Just listened to the Bongino podcast, so you don't have to, where DJT advocates for R's to nationalize elections. Puzzled why this is news, except that it illustrates how Pres Trump is still obsessed with claims that soberminded people of both parties long ago debunked.

This is a great video about very interesting research about voting technology. Definitely worth the look. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbL...

This essay by @kevinrkosar is consistent with many (but not all) of my thoughts about Congress these days. A traditional way of expressing this is something like, "show horses have taken over the farm, but there are still more work horses than you think." www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2026/01/100...

Gig alert. The MIT Election Data and Science Lab is searching for a new Research Support Associate to support research in the lab. The ideal candidate is just graduating & wanting to see what a research environment is like before going on to graduate school. careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/c...

So, it looks like the federal court of the Western District of Washington has struck down almost all of the president's executive order related to elections: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.u...

Mark your calendars: The 2026 Election Science, Reform, and Administration Conference will be held in Phoenix the first week of June. At least bookmark the conference website. More information about submitting proposals and registering will be forthcoming. esra-conference.org/2026-confer...

New article on whether donors punish extreme nominees. They do, although the effect has declined over time. doi.org/10.1017/S00...

Here's an interesting paper looking at the incumbency advantage in RCV elections: it seems to exist, although whether it's bigger or smaller than non-RCV elections is unknown. scholar.google.com/scholar_url...

Here's an interesting academic article on lessons learned from Hurricane Helene's effects on election administration in NC. doi.org/10.1177/152...

I encourage people to take a look at this paper by Josh Clinton and TzuFeng Huang the accuracy and efficiency of prediction markets. ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socar...

Here is an excellent paper laying out the AI landscape for election administration. It's useful for people outside the election administration field, too. Thanks to Lia Merivaki and Ioannis Ziogas. www.merivaki.com/uploads/6/4...

I served on a fed grand jury 25 years ago. I learned AUSAs informally discuss the +/- of cases with the juries. I'm assuming that the AUSA who presented the failed James indictment to the Norfolk grand jury had an after-action discussion with them to inform the DOJ's next moves. Could be wrong.

I'll be speaking at this event at @AEI tomorrow about the legacy of Bush v. Gore, 25 years lateer. There is a livestream option. Check it out. www.aei.org/events/bush...

Something reminded me of this New Yorker cartoon (published 6/15/81).

Gig alert. The MIT Election Data and Science Lab (electionlab.mit.edu) has an opening for a program/project administrator. Check it out and pass it around! careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/c...

Gig alert. The MIT Election Data and Science Lab (electionlab.mit.edu) has an opening for a communications associate. Check it out and pass it around! careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/c...

So, here's an interesting paper (if, perhaps, unsurprising). X posts are hostile to women politicians, Instagram, less so. www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10....

Here's an interesting paper on election security I've taken a quick look at. I'd be interested in hearing from others who have read the paper. If nothing else, the bibliography alerted me to several articles on the technical side I was unaware of. static1.squarespace.com/static/5a6b...

I guess it's too much to expect @NPR to acknowledge that there's a controversy over whether 325 is actually the date of the Nicene Creed...

Just think, Calvin and Hobbes stopped being produced thirty years ago...

I'm sure this will reassure the many election officials who have been skeptical over the years in their dealings with computers scientists and others who have advocated for the use of cryptographic tools in public elections. arstechnica.com/security/20...

MEDSL has just released an RFP seeking researcher-practitioner projects improving policy and practice in list maintenance. Check it out and forward to your communities: electionlab.mit.edu/research/pr...

No wonder I had so much trouble yesterday accessing websites. Let's hope this doesn't happen on an election day. www.washingtonpost.com/business/20...

I'm honored to contribute to the NYU Law School Democracy Project's "100 Ideas" series with this essay that ties Gilded Age polarization to the present. democracyproject.org/posts/polar...

Because it's broadly popular with the public, I've been predicting that Dems would have a hard time defending against voter ID laws in citizen initiative states. I was proven wrong by Maine. However, the measure included many other things that are probably unpopular with voters.

It's not straightforward to compare the PA Supreme Ct retention elections w/ the original elections of the same justices 10 years ago. However, it's notable that they collectively received 56% of the votes in 2015 and were retained by 61% - 62% of the vote. Another good night for D's.

On Tuesday, Cambridge, MA held city elections using its version of proportional representation. Below's a link to the Cambridge Election Commission to learn more. And here are some graphs that show the evolution of the vote distributions. www.cambridgema.gov/Departments...

The results in the two GA PSC races represented an average 10-point shift toward the Dems compared to 2024. Both candidates even won the Election Day vote handily. (Data are county returns.)

The average two-party Dem vote share for Atty Gen was 3.8 points less than Spanberger. Another great example of a statewide election down ballot. In the end, Jones's DM seems not to have hurt him much.

The average two-party Dem vote share for VA House of Delegates was 2.9 points less than Spanberger. Great example of a statewide election down ballot. The exception was Dist. 20.

CEIR has released an important report on who pays for what in election administration (state or local governments). I'm sure I'm going to use this one a lot. electioninnovation.org/research/wh...

I highly recommend this talk by the incomparable Nate Persily on the 2024 and 2026 elections, for Rick Hasen's Safeguarding Democracy Project. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoA...

I'm honored to be on the list of newly elected fellows to the National Academy of Public Administration. napawash.org/press-relea...

I'll be the election expert in this upcoming conversation, happening in about an hour and a half.

Interesting research on the relationship between partisanship of county voters and election boards in NC in setting salaries for local election directors. www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10...?

Interesting research on ways to induce voters on BMDs to check their ballots. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10...

Looks like attitudes toward voter ID in the UK are similar to those in the US. journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10....

Please join @SethBluestein , Karen Brinson Bell, and me for a @votebeat webinar on public trust in elections, moderated by @JessicaHuseman on Friday, Sept. 19, noon EDT. Register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/public-tr...

Conference hosting opportunity: The Association for Election Science, Reform, and Administration (the board that oversees the ESRA conference) has released a call for proposals to host the 2026 or 2027 summer conference. DM or email me if you're interested. esra-conference.org/call-propos...

Because I know you wanted it, here's the partisan breakdown of mail ballots by party from 2008 to 2024 in each state. Data from the Survey of the Performance of American Elections. For reference, I've also included the national time series.

I've just written a Substack post that explores some of the public opinion aspects of President Trump's recent anti-VBM post, and the political implications for the movement he has claimed leadership of. open.substack.com/pub/playing...

The correlation between clean elections and the availability of mail/postal voting is positive, but I suspect the causality runs mostly from free and fair elections to postal voting. On the data, see www.idea.int/data-tools/... & www.idea.int/data-tools/...

I'm going to be on the Smerconish show on SiriusXM Channel 124 (POTUS) at 11am Eastern Time tomorrow (Tuesday), talking about mail ballot, voting machines, and election integrity.

New article: When people have access to newspapers, belief that elections are well run is less likely to be influenced by the winner-loser effect than in counties with little newspaper penetration. doi.org/10.1016/j.e...

Just published: Research into poll worker recruitment that relies on a unique survey of poll workers in 2022. Check it out. doi.org/10.1111/ssq...

The Bipartisan Policy Center has just put out a very helpful explainer on the federal Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. This may sound like a dry subject, but it is central to President Trump's executive order on elections. Check it out. bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/w...

NH has increased documentary requirements for voting by mail. As this ternary plot indicates, NH is among the last 2 traditional states when it comes to convenience voting. The law probably won't affect mail voting rates much overall, but might affect rates for some populations.

Here's an interesting and important article by a team of social psychologists on the question of how people perceive the fairness of election outcomes given the order in which votes are cast. doi.org/10.1177/095...

Greg Huber and colleagues have written an interesting study on beliefs about electoral integrity that distinguishes b/t severity and frequency of fraud, and also b/t uncounted & forgone votes. Check it out. huber.research.yale.edu/materials/1...