We compare the results of two recent statewide recounts in Wisconsin — the 2011 Supreme Court election and the 2016 presidential election. We argue that recounts provide a valuable window into the accuracy of initial vote counts. Recount accuracy is best measured in terms of the absolute...

This paper examines how the growth in vote-by-mail and changes in voting technologies led to changes in the residual vote rate in California from 1990 to 2010. We find that in California’s presidential elections, counties that abandoned punch cards in favor of optical scanning enjoyed a...

This paper explores public attitudes about voting technologies from 2012 to 2018. Among the attitudes studied are those related to usability, security, and voter confidence. Scales are created to help explore the relationship between these attitudes and computer anxiety, computer self-efficacy,...

The purpose of this paper is to put the issues of election integrity that arose in 2016 in context, and to suggest along the way how it is that one should be sanguine about the administration of elections in the United States. First, I identify four integrity-related themes that have arisen in...

This paper revisits Nelson Polsby's classic article “The Institutionalization of the House of Representatives” nearly fifty years after its publication, in order to examine whether the empirical trends that Polsby identified have continued. This empirical exploration allows us to place...

The quality of voter registration lists has been at the center of debates about election administration in the United States for over a decade. Lists with excessive numbers of ineligible registrants, whether due to death, mobility, or other reasons, complicate the logistical task of running...

We use a model drawn from population ecology to propose a method to estimate the true number of registered voters in a state, independent of the "deadwood" that may be present on the registration rolls. The paper first presents a conceptual model that distinguishes the "true registration rate"...

This paper is a tour of mostly public opinion evidence about how COVID affected the experience of voters as they cast ballots in 2020. Topics covered include turnout, reasons for not voting, precautions observed in polling places, and the confidence voters felt about whether the layout of voting...