Join me as I talk with USC prof Christian Grose, as we go over the November 4, 2025 election results. What happened in the major races across the US on November 4th, including in New York City, New Jersey, and Virginia. We also focus attention on California's Proposition 50. What do these election results mean, both for where American politics stands today, and for what we might expect in the 2026 midterm elections?
Join me as I discuss with Caltech prof Jonathan N. Katz the current round of mid-decade partisan gerrymandering. We focus attention on Texas and California, discussing in particular California's Proposition 50. We talk about Jonathan's work on elections and redistricting as well!
On this episode, I talk with Ben Adida, the founder of VotingWorks. Ben has done important scientific research on voting systems early in his career, and we discuss his thoughts about cyptography and elections and the early history of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project (where we met!). We talk about why he founded VotingWorks, and why it was founded as a nonprofit business. And we discuss Ben's thinking about how AI might improve election administration, in particular how AI might be used to improve the accessibility of the elections process.
In this episode, Matt Masterson joins me to talk about election security and election administration. Matt is Senior Director, Elections and Societal Resilience at Microsoft; previously he was a Commissioner and Chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. We talked about election security, voter registration databases. There's also a great part of the conversations about AI and election administration!
California's controversial mid-cycle redistricting proposal will be on the state's ballot on November 4th. Now that the proposed maps are out, it's time to start to dig into how they might change the state's congressional delegation. Join me as I talk about one important aspect of these changes - how the new maps, if enacted, might reshape political representation for Asian Americans in California.
Here I talk with Justin Levitt about why Texas is considering redrawing their Congressional district lines now, what other states are considering in response, and what it all might mean for the 2026 midterm elections.
Earlier in July I had a chance to talk with Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico's Chief Election Officer. We talked about election administration in New Mexico, focusing on election reforms and election security. We also talked about what a Secretary of State's job entails, and learned about Maggie's plans once her current term in office is complete!
In this episode, Kim Wyman and I discuss threats to election security, what was done in the 2020 election to mitigate threats and what we should be doing to prepare to mitigate new threats looking ahead to the 2026 and 2028 elections.
In this episode of Election Science Office Hours I talk with Betsy Sinclair from WashU. Betsy and I chat about AI and election governance, election rumors, and a conference that we are planning for October at WashU. Betsy is one of the early election scientists, having written many studies about election administration and election science in the last two decades.
In this episode of Election Science Office Hours, I talk with Professor Gretchen Macht of the University of Rhode Island. She is an engineer by training, and has developed an important and unique research agenda working to improve election administration. We talk about her work, how she engages with election officials, and how she is developing new networks for bring more engineers and STEM researchers into election science. It's a great episode, full of energy and enthusiasm!
In this special episode of Election Science Office Hours, I talk with Stephan Lewandowsky, prof at the University of Bristol, about his innovative research on AI microtargeting. Stephan has shown that AI can be used to develop personally-targeted persuasive advertisements. This of course has important implications for upcoming elections worldwide and for democratic discourse. This talk and conversation was originally recorded January 17, 2025, as part of a conference hosted by Caltech.
Join me as I talk with Justin Levitt, from LMU Law School, as we discuss President Trump's executive orders on elections, the legal wrangling now going on regarding those executive orders, and what we can expect to happen regarding these executive orders between now and the 2026 midterm elections.
In this episode, originally recorded on March 12, 2025, I talk with Paul Gronke (Reed College) and Paul Manson (Portland State University) about their Elections & Voting Information Center and most importantly about their ongoing local election officials survey project. What do we know about local election officials? How do their like their jobs? How do you go about surveying local election officials? This is a great episode for anyone interested in election science and how elections are run in the US.
This is the final episode of Election Science Office Hours for 2024! Here I talk with Jennifer Morrell, one of the world's leading experts on election auditing. We had a wide-ranging conversation about the past, present, and future of election auditing in the U.S. Make sure to listen, as Jennifer provides great insights about innovations in election auditing and also gives some great research tips for the election science geeks in the audience!
In this episode I talk with Tommy Gong, Deputy Clerk-Recorder of Contra Costa County. We talk about how he and his colleagues worked to prevent the spread of election misinformation and rumors in 2024, the financing of election administration, and Tommy's "trifecta" of efforts to improve voter trust in elections.
Our second post-election episode, with Christian Grose (University of Southern California) and Andrew Sinclair (Claremont McKenna College). Election reforms like ranked choice voting, primary reforms, and redistricting commissions, were on the ballot in many states in the 2024 election. Many of these measures failed or struggled with voters. Why? What might these struggles portend for the future of election reform at the ballot box? How can election reformers respond? This is a great episode if you are interested in election reform. Note that there is a little feedback in the first few seconds of the audio, per our usual policy we have not edited the audio track to bring you the entire conversation, as it occurred.
Charles Stewart III from MIT joins me, on the morning after the November 5th 2024 election. We discuss his work on the CBS Decision Team, why the administration of the election went smoothly, what to expect from federal election reform, and some ideas for research coming out of the 2024 election.
Since 2000, we've developed a unique way to observe polling place and voting center operations. There are specific things we look for, and ways we go about conducting our studies of how effective in-person voting procedures and technologies operate in a state or county. Listen to this short episode to learn more!
This is an interesting in-depth conversation wth Dean Logan, LA County's Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. We talk about his job managing elections (and lots of other interesting processes) in the nation's largest and most diverse jurisdiction. We talk about early voting, election misinformation, and how LA County has built an accessible and secure voting system that works in this diverse community. With only a week until Election Day 2024, it was an honor to have Dean join me for this wonderful conversation.
Guests in this episode are Lisa Bryant, Christian Grose, Dean Logan, Efren Perez, and Sara Sadhwani. This is a special episode of Office Hours. The Election Roundtable was recorded in-person (with an audience) on October 11 at Caltech. Prof. Mike moderated the conversation and we have a Q&A at the end with audience participants. This event was co-sponsored by the Caltech Linde Center for Science, Society, and Policy and the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy.