How Concerned Should We Be About Partisan Election Officials?

Elections have always been heated in America. But with Republican narratives around a “stolen” 2020 election, and fears that newly elected administrators will sway 2024, concern about the power of election officials is at a high. While it's true that some election officials are nonpartisan, in a lot of counties, local elections officials are elected by voters and they run as members of a political party. Why wouldn't they tilt an election in their party's favor? It's a fair question on some Americans' minds, and one that UCLA political scientist Dan Thompson sought to answer in a new paper, "How Partisan Is Local Election Administration?". Paper link: https://dthompson.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2021/12/Ferrer_et_al_Election_Admin.pdf

Episode 57 of the Not Another Politics Podcast podcast, hosted by University of Chicago Podcast Network, titled "How Concerned Should We Be About Partisan Election Officials?" was published on March 16, 2022 and runs 42 minutes.

March 16, 2022 ·42m · Not Another Politics Podcast

Summary

Elections have always been heated in America. But with Republican narratives around a “stolen” 2020 election, and fears that newly elected administrators will sway 2024, concern about the power of election officials is at a high. While it's true that some election officials are nonpartisan, in a lot of counties, local elections officials are elected by voters and they run as members of a political party. Why wouldn't they tilt an election in their party's favor? It's a fair question on some Americans' minds, and one that UCLA political scientist Dan Thompson sought to answer in a new paper, "How Partisan Is Local Election Administration?". Paper link: https://dthompson.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2021/12/Ferrer_et_al_Election_Admin.pdf

Episode Description