Arizona State University’s Center for Constitutional Design invited me to speak on a panel on this topic. I riffed on Prof. Rick Hasen’s remarks, which argued that federalism was increasing the perils of electoral mischief by politicos, and discussed my essay, “Elections, federalism, and the peril of a partisan race to the bottom.”
Panel discussion on the Electoral Count ...
The Cato Institute’s Sphere Initiative invited me to join a Zoom panel discussion on November 1, 2022. It was fun—the audience was civics and social studies teachers. You may watch the video at https://www.cato.org/sphere/election-reform-midterm-election.
Election reform: Is history repeating? A...
Many Americans are unhappy with the quality of governance and the two major parties. Last month, 43 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup declared themselves independents. Unsurprisingly, public dissatisfaction has coincided with calls to reform elections, including nonpartisan primaries, ranked-choice voting, and other systems. We have been here before. Dr. Jack Santucci’s new book, More Parties or No […]
Elections, federalism, and the peril of ...
These remarks were written for a conference on elections and federalism at the Center for Constitutional Design at Arizona State University. The two-day event was held in partnership with the University of Wisconsin’s State Democracy Research Initiative.
To win more seats in Congress, the GOP m...
Almost inevitably, the president’s party loses congressional seats during a midterm. Between 1934 and 2018, there were 22 of these elections and the incumbent party shed House seats in 19 of the 22 and Senate seats in 16 of them. The average loss per chamber was 28 in the House and 4 in the Senate…. (Read more)
Alaska’s election results do not discred
Various conservatives are upset that Sarah Palin was defeated by Democrat Mary Peltola in the recent special election to fill Alaska’s lone House seat. Some of them point out that the former governor and vice-presidential candidate got the most votes in the June primary, and lament that a majority of voters picked a Republican in […]