In oral arguments before the Supreme Court last week, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. introduced a statistical claim that he took to imply that an important provision of the Voting Rights Act has become outmoded. … As much as it pleases me to see statistical data introduced in the […] Read more »
Why Section 5 Is Still Needed: Racial Polarization and the Voting Rights Act in the 21st Century
… There is no doubt that old-fashioned racism has greatly diminished over the past 40 years throughout the nation and in the states covered by Section 5. However, there are good reasons to be concerned about how a decision to overturn Section 5 would affect the voting rights of African […] Read more »
Did Democrats Get Lucky in the Electoral College?
… Liberals tend to cluster in dense urban centers, creating [congressional] districts in which Democrats might earn as much as 80 or 90 percent of the vote. In contrast, even the most conservative districts in the country tend not to give more than about 70 or 75 percent of their […] Read more »
Why Wisconsin is a hotbed of political participation
With almost three-quarters of eligible voters going to the polls, Wisconsin not only ranked second in the nation in turnout last fall, but was one of only three states where turnout was higher in 2012 than it was in 2008. Why are people in some states more apt to vote […] Read more »
Why voter studies are a good public investment
Eric Cantor and House Republicans are on one of their periodic attacks against funding for social sciences, with political science as a prime target. … Why is it in the public interest to generate knowledge about voters? There’s a real answer to that, beyond a general sense of how “democratic” […] Read more »
Denying the right to vote
Voting is a responsibility. But for too many, that responsibility has been transformed into a burden in ways that do violence to fundamental principles of democracy. In 2012, 13 percent of voters had to wait 30 minutes or more to exercise their most fundamental right. Even more troublesome, the long […] Read more »