New Research on Elections
Announcing the 2018 New Initiatives Grant Recipients
Here at the MIT Election Data & Science Lab, we think encouraging new ways to study elections is important — we’ve made it into one of our primary goals for the work we do. Taking scientific approaches and principles and applying them to the practice of democracy can have a significant impact.
More specifically, scientific research helps us all better understand what works and what doesn’t, and that knowledge helps election administrators think through and implement reforms to improve our electoral systems.
In 2017, we established the New Initiatives in Election Science Grants to encourage new approaches to the scientific study of elections and election reform. These grants fund systematic research on the conduct of elections in the United States by scholars around the country. Last year, we were able to support 14 research projects — almost all led by junior faculty members or Ph.D. students — that examined issues ranging from the maintenance of voter lists and voting machinery to the cost of election administration, the implementation of photo ID laws, and voter fraud.
We are pleased to announce that this year, we are funding 8 new proposals as part of this program, supporting 15 scholars from 9 institutions who are examining important topics in election science.
We’ve published a full list of this year’s recipients and their projects on our website, and we can’t wait to hear more about their research as it unfolds. We think you’ll find it interesting too, no matter what your specific election interests are!
Many of this year’s recipients are focused on specific aspects of election administration, including vote center implementation and administrative barriers to political participation; others will dismantle information barriers for researchers and make new data available. Still others will take a close, scientific look at voters’ perceptions and behavior, from the effects of voting by mail to the impact of American voters’ perceptions of foreign influence and voter fraud.
Each of these projects will add to the growing body of research that can be used to improve elections, and we hope you’ll follow our updates as the 2018 recipients start their projects — and more immediately, as many of the 2017 recipients of the New Initiatives Grant conclude their research and begin discussing their findings!
The New Initiatives Grant Program was made possible through a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
