Category Archives: voting

Pew survey: views on voting

July 22, 2021, 12:29 pmvotingNed Foley

What jumped out most to me on a first quick look at these numbers was the racial divide on whether voting is a “fundamental right” or instead a “privilege”. Blacks split 77-21 in favor of “fundamental right.” Asians and Hispanics… Continue reading

Brennan Center Updates Report

July 22, 2021, 7:53 amelection administration, legislation and legislatures, The Voting Wars, voter id, votingNed Foley

Voting Laws Roundup: July 2021. I saw this just after posting on Politfact’s caution on the need to be nuanced when characterizing these new state laws. To the Brennan Center’s credit, this July update prominently states up front: “The… Continue reading

Nuanced Analysis of New Laws

July 22, 2021, 7:21 amelection administration, legislation and legislatures, The Voting Wars, votingNed Foley

Kudos to Politifact for this careful and detailed explanation of the degree to which the new state laws on voting make it harder to vote in those states. Their analysis makes clear that they considered only the issue of retrogression:… Continue reading

“21st Century Jim Crow” or Electoral McCarthyism?

July 21, 2021, 12:19 pmelection subversion risk, voting, Voting Rights ActNed Foley

This op-ed in The Washington Post, by John C. Ackerman, an Illinois county clerk, argues that calling the new state laws that cut back on voting opportunities “21st century Jim Crow” is a “vilification campaign” aiming “to smear Republicans… Continue reading

Tournament Elections with Round-Robin Primaries

July 20, 2021, 9:04 amalternative voting systems, ballot access, political polarization, primaries, theory, votingranked choice votingNed Foley

I’ve posted a draft of this paper on SSRN. Here’s the abstract: Round-robin voting uses ranked-choice ballots but calculates which candidates are most preferred by a majority of voters differently from instant-runoff voting. Like a round-robin sports competition, round-robin… Continue reading

Report on the Georgia hearing; what’s next?

July 19, 2021, 7:39 pmelection subversion risk, redistricting, voting, Voting Rights ActNed Foley

Washington Post summarizes. Given the Republican non-participation, this doesn’t sound like an effective strategy to overcome a filibuster. USA Today reports that Senate Democrats, essentially abandoning S1, will turn instead to VRA reform “this autumn”; if true, this presumably… Continue reading

Effect of Primaries on Electoral Outcomes?

July 19, 2021, 10:01 ampolitical polarization, primaries, theory, votingranked-choice votingNed Foley

Geoffrey Skelley at 538 has a piece on Lee Drutman’s very important new report analyzing the effect of primary elections on general election outcomes. (I mentioned this report in a previous blog post.) As Skelley explains, Drutman’s report is… Continue reading

Good morning. Georgia on my mind.

July 19, 2021, 6:22 amelection administration, redistricting, voting, Voting Rights ActSenateNed Foley

Thanks, Dan, we so miss you at Ohio State, but are glad to reconnect whenever there’s an opportunity. Thanks, Rick, for this opportunity to join the ELB blogging team. As I start, the Senate Rules Committee hearing today is top… Continue reading

When has a state enacted a “new hurdle” to voting?

July 14, 2021, 6:30 amvotingDerek Muller

Dan links to an analysis from the Washington Post citing figures from the Voting Rights Lab about “18 states” that “enacted 35 laws with provisions that create new hurdles to vote.” The piece has some important depth-of-treatment looks at what’s… Continue reading

New essay alert: “In Whom is the Right of Suffrage?”

July 6, 2021, 8:15 amelection law and constitutional law, felon voting, votingFranita Tolson

This is my first blog post on ELB, and I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of the revamp. I am a devout reader of the blog and very much appreciate the hard work that Rick has put… Continue reading

Jack Rakove: “The framers would have been fine with sweeping national election reforms”

June 15, 2021, 8:06 amvotingRick Hasen

WaPo opinion piece: The fate of the For the People Act is growing ever more precarious. It remains vulnerable to the whims of two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona; to the massive… Continue reading

Eric McGhee, Jennifer Paluch, and Mindy Romero: Did mail voting reforms in 2020 raise turnout or help Democrats?

April 19, 2021, 9:36 amabsentee ballots, votingRick Hasen

The following is a guest post from Eric McGhee, Jennifer Paluch, and Mindy Romero: The pandemic forced a lot of states to consider expanding access to voting by mail (VBM) in a way they hadn’t before to lower the risk… Continue reading

“Georgia voter limits take root amid weakened Justice Department”

March 31, 2021, 6:46 amDepartment of Justice, votingRick Hasen

John Kruzel and Rebecca Beitsch in The Hill: Biden said during the campaign he would “make voter protection a foundation of my administration” and added Friday that the White House and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are reviewing the… Continue reading