Writing for The Washington Post, Prof. Charles Stewart examines why ballots are still being counted in Florida and Georgia following the midterm elections and why the post-election night vote count favors Democrats. “Voters across the United States have demanded greater flexibility in how and when they cast their ballots,” explains Stewart. “This greater flexibility comes with a price: a delay in counting ballots.”
Motherboard reporter Jason Koebler writes about how MIT alumnus Ben Adida has started a non-profit aimed at building a safe and open-source voting machine. Koebler explains that Adida plans to use “already existing, commodity hardware and open-source software to compete with the proprietary, expensive, and often insecure voting machines that currently dominate the market.”
In an article for The Washington Post, graduate students Elizabeth Dekeyser and Michael Freedman write about their research examining the impact of anti-immigration rhetoric on voters in Europe. They found that “elections with high levels of nationalist and anti-immigrant rhetoric affect individual attitudes much more strongly than those with low levels of such rhetoric.”
Vox reporter Zack Beauchamp highlights a study co-authored by Prof. Ezra Zuckerman Sivan that finds voters often support a politician they recognize is lying when the politician is viewed as upholding a specific group’s best interests. Zuckerman Sivan explains that the lies are seen as “as a tool for expressing a larger truth.”
A report co-authored by Prof. Charles Stewart calls for fundamental changes to the U.S. voting system to help ensure security, reports the Associated Press. Stewart noted that funds appropriated by Congress earlier this year to help states improve election security are a "down payment" on what’s needed to update the current voting system.
Prof. Charles Stewart III writes for The Washington Post about a new report from the MIT-run Elections Performance Index (EPI) showing that election administration improved from 2012 to 2016. “The latest EPI shows that we can use objective metrics to chart any policy change aimed at improving voting, and that it’s not as difficult as we thought,” explains Stewart.
In an article for the Pacific Standard about dispelling rumors and conspiracy theories, Nathan Collins highlights research by Prof. Adam Berinsky examining how information sources impact voters. “People speaking against their interests [are] more credible,” Berinsky explains. “What’s more credible: the surgeon general or McDonald’s saying you shouldn’t eat French fries?”
Writing for The Washington Post, Prof. Charles Stewart examines the disbanding of the election integrity commission and possible next steps for improving voting security. “The two most important issues right now are replacing the nation’s aging voting machines and making the information systems surrounding elections more secure and resilient in the face of mounting threats."
MIT Sloan Senior lecturer Neal Hartman writes for HuffPost about whether it’s possible to prevent election interference via social media. “We can blunt their attempts at manipulation by common-sense corporate, media, government and individual citizen actions, exposing untruths and speaking truths when we can,” writes Hartman.
In an article for The Washington Post, Stephen Pettigrew and Mayya Komisarchik of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab examine the problem with trying to identify duplicate voter registrations using limited information. They write that, “working with registration records that lack essential details…could cause us to draw wildly inaccurate conclusions about the potential for voter fraud.”
In an article for The Washington Post, Prof. Fotini Christia and graduate student Tugba Bozcaga analyze whether Turkish referendum rallies held in Europe influenced election results. The researchers found that rallies did not influence the election outcome, and that "deep-seated cleavages between Turks and Kurds, as well as divisions within Turks…ultimately determined the outcome of the referendum.”
Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Prof. Arnold Barnett proposes that electoral votes be awarded based off of a candidate’s share of each states’ popular vote. Barnett writes that this reform would be a “compromise between the electoral college and the national popular vote, each of which has a clear tendency to favor one of the two major political parties.”
Prof. Charles Stewart explains in The Washington Post that ballot recounts help to determine the accuracy of the initial vote count method in an election. Prof. Steward predicts that the Wisconsin recount will uncover “only small discrepancies between the election night totals” and will show that scanners are more accurate than humans at counting votes.
A study co-authored by Prof. David Autor shows that voters living in regions of the country that saw an increase in Chinese imports were more receptive to President-elect Donald Trump’s anti-free trade message, writes Bob Davis for The Wall Street Journal. The researchers found “import competition from China damaged local economies and undermined employment and wages.”
Over 1,500 Fulbright recipients, including a number of MIT fellows, penned a letter in The Huffington Post about the U.S. election. The authors “stand for the tradition of tolerance, free expression, and inclusivity that has made the United States a beacon of hope.”