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- Founder & Director: Paul Gronke
- Research Director: Paul Manson
- Senior Program Advisor: Michelle M. Shafer
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Recent Updates
- Merry-go-Round: Tracking Ranked Choice Voting Results
- Explainer & Lessons Learned From the Ballot Drop Box Fires in Multnomah County, Oregon and Clark County, Washington
- Watch the Oct 8, 2024 “Fireside Chat” at Reed College about the Impact of EVIC’s Local Election Official Survey Program on Election Science Research and Election Administration
There has been a lot of ink spilled over a recent article in the Monkey Cage that suggested that “Non Citizens Could Decide the The November Election.” At last count, the post had generated 3305 comments, the most by far in the history of the Monkey Cage.
The blog posting was based on a forthcoming article in Electoral Studies, which had a less provocative title (“Do Non Citizens Vote in US Elections“) but does contain this highly charged claim:
The conservative websites, such as the National Review and the Drudge Report, that publicized the findings, seem to have missed the final statement in the article:
My interest here is less in the possible problems with the study; John Ahlquist and Scott Gelbach and Michael Tesler, in separate Monkey Cage postings, have done a nice job summarizing these.
And to the credit of Jesse Richman, the lead author of the study, he has not shrank from the public gaze and has engaged with his critics at Rick Hasen’s Election Law blog in particular.
But I have to add that this quote, in a recent “Fact Checker” article in the Reno Gazette-Journal, is just brutal.
Horse. Stable Door. Too Late.
The damage form this study may have already been done. Doug Chapin, someone who bridges political science and policy, has already written (“Is Political Science Blowing It’s Close Up?”) about the impact of this study (and the Montana experiment) on when and how election administrators may engage with scholars. I am attending a conference of election officials in just a few weeks, and I am certain I will have to defend our discipline from those who are already skeptical about working with scholars.
Any political scientist, and particularly those who work in the elections administration and election policy fields, need to be worried to see a quote like this from one of our supporters and friends:
My professional association is working hard to convince politicians and policy makers that our scholarship can be relevant. But we as members need to be very circumspect about how we publicize our work, particularly in the context of a dynamic and competitive election campaign. This is not about a few citations or a few appearances on local news shows. This is about political power, and those in power can be quite unforgiving.