Jason Kaune, a senior partner at the firm of Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinelo, Gross, & Leoni LLP, was named chair of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Election Law at the ABA Annual Meeting in August.
The committee was founded in 1973 and is dedicated to developing and examining all aspects of the electoral process with a charge to further the ABA’s commitment that federal, state, local, and tribal election laws be legally sound, properly administered and permit the broadest, least restrictive access by American citizens to the ballot box. SCEL is structured as fully bipartisan, with members appointed based on their expertise in election law and the maintenance of ideological balance on SCEL.
Considered one of the nation’s leading political law attorneys, Kaune advises individuals, entities and government agencies on complex election law, campaign finance, political disclosure and conflict of interest matters. His area of expertise is in the corporate and regulated community, including as counsel and treasurer to political action committees, advocacy groups, social welfare organizations, independent expenditure committees and ballot measures on topics ranging from land use restrictions to government reform.
Kaune is a co-chair of the Practicing Law Institute’s annual conference on Corporate Political Activities. He is a past president of the California Political Attorneys Association and a member of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws. He is scheduled to teach a course on Political Ethics for Organizations at the Yale School of Management in 2023. He is the past program chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Election Law. and serves as an elected trustee of a California public school district.
Before joining Nielsen Merksamer, Kaune worked in the private and nonprofit sectors, including as a speechwriter in Washington, D.C., on a presidential campaign, and as an extern for a U.S. District Court judge and for the California Law Revision Commission. He received his law degree from the University of California Hastings College of the Law, a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University.
