Electoral Policy and Politics

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

"Can non-US citizens vote? How about dead people? Does mail voting allow for voter fraud? Are voting machines vulnerable to hacking? Can votes be switched? These questions dominate discussions among election integrity skeptics, but also policy makers who want to reinforce election security. Election security has been framed as incompatible with voter access - that making it easier to register and vote causes the election system to be less secure. If that is true, then restrictions on who can vote and how can be justified in the name of election security. The same logic applies to the tradeoff between efficient elections and secure elections: if voting machines are vulnerable, we need to go back to paper ballots, and manual vote counting. But, are these policy alternatives actually making elections secure? While the US Constitution grants power to Congress to set the “times, places and manner of holding elections,” state legislatures have jurisdiction over who gets to vote, how, and when, and how votes are cast and counted, and authorize election officials with the conduct of elections. This results in a patchwork of election policies and practices, with increasingly high rates of common practices around election integrity, and voter access. In this class, we will evaluate the U.S. and state election infrastructure, and will closely investigate what it takes to design election policies that ensure both access and integrity. We will also “stress test” election systems to identify which policies have the potential to “break” the election infrastructure. We will prioritize concerns that can be evaluated by empirical evidence, leveraging research from the field of election science. At the end of this class, students will have a thorough understanding of federal and state election policy, and the core actors involved in making elections work. Students will delve deep into data-driven election policy evaluation, conduct original research, and engage with election systems directly through in-person and online simulations facilitated by election practitioners. "