Since the Cold War, more and more nations have held elections that may be highly competitive — but still don’t meet the minimum standards for being free, fair and democratic. The 2016 U.S. presidential election included some of the same violations of democratic norms and procedures often found in fragile […] Read more »
Election Data and Science Lab Launches at MIT
A new enterprise dedicated to researching and improving elections based on scientific principles launches today at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The MIT Election Data and Science Lab (MEDSL) will generate, advance, and disseminate scientific knowledge in an effort to develop a comprehensive evidence base about the conduct of […] Read more »
Why don’t more Americans vote? Maybe because they don’t trust U.S. elections.
… A Gallup poll two weeks before Election Day found that only one-third of Americans (35 percent) were “very confident” that their vote would be counted accurately. Even worse, when people around the world were asked how confident they were in the honesty of their elections, Gallup found that this […] Read more »
All This Talk of Voter Fraud? Across U.S., Officials Found Next to None
After all the allegations of rampant voter fraud and claims that millions had voted illegally, the people who supervised the general election last month in states around the nation have been adding up how many credible reports of fraud they actually received. The overwhelming consensus: next to none. … The […] Read more »
Trump’s Electoral College Victory Ranks 46th in 58 Elections
Members of the Electoral College will meet Monday to cast their votes for president. President-elect Donald J. Trump has claimed he won the electoral vote in a “landslide,” but he ranks below most presidents in the electoral vote and popular vote margins. CONT. Jugal K. Patel & Wilson Andrews, New […] Read more »
Clinton won as many votes as Obama in 2012 — just not in the states where she needed them most
The final results of the 2016 presidential election look like this: Hillary Clinton got roughly the same number of votes that President Obama received four years ago en route to his reelection, but she nonetheless lost the presidency to Donald Trump, who came in at least 2.8 million votes behind […] Read more »