Election Sciences Workshop

Portland State University, Portland OR

Investigators

Abstract

General Abstract Election sciences is an emerging field of scholarship that focuses on the systematic study of election administration and conduct. The aim of scholars in this field is to identify problems, provide valuable data and performance measures to assess and reform election systems to ensure the highest levels of integrity and voter access. The Election Sciences summer conference will bring together a group of political scientists, statisticians, computer scientists, and legal scholars interested in building and diversifying the field. The conference complements scholarly efforts to identify the intellectual boundaries of election sciences, define primary research questions, create a network to support junior scholars and graduate students, and create curricular materials for use in graduate and undergraduate education. The conference embodies NSF's mission to broaden participation in science that benefits the national interest and enhances security. This conference and the research that will come out of the conference will help to assure that American elections are accepted as legitimate, use safe and secure technology, and maximize public participation. Technical Abstract The Election Sciences summer conference complements a national effort led by senior scholars in political science, and in partnership with selected scholars in law, computer science, and public policy. The primary aim of these efforts is to build and institutionalize election sciences as a scholarly field of study. Political scientists played a central role in helping to understand the problems in the American election system that contributed to the election crisis of 2000. This work helped to shape subsequent federal election reform legislation, and contributed research for the presidential commission established after the 2012 elections. Significant barriers to entry to the election sciences field still exist for younger scholars. Election scientists work primarily with voter registration and voter history files, both of which present challenging data and statistical inference problems. The field also lacks recognition as a defined "section" in professional organizations, making it difficult to participate in professional conferences as a cohesive intellectual field, thereby diluting the intellectual contributions. Scholars need to be trained how to interact with election officials, state legislators, and other policy makers in meaningful ways. Finally, there is no agreed upon set of curricular materials train a new generation of election scientist. This conference will work to reduce such barriers. The conference follows established models in our field (political methodology, visions in methodology, law and politics, history of congress) by offering a series of small, focused summer conferences, targeted particularly at younger scholars and graduate students. The deliverables from the conference, beyond valuable professional connections, will be a series of research papers, curricular materials, and ideally an academic volume or special issue of an academic journal.