starting in 2020 Elias led a Hopewell Fund project called the Democracy Docket Legal Fund with the stated goal of supporting litigation to challenge Republican-backed voting restrictions enacted across the country.^[2]

He served as lead counsel for Senator Al Franken in the 2008 United States Senate election in Minnesota recount and contest, the longest recount and contest in American history.^[1] Elias has testified on campaign finance before committees in both houses of Congress and before the Federal Election Commission.^[11] Elias has worked on voting rights and redistricting lawsuits across the U.S.^[12]

In April 2015, Hillary Clinton engaged Elias as attorney of record and general counsel for her 2016 presidential campaign.^[13] According to The Washington Post, in April 2016, Elias hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to create the research that resulted in the Steele dossier.^[14] On October 24, 2017, Perkins Coie released Fusion GPS from its client confidentiality obligation.^[14]

Elias served as the attorney for

Following the 2020 presidential election, Elias supervised the response to dozens of lawsuits filed by the Donald Trump campaign seeking to overturn Biden's win.^[4] Out of 65 such court cases, Elias prevailed in 64.^[17] In 2021, as several Republican-dominated state legislatures passed laws to tighten election procedures and voting requirements, Elias filed suits challenging the new laws, often within hours of the bills being signed.^[17] Writing in The Hill, Reid Wilson described Elias as "the most prominent Democratic attorney in America" and "the Democrats' last best hope of preserving a House majority".^[18] According to The American Lawyer, Elias has gained a reputation for "strident election and voting rights litigation on behalf of the Democratic Party".^[19]

On May 18, 2022, Elias was called to testify by prosecutors for special counsel

Elias represented the Democratic National Committee from 2009 to 2023.^[21][22] Elias appears frequently on Democracy Watch with Brian Tyler Cohen.^[23]

Criticism

Elias's tactics have been criticized by legal scholar Richard L. Hasen who has written a blog post outlining the differences in approaches to defending election law^[24] Hasen and Elias had previously disagreed on legal tactics.^[25]

On March 12, 2021, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued sanctions on Elias and other Perkins Coie attorneys for "redundant and misleading" motions related to a case in which Elias and his legal team argued that the elimination of straight-ticket voting in Texas disproportionately affected minorities. In the ruling, the court stated that Elias and his team "did not notify the court that their latest motion to supplement the record filed on February 10, 2021, was nearly identical to the motion to supplement the record filed several months ago by the same attorneys, on September 29, 2020".^[26] After the ruling, Perkins Coie defended Elias's actions.^[27] In December 2021, Elias asked the full court to reconsider the panel's decision. His attorney Paul Clement claimed that the panel's action was unprecedented and Elias had made good-faith mistakes rather than engaged in egregious misconduct for which appellate courts typically impose sanctions. The court has broad authority to oversee the attorneys who appear before it. The motion was denied by the appeals court.^[28][29]

Bibliography

• With Jonathan S. Berkon for the Harvard Law Review: "After McCutcheon" about the Supreme Court of the United States ruling on McCutcheon v. FEC^[30]
• "Political Regulation: Justified Reform or a Burden on Free Speech"^[31] an article about the increase in political spending since 2000 due to changes in campaign finance law.
• "Even Judges Can't Follow Campaign Finance Laws"^[32] an assessment on the trial for David Rosen where Elias asserted that "The Rosen trial confirmed one of the dirty little secrets of the campaign finance laws — they are so complicated that virtually no one in politics fully understands them."

References