PLI Bulletin

2020 Polls, COVID Advice, Small Claims Court and More

Posted on December 2, 2020

Small Claims Court Modernization Act: Currently, most state small claims courts have monetary limits of $5,000 to $10,000, which is woefully low. The Small Claims Court Modernization Act increases the monetary limit for small claims court jurisdiction to $25,000.

In retrospect, 2020 polls were fairly accurate: Now that all the votes have been counted, 2020 polls don’t look so bad. Nationally, the final polling forecast had Biden winning by 8 percent and he actually won by 4.4 percent. In those states surveyed the most, polls correctly called the Presidential and Senate winners 18 times and were wrong only 4 times. For details, see the latest IdeaLog, our blog intended to raise eyebrows and engage minds.

Why Did Down-Ballot Democrats Have Such A Mediocre Showing? While Joe Biden’s electoral map was ultimately a pretty good one, down-ballot Democrats had very disappointing results. The experts at FiveThirtyEight have a podcast discussing why.

CDC’s COVID advice for gatherings, like legislative sessions: State and local legislative sessions will restart or continue in January. Here’s advice from the Centers for Disease Control about how you can safely conduct business and an article from Pew on the same subject.

The Big Federalism Challenges Facing a Biden Administration: Here are five issues that are important to state and local governments where Biden and Congress are likely to act, according to Governing Magazine.

Hundreds of PLI Bulletins: This is the 200^th Edition of the PLI Bulletin. It has been published every two weeks since March 2013. For back issues, click here.