News & Insights

This blog post originally appeared on The Fulcrums Election Dissection. On Dec. 14, the Electoral College will cast its votes. Barring any unforeseen outrage, a majority will vote for Joe Biden, the popular vote winner in the general election, to sighs of relief. Many may conclude the creaky Electoral College works most of the time, and that any fixes are just too hard to worry about. That would be a mistake. With a shift only .07 percent of the vote, we would have a second-place winner again, just as in 2000 and 2016....

Description: November 10, 2020: As the initial vote counting wraps up, talk turns to recounts and audits. Nearly half of all states for automatic recounts if the margin of victory is below .25 or .5 percent; in others, losers must request and pay for recounts. But what exactly are officials counting? And what's the difference between a recount and a postelection audit? This presentation initially appeared on the Carter Center Facebook page.

This blog post originally appeared on The Fulcrum’s Election Dissection. In the months leading up to Election Day, civil society organizations carried out an extraordinary effort to make sure people across the country knew what to expect. That laid the groundwork for the core messages that have dominated in recent days: Every vote needs to…

This blog post originally appeared on The Fulcrum’s Election Dissection. One of the most talked-about questions of this incredibly fraught election has been whether President Trump will concede if defeated by Vice President Joe Biden. Trump has fueled this concern through unsubstantiated accusations of election fraud...

This post originally appeared on foreignpolicy.com. With an incumbent president attacking the electoral process as rigged and refusing to commit to accepting the results, the Nov. 3 U.S. elections increasingly resemble those in struggling democracies and autocratic countries. I speak from experience, having led or managed some 40 election observation efforts in 22 countries over more than 30 years...

Fundamentally, ranked choice voting doesn’t preference either party; it preferences mainstream candidates of both parties over spoilers and fringe candidates. We need this change given the competitiveness of crowded primaries.

This post originally appeared on Medium. By Larry Garber and Thessalia Merivaki. With only a few weeks to go before the Nov. 3 election, Americans are being bombarded by stories in the news and on social media about election irregularities. On a daily basis, voters hear reports that registration applications have been addressed to deceased persons...

This blog post originally appeared on The Fulcrum. Last week, when President Trump complained about Attorney General William Barr's failure to bring charges against his political opponents, the Justice Department lifted restrictions on election-related federal prosecutions. Let's hope these developments do not presage a new kind of October surprise...

Elections experts, law professors, former President of National Association of Secretaries of State urge Congress to pass state vote counting deadline extension to avoid crisis...

This blog post originally appeared on The Fulcrum’s Election Dissection. John Adams issued a mantra amidst the American Revolution: “Ours is a country of laws not men.” In today’s time of turmoil, as President Trump questions the integrity of the upcoming election, the words of the second president should give us some solace. During the…