Redistricting plays a critical role in structuring the competitive terrain of American elections and shaping the quality of democratic representation. While often viewed as a routine administrative task, the redrawing of electoral boundaries is a deeply political process that can significantly influence who runs for office, who wins, and how voters are represented. This article examines the relationship between redistricting and electoral competition, with a particular focus on how partisan gerrymandering, legal rulings, and institutional reforms have influenced the fairness and integrity of the redistricting process. Tracing its historical roots and evolution, the analysis explores how legislatures, courts, and independent commissions construct district maps and the downstream effects these configurations have on incumbent entrenchment, voter behavior, and partisan polarization. By investigating the trade-offs between fair representation and competitive elections, this article illuminates how institutional design choices shape electoral outcomes and democratic legitimacy. In doing so, it underscores the enduring significance of redistricting as a source of political contestation and reform in the ongoing struggle to strengthen American democracy.

Redistricting is often a hotly contested affair within states as the party in power attempts to maximize its chances for electoral success through injecting partisanship into the process. Previous works have evaluated how different redistricting practices can influence elections, but little is known about how redistricting can impact citizen attitudes toward government. Using an original survey with a unique experiment, we evaluate the relationship between how redistricting is performed and how satisfied citizens are with the state of democracy in the United States. We find that the mere perception of redistricting being done in a partisan manner leads to decreased levels of system support. Furthermore, our models show that independent redistricting commissions tend to reduce the perceived prevalence of gerrymandering and boost citizens’ evaluations of the democratic process.

Among US states with party registration, many allow the unaffiliated to choose either the Democratic or Republican primary. States with these semi-closed rules thus provide an option to voters with greater choice than registering with a single political party. Using the synthetic control method, I find that the introduction of semi-closed primaries is associated with growth in unaffiliated registration. However, the likelihood of unaffiliated registration is not even across the electorate in semi-closed states. I show that it is most common where a voter’s party is not competitive and the access unaffiliated registration provides to the strong party’s primary is valuable. Consistent with this instrumental motive, unaffiliated voters in semi-closed states use their freedom of choice to vote in the primary of the stronger party in the electorate. This leads to significant crossover voting among unaffiliated voters who do not identify with that party such as Democrats in red states or Republicans in blue states. These findings show the unintended consequences of electoral institutions and find primary crossover voting is more common under some circumstances than others.

During the most recent round of redistricting, many states have enacted a number of reforms to their mapmaking practices. One reform that has received increased attention in recent years is a ban on prison gerrymandering—the practice of counting incarcerated individuals in prisons instead of their home addresses. Eleven states drew districts while counting incarcerated persons in their homes after the 2020 Census. Though substantial research has investigated redistricting practices, far less attention has been paid to empirically examining the effect of prison gerrymandering on elections. We seek to fill this void by evaluating the effect of New York’s ban on prison gerrymandering on state legislative elections between 2002 and 2020. We find that altering how the prison population is counted, indeed, altered the electoral dynamics across the state.

Conventional wisdom holds that public campaign financing can diversify the socioeconomic makeup of candidate pools and, therefore, of U.S. elected officials, which could make U.S. public policy more responsive to lower socioeconomic status (SES) citizens. I argue that in addition to the absence of a positive relationship between public financing and candidate socioeconomic diversity, public financing, depending on the program design, may, in fact, reduce candidate socioeconomic diversity. Using occupational data on state legislative candidates in public financing state Connecticut and two paired control states to execute a difference in difference analysis, I demonstrate that when public financing is available, fewer low SES candidates run for state legislative office, and those who do run are not more likely to win and are less likely to utilize public financing.

Extant findings show that voter fraud is extremely rare and difficult to prove in the United States. Voter's knowledge about voter fraud allegations likely comes through the media, who tend to sensationalize the issue. In this study, we argue that the more voters are exposed to media coverage of voter fraud allegations, the more likely that they will perceive that voter fraud is a frequent problem. We merge the 2012 Survey of Performance of American Elections with state-level media coverage of voter fraud leading up to the 2012 election. Our results show that media coverage of voter fraud is associated with public beliefs about voter fraud. In states where fraud was more frequently featured in local media outlets, public concerns about voter fraud were heightened. In particular, we find that press attention to voter fraud has a larger influence on Republicans than Democrats and Independents. We further find that media coverage of voter fraud does not further polarize partisan perceptions of voter fraud. Rather, political interest moderates state media coverage on voter fraud beliefs only among Republicans. Last, our results provide no support that demographic changes, approval of election administration, or information concerning actual reported voting irregularities have any discernable effects on partisan perceptions.

Foundational studies in political science endeavored to explain the dynamics of voter turnout in America over time. Two theories, one focused on legal-institutional factors and the other on behavioral elements such as party mobilization strategies, were born from the need to account for temporal fluctuations in aggregate voter turnout. A comprehensive test of these competing theories has been hindered by the fact that reliable measures of the behavioral factors driving turnout have proven elusive. In this article, I develop and test an interactive theory of voter turnout that focuses on the impact of legal-institutional barriers to the franchise conditional on party organizational strength and mobilization efforts. To this end, I use data on the circulation of party-sponsored newspapers, coupled with information on the spread of voter registration requirements, to capture the effects of both behavioral and legal-institutional factors in Pennsylvania between 1876 and 1948. My results offer modest empirical support for an interactive theory of aggregate voter turnout. In isolation, however, the effects of behavioral factors are quite limited. On the contrary, legal-institutional variables exert a sizable impact on voter turnout in the state. Contrary to other recent work on the subject, careful analysis of the Pennsylvania case therefore provides a great deal of evidence in favor of legal-institutional accounts of the changes in aggregate voter turnout that were witnessed at the beginning of the twentieth century while demonstrating that behavioral factors, such as the decline of the partisan press, served to enhance the deleterious effects of legal reforms on turnout.

We propose a model of public response to politicized election reform. In this model, rival partisan elites send signals on the need and consequences of a proposed reform, with partisans in public adopting those positions. We apply this to test how state use of voter identification laws corresponded with public evaluations of the conduct of a state's elections. We find that the relationship between photo identification laws and confidence in state elections was polarized and conditioned by party identification in 2014. Democrats in states with strict photo identification laws were less confident in their state's elections. Republicans in states with strict identification laws were more confident than others. Results suggest strict photo identification laws are failing to instill broad-based confidence in elections, and that the reform could correspond with diminished confidence among some.

Recent elections have witnessed substantial debate regarding the degree to which state governments facilitate access to the polls. Despite this newfound interest, however, many of the major reforms aimed at increasing voting convenience (i.e., early voting and no-excuse absentee voting) were implemented over the past four decades. Although numerous studies examine their consequences (on turnout, the composition of the electorate, and/or electoral outcomes), we know significantly less about the factors leading to the initial adoption of these policies. We attempt to provide insights into such motivations using event history analysis to identify the impact of political and demographic considerations, as well as diffusion mechanisms, on which states opted for easier ballot access. We find that adoption responded to some factors signaling the necessity of greater voting convenience in the state, and that partisanship influenced the enactment of early voting but not no-excuse absentee voting procedures.

Although research demonstrates that favorable ballot position can deliver candidates a small windfall of votes in local, nonpartisan, and primary elections, it is not clear whether ballot order laws have had any impact on the composition of U.S. legislatures. In this article, I estimate the substantive significance of ballot order rules by comparing the legislators of states that alphabetically order ballots to those elected by states that randomize or rotate ballot order. I also compare legislators elected by states that started or stopped alphabetically ordering ballots in recent decades. I find that states that alphabetically order ballots disproportionately elect candidates with early alphabet surnames. My research challenges the prevailing belief that ballot order affects only minor elections and suggests that seemingly innocuous rules have altered our political landscape. I conclude that arbitrary ballot ordering rules should be reformed to remedy their substantial impact on political representation.

Recently, many U.S. states that allow citizen initiatives have passed laws designed to make it more difficult for an initiative to qualify for the ballot (e.g., by increasing the number of signatures required to get on the ballot), thereby making it harder for citizens to bypass the legislature and make direct changes to public policy. Such laws have reduced both the number of measures that make the ballot and the number that pass on Election Day. I show that laws governing access of initiatives to the ballot also shape the policy agenda; provisions making it harder for proposals to get on the ballot decrease the complexity of the initiatives on the ballot. As less complex initiatives are more likely to be understood by voters and voters are reluctant to vote for measures they do not understand, more restrictive laws actually increase the likelihood that an initiative will pass.

We investigate whether Maine and Arizona's Clean Elections laws, which provide public funding for state legislative candidates, are responsible for producing a new cadre of legislators who are unusually ideologically extreme. We find that there is essentially no important difference in the legislative voting behavior of “clean” funded legislators and traditionally funded ones in either Arizona or Maine: those who are financed by private donors are no more or less ideologically extreme than those who are supported by the state. This finding calls into question some concerns about the effects on polarization of money generally and public funding in particular.

Presidential vote shares in legislative districts are widely available for congressional districts and are often used by scholars in their research. Here, I describe the general methodology to construct statewide vote shares within districts and apply these methods to a new database of presidential vote shares within 36 states' legislative districts.

Studies of state judicial selection systems require accurate classification of electoral systems. While agreement exists for most states, Ohio and Michigan are difficult to classify. In this paper, we discuss the different practices and explain how, in the absence of candidates' party affiliation on the ballot, elections in these states may justifiably be classified as partisan. Replicating the results of an important study on participation in judicial elections, we show how the treatment of these states may result in differing substantive conclusions. We conclude by urging scholars to provide evidence that their results are robust to alternative classifications.

In mid-2011, the Florida state legislature passed House Bill 1355 (HB 1355) and in so doing placed new regulations on community organizations that historically have helped eligible Floridians register to vote. Among the legal changes promulgated by this bill were new regulations on the operations of groups like the League of Women Voters and a new oath, warning of prison time and fines, that voter registration agents were required to sign. Such changes raised the implicit costs that eligible Florida citizens faced when registering to vote, and we show that voter registrations across the state in the second half of 2011 dropped precipitously compared with registrations in the second half of 2007. This pattern is evident among registrants in general, among registrants age 20 and younger, and among individuals who registered as Democrats. Outside of HB 1355, we know of no credible explanations for these results. Our findings thus show how restrictions on the way that third-party organizations register voters can have tangible effects on actual registrations. Given that registration prior to an election is a civic necessity in Florida and in many other states, such restrictions have the potential to affect electoral outcomes as well.

Expansive and restrictive state electoral institutions have been instrumental in structuring the vote throughout American history. Studies focused on a small number of reforms, years, or states lack the scope necessary to comprehensively evaluate the effects of institutional change over time. This work, however, places recent reforms in historical context and offers a long-term perspective. Using an original data set, it identifies the institutions that have generated the most substantial effects on state turnout rates during presidential elections from 1920 to 2000. Findings demonstrate that restrictive laws (those aiming to limit the vote or make voting more costly) produced large and consistently negative effects in the Southern and non-Southern states alike, but the effects associated with expansive reforms (those making participation more convenient or less costly) vary. Although a few expansive laws have increased turnout in the non-Southern states, they have had no effect in the Southern states where turnout rates are lowest.