The Senate voted yesterday, 48-50, not to attach the SAVE America Act to the reconciliation act. Collins, McConnell, Murkowski, & Tillis were the R's who voted nay. Ernst (R) and Bennet (D) didn't vote. Otherwise, it was a strict party-line vote.

On net, Cornyn lost early votes 1:1 to Paxton at the precinct level, whereas Cornyn did better on net in mail voting. Too bad for Cornyn that almost no one votes by mail in TX.

For the curious: The filing deadline for SC state House of Representatives was March 30. Early voting in the primary begins today. The primary is June 9. From what I can tell, of 89 R's in the House, 84 are running for reelection w/ 24 facing primary opposition. That is all.

Christian Fong at the University of Michigan has published this interesting article on voter fraud, voter ID, and election trust in American Politics Research. doi.org/10.1177/153...

FWIW, the strongest correlation, at the precinct level, among statewide vote shares in GA is between Raffensperger (GOV) and Cooley (Sen.). This seems to indicate that the Kemp/Reagan wing of the GA Republican Party has a strong core but not a majority.

Here's a quick post about tonight's GA primary, with a look back to LA's primary, to boot. playingwithelectiondata.substack.com/p/will-geor...

Following up on yesterday's Substack post about primary turnout trends in 2026 vs. 2022, (playingwithelectiondata.substack.com/p/yet-anoth...), here's two graphs that update turnout in Georgia's advance voting for next Tuesday's primary.

I just published a piece on Substack about what we're seeing in primary elections this season, and what that portends for November. Check it out. playingwithelectiondata.substack.com/p/yet-anoth...

Graph of the day: Number of members of the House not running for reelection. Data from the amazing @mollyereynolds and the AP for 2026. 2026 stat as of today.

I've just posted on Substack about the administrative complexities of actually trying to implement the latest election administration executive order. playingwithelectiondata.substack.com/p/president...

The State Certification Testing of Election Systems National Conference is a great annual meeting. It will be held in Sacramento this summer. Check it out. Consider attending and submitting a proposal to speak. (Paper deadline approaching.) bsu-wpe-sites.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/...

Kevin Kosar posted about the president's latest election executive order so I didn't have to. @kevinkosar kevinrkosar.substack.com/p/several-t...

@BPC has just released a timely and important report on who among American voters possesses citizenship-proving documents. I'm delighted they found the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (produced by @mitelectionlab) useful. bipartisanpolicy.org/article/do-...

Pocket veto, anyone?

Here's an important new article about how academics and election officials can work together to find ways to build trust in elections. www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsand... Title: How Research–Practice Partnerships Can Strengthen Experiments Designed to Build Trust in American Elections

Bookmark this: the University of Wisconsin Law School voter list litigation tracker: statedemocracy.law.wisc.edu/tracker-doj...

I re-ran the classic Tufte model predicting midterm congl election results using updated data. The model doesn't work as well as it once did & dRDI no longer influences seat loss. Confining the analysis to the most recent elections, it gives a prediction of a seat loss of ~ 38.

The call for participation in the 2026 Election Science, Reform, and Administration conference has just dropped. Submit your proposals for papers, roundtables, posters, and all the rest: esra-conference.org/2026-call-p...

Congress geek alert, recommittal department: The four Democrats who voted to pass the SAVE Act also voted to recommit the bill to the committee. The recommittal vote failed 211-215 on a strict party-line vote.

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...