Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for several states, and served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. He is co-director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet, and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg is the Newhouse Director of The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. CIRCLE is a nonpartisan national research institute that focuses on youth civic and political learning and engagement. CIRCLE uses its expansive portfolio of research initiatives, tools for practitioner organizations, educators and other civic stakeholders, and reports to facilitate systems-level change to advance access to opportunities for civic learning and democratic participation across communities.

Christopher B. Mann is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Skidmore College. His research focuses on political communication about voting and elections in the United States. His past research has included the use large-scale field experiments to better how participation in elections can be increased; he is especially interested in how to effectively communicate about new electoral procedures. He also conducts research on election administration, particularly the effects of changes to permit (and occasionally restrict) pre-Election Day voting alternatives.

Gretchen A. Macht is the founding director of URI VOTES, which employs engineering tools to provide data-informed recommendations for election administrators. Dr. Macht’s research focuses on human systems engineering and computational methods to understand and inform community-level systems. Her work in voting systems uses extensive data analysis, simulation, optimization, and layout planning for resource allocation to overcome new and future obstacles in the voting and election processes.

Mindy Romero is the founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy (CID), formerly known as the California Civic Engagement Project, which is part of the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and is based in Sacramento, California. Romero is a political sociologist and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on political behavior and race/ethnicity, and seeks to explain patterns of voting and political underrepresentation, particularly among youth and communities of color in California and the U.S.

Today, voters in all states except for North Dakota must register as a voter before they can cast their ballot in an election. Voters in most states must complete their registration between 8 and 30 days prior to the next election to be eligible to vote. However, 20 states and the District of Columbia currently allow Election Day Registration (EDR) (sometimes called Same-Day Registration), which allows voters to register and cast a ballot on the same day.

Professor Stein is an expert on voting and elections, urban politics, public policy emergency preparedness and severe weather mitigation. His current research, funded by the Arnold Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Science Foundation focuses on voting behavior, election administration and emergency preparedness. Since 2000, Stein has collaborated with an interdisciplinary group of researchers in computer science and civil engineering to study how individuals prepare for and respond to severe weather emergencies. He has collaborated with several states and local governments in the design and implementation of voting systems.