North Carolina has a lower percentage of votes being cast absentee than many states. According to the most recent data, about 21% of the votes cast thus far have been by absentee ballot, with the rest coming from early in-person… Continue reading

See this story in the NYT, focusing on one official in a small county in PA.

In advance of a possible Susan Collins loss in Maine, the headline writers at the New York Times and Washington Post are blaming Maine’s ranked-choice voting system (don’t blame the authors of these stories, they do not control the headlines).… Continue reading

Maine’s Senate race is considered close, and if so, there’s an additional reason it could take longer — maybe several days — to determine who has won. The reason is that Maine now uses ranked-choice voting (RCV), and there… Continue reading

We are going to see mistakes about this, as in this recent story from an otherwise good Politico journalist. Normally I would not call something like this out, but this is important and we need journalists and others to get… Continue reading

Important Salon article, glad to see one of my co-authors quoted: “I do think it’s safe to vote in person,” Dean Blumberg, an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California–Davis, told Salon. “I think for… Continue reading

I’ve published this essay, which steps back from all the specific legal issues surrounding the election to bring to the surface an underlying question about why our legal system leaves us so much uncertainty about such vital questions. From The … Continue reading

Short answer: around 80%. As we discuss the numbers that are emerging each day of absentee ballots that have been returned already in various states, I went back to look at the final tallies on this issue from 2016. From… Continue reading

From the WSJ, which is closely tracking this issue: That puts critical votes at risk in an election that, more than any before, will hang on mail-in ballots. To find choke points for those ballots, the Journal is tracking… Continue reading

The fact that the New Hampshire Union Leader is endorsing Biden has made big news, understandably enough given that it’s the first time in more than 100 years the Union Leader has endorsed a Democrat for President. Here’s what the… Continue reading

Here’s the start: Monday, Oct. 19, 2 a.m.: I’m so overactivated, I can’t sleep. I want to vote during the first hour of the first day of early voting here in surprisingly purple mid-South Florida. I have to vote… Continue reading

In today’s Washington Post story about President Trump’s “repeated” discussions with aides about whether to fire FBI Director Christopher A. Wray after Election Day, here’s what the President’s aides reportedly say about the reasons for these repeated discussions and why… Continue reading

Later today, the Social Science Research Council’s “Anxieties of Democracy” program is hosting this event. The event features Harvard’s Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die; the Director of the Agora Institute at John Hopkins, Hahrie Han, whose… Continue reading