My recent research is about how we organize ourselves politically, and how the rules used to conduct elections can affect turnout, representation and even the results. This may appear totally obvious. Most people, if asked, would say that elected officials will seek to protect their own interests when setting and altering rules, and that anyone who argues otherwise is naïve.
And it is often obvious, when partisan legislators gerrymander districts to protect their majorities or enact voting laws they believe will affect particular voters.
There are, though, a lot of interesting questions that go beyond the obvious ones. Some changes don’t have the effects their supporters intended or create unexpected results.
Public election funding, for example, did not spur large changes in policy, although it has increased the demographic diversity of the donor pool by giving candidates an incentive to seek small campaign contributions. My current interest is the question of examining alternatives to partisan redistricting.
Almost nobody defends partisan gerrymandering – at least not honestly, or when the other side does it.
As the saying goes, the practice of elected officials choosing their voters rather than the other way around violates core principles of democratic governance, representation and responsiveness.
Along with colleagues in computer science and geography, several of us in the political science department will investigate these questions from a truly interdisciplinary standpoint.
This essay originally appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal’s Fueling Discovery section on May 4, 2020. Fueling Discovery is a special partnership between the Wisconsin State Journal and the College of Letters & Science.