Elections
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Democracy in Peril: Biden and the 2024 Presidential Election
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This article was co-authored by Natalie Reyes. Despite signaling to aides in 2019 that he would almost certainly not seek re-election in 2024, 81-year-old President Joe Biden is doing exactly that. Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, Biden has positioned himself as the…
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Chicago’s Path to Fairer Elections: Embracing Ranked-Choice Voting
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In early 2023, Chicago witnessed an animated local election season with no shortage of personal attacks, stark ideological differences, and drama typical of the city’s politics. However, like many other Chicago voters, I had a difficult time choosing a candidate. With nine major contenders, it was always unlikely that one would…
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Why Do People Forgive Corrupt Politicians?
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The case of Hilario Ramírez, a Mexican politician who, amid a reelection campaign admitted to having stolen from the treasury, “just a bit,” he argued, is more than a simple piece of Latin American political folklore. “Layín”—as Ramírez is also known—was mayor of San Blas, a costal Mexican city, from…
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Why Are Mexican Political Candidates Getting Killed?
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The 2018 elections were not only the largest in Mexico’s history, but also the most violent. From September 2017 to June 2018, 48 political candidates were killed during their campaigns. Was this violence politically motivated? A consequence of the criminal activity of the drug cartels? Was it a combination of…
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Risks of In-Person Voting During COVID-19
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When the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a national emergency on March 13, the country was in the middle of primary election season. As states franticly adjusted plans for voting, Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court overruled Governor Tony Evers’ executive order to reschedule the election, just one day before the election was…
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Tackling the Youth Turnout Problem
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Youth voter participation remains an intractable problem for holding truly representative elections in America. Young voters, ages 18 to 29, consistently make up 20% to 22% of the electorate, which is defined as those who are eligible to vote. But due to consistently low rates of turnout, they do not…
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Can Blockchain-Enabled Voting Meet Security and Secrecy Standards?
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In 2018, West Virginia became the first state in the U.S. to test blockchain-enabled internet voting on mobile devices for a federal-level general election. Overseas voters from 24 West Virginia counties were able to cast their votes via an app instead of requesting absentee ballots. Despite the easier access to…
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The Lefts, Mexico, and Latin America: A Conversation with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas
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Biography: Mr. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano is the son of late Mexican President and Mexican Revolutionary General, Lázaro Cárdenas del Río. He has been a Mexican Senator, Governor of the State of Michoacán, and the first democratically-elected Mayor of Mexico City. In 1988 he split with the PRI and launched the…
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Technologies that Matter: How BallotReady is Educating Voters
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BallotReady is an online voting guide for local, state, and federal elections. It provides a free guide with information on more than 20,000 candidates across 25 states and Washington, D.C. that helps voters make better-informed decisions. The Director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, David Axelrod, sits…
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Toward an Inclusive Democracy: The Positive Impact of Preregistration Laws on Youth Voter Turnout
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Low turnout among young voters in the United States has recently garnered attention, prompting policymakers and political scientists to design electoral reforms aimed at bringing young Americans into the public decision-making process. The most common strategies have included early voting and online voter registration; however, some scholars have also urged reforms aimed at reducing…
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Money and Polarization: How Campaign Limits Are Both a Solution and a Problem
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Raising contribution limits on individual donations polarizes legislators in office, while increasing PAC limits leads to greater moderation.