A new Common Ground Democracy essay.

“What Institutional Reform Would Most Depolarize Politics?” A new Common Ground Democracy essay examines, with sympathetic skepticism, the growing interest among scholars in fusion voting, as evidenced by the recent open letter advocating it. The essay explains why, given the… Continue reading

The New Yorker writer Susan Glasser, a journalist whom I greatly admire (and read regularly), in her most recent column uses the word “coup” to describe the current effort within the Democratic Party to persuade Joe Biden to step aside… Continue reading

ELB readers might be interested in this Lawfare analysis. Its subheading: “Chief Justice Roberts gives neither Trump nor any future president a green light to tyranny, as some initial reactions to his opinion fear.” Its opening paragraph: The Supreme… Continue reading

… the Democratic Party’s rules for what would happen if and when President Biden steps aside, on the latest episode of POLITICO Playbook’s Deep Dive podcast. (I assume ELB readers know of her expertise on this topic.) The discussion… Continue reading

This post is a revised version of a nonpublic email I sent yesterday. Several who received the email responded by saying that Lincoln example discussed in the email is useful. Therefore, I’m sharing it here. Yesterday the Washington Post ran… Continue reading

I wrote the following originally as a nonpublic email but subsequently have been asked to make it publicly available. I do so in the spirit that deliberation among scholars about a new Supreme Court opinion as important as the presidential… Continue reading

New Common Ground Democracy essay on yesterday’s SCOTUS decision, with this subtitle: “The effort to prosecute Trump criminally is a consequence of the Senate’s failure to convict him in the impeachment case, and why did the Senate fail in this?… Continue reading

Here’s the link to the recording of the webinar that Election Law at Ohio State held last week on the topic of structural reform of the electoral process–and specifically the policy tradeoffs involved between Instant Runoff Voting (technically, the “Hare”… Continue reading

Nate Persily is one of our nation’s leading election law scholars (and a friend), with whom I usually agree on many specific matters in our field, but he is quoted today in the N.Y. Times (in an article today … Continue reading

I won’t repeat all of the previous ELB post announcing this webinar on alternative electoral reforms to improve American democracy, especially in light of increasing partisan polarization. I will simply note that the French legislative elections, the first round of… Continue reading

New Common Ground Democracy essay with this subtitle: “The likelihood that extremist parties on the right and left will gain at the expense of the middle illustrates with hyper-polarization necessitates electoral reform.“ The essay begins: “France is facing a political… Continue reading

The Election Law team at Ohio State University is hosting a thought-provoking webinar on Wednesday, June 26, from 3-4 pm to discuss the possibilities of Structural Reform of U.S. Elections, with a focus on the nuanced differences two different electoral… Continue reading

Oxford University Press has published a revised and expanded edition of Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States. It’s also available in a Kindle version for those, like me, who prefer to read (and highlight)… Continue reading