In <i>Rucho v. Common Cause</i>, the Supreme Court held that partisan gerrymandering is a nonjusticiable political question.  The Court’s opinion admits that “[e]xcessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust.”  The injustice is the ability of the majority party to use political gerrymandering to entrench itself as the governing party and to remain so, long after that party falls out of favor. <br><br>Although <i>Rucho</i> was an Elections Clause case, it is easily applicable to states’ exercise of their Electors Clause power.  Republicans will wield this new, nonjusticiable power (and the concomitant political cover that it provides) to gerrymander the Electoral College.  And, when they do, it is likely that Democrats will follow suit.  <i>Rucho</i> encourages, enables and ensures an arms race to the end of meaningful participation by voters in presidential elections in many states. <br><br>Here is the template, using Texas as an example, for the “Gerrymandered Electoral College”:<br><br>“The set of elector candidates that is elected is the one that corresponds to the candidates for president and vice-president who win the most individual Texas Congressional districts.  The winners of each Congressional district shall be the candidates for President and Vice President who receive the highest number of votes in that Congressional district.”<br><br>This system for allocating Texas’s electoral college votes mimics the Electoral College system used to elect the President.  Unlike the existing “District Systems” in use in Maine and Nebraska, it is a winner-take-all system (thus maximizing the State’s influence on the presidential election) that is NOT based on the popular vote for the relevant sovereign territory.  Instead, it allocates all of the spoils of victory—all of Texas’s electoral college votes—to the winner of the most subdivisions of that sovereign territory.<br><br>Or Texas might insulate its gerrymandering of the Electoral College from any future corrective legislation by Congress by creating its own set of forty unique, extremely gerrymandered “Electoral College Districts” and mandating that Texas allocate all of its electoral college votes to the winner of the most individual Electoral College Districts.<br><br>The Gerrymandered Electoral College (1) satisfies the Constitutional requirement of population equality,  (2) mimics the actual Electoral College in its anti-majoritarian nature,  (3) exploits the fact that political gerrymandering is a nonjusticiable political question, and (4) in the second example above, leverages the fact that States have plenary power over the allocation of their Electoral College votes to avoid oversight, constraint or regulation by Congress.  This last aspect is particularly powerful.  Once a State establishes “Electoral College Districts” and enacts a Gerrymandered Electoral College, Congress will be powerless to override it.

U.S. presidential elections are determined by the Electoral College. In all but two states, a statewide winner-take-all system for electors can lead to decisive outcomes based on narrow victories in key states. Small groups of voters can significantly impact results, not only through turnout but also through a less-explored mechanism: the strategic relocation of a relatively small number of dedicated voters across state lines. The extent to which election outcomes are sensitive to such coordinated movements has not been thoroughly investigated. We introduce an analytical framework that integrates forecasting, simulation, and optimization to identify these pivotal voter shifts. Our findings show that small-scale relocations can meaningfully alter election probabilities under a range of parameter settings and polling data sources. Furthermore, we examine how the optimization-based recommendations align with actual election results, demonstrating that the suggested movements would have been beneficial in the 2024 U.S. presidential election—even when based on pre-election data. Given the remarkably small number of individuals required and the fact that electoral residency in many states can be established within about a month, our results have direct implications for policymaking and campaign strategy. Moreover, they highlight new opportunities for applying operations research methods to political science. History: Accepted by Alice E. Smith, Editor-in-Chief. Funding: This work was supported by an Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information ( https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2024.0990 ) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository ( https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2024.0990 ). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/ .

ABSTRACT “Almost everyone,” Ronald Dworkin wrote in Sovereign Virtue , “assumes that democracy means equal voting power.” What, then, is voting power? The standard view defines it as the probability that a vote changes the outcome assuming that each possible combination of votes is equiprobable. This has significant implications: institutions like the US Electoral College give disproportionate voting power to voters in large states. But the standard view cannot be true. As an a priori account, it rests on the principle of indifference, and thus faces the problem of multiple partitions: we could assign an equal probability to each possible combination of votes or to each possible vote share. The choice to partition in terms of combinations of votes is arbitrary, and makes the standard view objectionably overconfident. These problems of arbitrariness and overconfidence undermine the standard view's main implications. And they call into question whether equal voting power should play a central role in democratic theory.

This paper aims to analyse the legal status of non-academic staff (NAS) within the statutes of public academic institutions in Poland. Although they are formally part of the academic community, NAS are often marginalised in institutional practices and internal organisational regulations. The authors, using a formal-dogmatic method and quantitative-qualitative, examined 101 academic statutes of public universities. First, artificial intelligence tools were used to make a preliminary selection of the 20 most diverse statutes in terms of regulations concerning NNA. Next, using the MAXQDA tool, a qualitative analysis of the selected statutes was carried out in terms of: a) the place of NNA in the university community and their definition as a group of employees; b) the representation of NNA in university senates; c) representation in the electoral college; and d) other regulations. This paper contributes to debates on egalitarianism and the recognition of diverse professional roles within academia. The results of the analysis were used to formulate recommendations and proposals de lege ferenda.

Abstract Richard Nixon won a narrow popular and electoral vote victory in 1968. This article investigates whether newspaper endorsements, which heavily favored Nixon, were pivotal in his victory. Utilizing the shift in endorsements between 1964 and 1968, we find a sizable endorsement effect. This estimated effect was large enough to be pivotal: eliminating Nixon’s endorsement advantage would have deprived him of an Electoral College victory, resulting in a contingent election. Alternatively, if newspapers had endorsed his opponent, Hubert Humphrey, at the same rates they endorsed Johnson in 1964, Humphrey would have won the Electoral College.

BackgroundPolitical determinants of cancer risk are largely unexplored, conceptually and empirically.MethodsObservational analysis of associations present in 2017-2021 between 5 state-level political metrics and 4 age-standardized cancer outcomes (regional and distant stage at diagnosis for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer among screening-age adults and premature cancer mortality), overall and in standardized linear regression models adjusting for state-level poverty and medical uninsurance.ResultsIn fully adjusted models (adjusted for state-level poverty and state-level medical uninsurance variables: % working age adults [age 35-64] without medical insurance; number of years of state Medicaid expansion), each 1 SD shift toward a more liberal political ideology (measured by voting record) among elected officials in the US House of Representatives was associated with decreased risk of diagnosis with regional and distant breast and colorectal cancer (respectively: −0.76, 95% confidence interval [CI] = −1.26 to −0.25; −0.75; 95% CI = −1.5 to 0). Risk of premature cancer mortality likewise was lower, in the fully adjusted models, with each 1 SD shift toward more liberal scores for the state electoral college vote (−2.01, 95% CI = −3.68 to −0.33), the state liberalism policy index (−2.51, 95% CI = −4.48 to −0.54), and political ideology of elected officials in the US Senate (−1.93, 95% CI = −3.71 to −0.14).ConclusionOur state-level analyses suggest that political metrics are associated with preventable cancer outcomes. Efforts to reduce population burdens of cancer and inequities in these burdens could benefit from analyses of sociopolitical drivers of cancer risk across the cancer continuum.

ABSTRACTStereotypes against women and the advantage of incumbent male candidates make balancing political gender representation a formidable task. Gender and incumbency play critical roles in both fundraising and the electoral process, contributing to this gender disadvantage—a facet of the so‐called “glass ceiling” also present in other spheres of the social structure. We study the 2021 Chilean Constitutional Convention election, a process that had no incumbency effects and which enforcing both entrance and exit parity, facilitating the shattering of this glass ceiling. Estimations from a modified 2‐stage least squares model using data from the Chilean electoral college show that strong parity rules and the absence of incumbency are indeed effective ways to counteract stereotypes and promote gender parity not only in the election they were designed for but also in subsequent elections.

ABSTRACTWhat does it mean to be an effective citizen in a democracy? Answering this question requires unpacking “democracy” and an analysis of institutions that systematically disempower and alienate citizens. This paper briefly examines the contributions of psychoanalysis to understanding democracy and authoritarianism. It scrutinizes U.S. governance institutions and points to democratic deficits and backsliding present even before Trump 1.0 and 2.0. These range from the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court to the Federal Communications Commission. All contributed to institutionalizing minority rule and elite capture. Governance institutions failed to deliver what the American people tell opinion pollsters they want, including affordable health care, a higher minimum wage, regulation of industry and finance, reduced educational, medical and housing debt, a serious climate change policy, an economy that provides meaningful work, abolition of the Electoral College, the popular vote for president, and labor, reproductive and consumer rights. Elite capture limits effective citizenship in multiple ways. Social exclusion involves the systemic, structural exclusion of people from institutions to which they are supposed to have access and from rights to which they are entitled. Elite capture and social exclusion have very real material effects on the population. They also deeply structure subjectivity and fuel beliefs in conspiracy theories and authoritarian demagogues. A full discussion of Trump 1.0 and 2.0 is beyond the scope of this paper. The rise of a deeply authoritarian and reactionary movement and administration, however, cannot be separated from earlier processes of systemic exclusion and disinformation that left significant portions of the electorate feeling enraged and abandoned.

The Constant Two Plan: Reforming the Electoral College to Account for the National Popular Vote

To ensure that both large and small states had equal representation among states with different populations, the Electoral College was created to contribute meaningfully to U.S. presidential elections. Yet, in practice, the system has led to significant disparities in electoral influence, with larger states often holding disproportionate power. This paper investigates the extent to which the Electoral College upholds or undermines its original purpose of equitable representation. Through an analysis of the system’s structural biases, including the focus on swing states and the winner- takes-all method, the article reveals how these elements can diminish the voices of smaller states and concentrate power in a few populous regions. It also examines how this unequal distribution of influence risks fostering conditions that could lead to one-party dominance, particularly if certain large states consistently support a single party. The study concludes by examining the implications of these dynamics for American democracy and considers possible recommendations that might restore a balanced and representative electoral process. The study found out that the Electoral College fails to provide equitable representation, risks becoming a tool for one-party dominance and deviates from its federalist roots, effectively functioning as a flawed proxy for a popular vote system dominated by populous states. It’s on this note the study, recommended that Electoral Vote Caps should be introduced for Highly Populated States: Capping the number of electoral votes that any single state can hold would reduce the excessive influence that large states like California and Texas currently have.

Abstract No election rules are perfect, but they can be better. The Electoral College is increasingly failing to represent voter preferences in determining election winners. A path to reform begins with identifying election goals and establishing voting rules that best achieve these goals.

Abstract The academic literature is rife with analyses of the US Electoral College’s flaws, but proposals to improve the system often rely upon old ideas. For example, the idea of replacing the Electoral College with a nationwide vote originated in 1816, and the derivative concept underlying the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact dates to 1976. Similarly, numerous methods for retaining the College but modifying the manner in which individual states select electors were proposed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the only one that gained significant traction – the congressional-district system currently used by Maine and Nebraska – was initially described in the 1950s by Senator Karl Mundt and Representative Frederick Coudert. This article describes the County-Elector Plan, a new approach that maintains the Electoral College but allocates a state’s electoral votes to each county’s plurality winner, in an amount proportional to the county’s voter turnout. A candidate’s statewide electoral vote total is then the rounded sum of the electoral votes the candidate receives in each county. The County-Elector Plan would seismically transform presidential elections by shifting an election’s focus from a handful of battleground states to hundreds of battleground counties spread across both current battleground and spectator states. Retrospective application of the plan to the 2016 Trump-Clinton contest shows that each candidate would have received electoral votes from 41 states, and that Clinton would have won the election by 26 electoral votes. The County-Elector Plan could be implemented on a state-by-state basis, without requiring a constitutional amendment. The plan is gerrymandering-resistant and provides all voters in a state with equal voting power.

This paper examines the topic of the extent to which elections reflect the will of the people, a crucial precondition for free and fair elections, cornerstones of a countrys democratic system. This study analyzes free will from two perspectivesthe personal and socialidentifying education, critical thinking, and the ability to access reliable information as necessary conditions for free will. Conducting a historical-based analysis, this work assesses the mechanisms through which dictators in authoritarian regimes use the role of the election as a guise for masking totalitarian oppression. Next, it addresses the more subtle but equally perilous danger of demagogic leaders who take advantage of voter fears and prejudices to pretend to represent the citizens will. Lastly, the paper examines how various external factors, even in the framework of a perceived democratic electoral system, can usurp the peoples power. Namely, the nature of big data and targeted political advertising with predictive algorithms, along with disenfranchisement of marginalized groups and inherent flaws in seemingly democratic electoral systemsincluding the Electoral College or Israels fragmented parliamentary systemcall into question the strength of the peoples will. The paper then argues that mitigating the flaws that subvert the peoples will necessitates large-scale reforms on a social and institutional level.

In recent years, American political figures, media pundits, and others have argued that undocumented residents in the United States should not be included in census data used for congressional apportionment. They argue that including them unfairly benefits some states-especially politically Democratic-leaning (or "blue") states, according to most arguments-at the expense of others. Some people have speculated that many more House seats and Electoral College votes would have been apportioned to politically Republican-leaning (or "red") states and that many fewer would have been apportioned to politically "blue" states if undocumented residents were excluded from apportionment data. The only systematic empirical examinations of this question occurred prior to the 2020 census and projected-mostly inaccurately-how apportionment would differ after the 2020 census under this hypothetical. Does including undocumented residents in US census data used for congressional apportionment alter (ⅰ) political party representation in the House of Representatives or (ⅱ) presidential Electoral College votes? We use annual state-level estimates of the undocumented resident population at each census date to examine the consequences of including them in official apportionment data since 1980. If undocumented residents had been entirely excluded from census data used for apportionment, no more than two House seats and three Electoral College votes would have shifted between political parties in any year since 1980; this would have had no bearing on party control of the House or the outcome of presidential elections.

An Unsafe Harbor: Recounts, Contests, and the Electoral College

The article is devoted to the analysis of the 1980 U. S. presidential election campaign. Special attention is given to the historical conditions that influenced the election outcome, against which the partisan political struggle unfolded. Each U. S. presidential campaign is characterized by its unique features and unpredictability. The final result is not always possible to determine, as numerous factors influence both the voters and the decision of the Electoral College. However, based on a comprehensive analysis of the domestic and foreign policy priorities of various electoral groups, an overall assessment of historical conditions, and a comparison of the candidates’ views and platforms, grounds emerge to identify the likely winner. The intense partisan political struggle during the 1980 presidential campaign reflected a deep division within the country and was largely connected to shifts in American voter sentiment. There is a need for a deeper and more objective analysis of that period to understand the processes occurring within American society that led to the defeat of Democrat Jimmy Carter, secured the victory of the far-right Republican Ronald Reagan, and strengthened the ideology of neoconservatism in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Considering advancements in historical and political sciences and employing historical-comparative and historical-genetic methods, this analysis is undertaken in the present study.

Electoral College Subversion, the Vice President & the Federal Writ of Mandamus

This article explores the author's emotional reaction and reflections following the 2024 U.S. presidential election, in which an incumbent candidate secured both the electoral college and popular vote. As an educated, upper-middle class, straight, cisgender white man, the author grapples with his own privilege and the implications of the election result for marginalized communities. The piece delves into the concepts of "disparate impact" and "disparate treatment" discrimination, examining how these forms of systemic bias manifest not just in the workplace, but also in public policy and the legislative process, with examples provided across domains such as voting rights, criminal justice, environmental regulations, and education funding. The author outlines alternative policy, legislative, and legal approaches that could help address these complex issues of discrimination and inequality, concluding with a call to self-reflection and an urging of readers to consider their own complicity in perpetuating disparate impacts and to take concrete steps towards dismantling systemic inequities in society.

Abstract The language my friends and I are using to describe the outcome of Tuesday's elections combines astonishment, outrage, and a large dose of despair. Astonishment that a convicted felon, a twice impeached politician, a vicious misogynist, a racist, homophobe, liar, and cheat, who is a stated enemy of democracy, managed to secure the popular vote for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time since 2004 and—against so many predictions—win all of the states required to carry the electoral college by a significant margin. Along with his victory came control of the Senate and also—at this moment—likely the House of Representatives. The Supreme Court is already stacked with his allies, having ruled in his favor in many of the legal cases brought against his last acts as president. All branches of the government, in other words, are now in the hands of the neo-fascists who have extensive plans to dismantle what remains of American democracy. And make no mistake, they will implement their Project 2025. Even those of us in relatively comfortable positions, who live in “blue” states, will feel the impact of the abolition of the Department of Education; the assignment of health services to the vaccine-denying Robert Kennedy Jr.; the cost-cutting mania of Elon Musk; and the deregulation of what climate controls have managed to be implemented during the Biden administration.

ABSTRACT Hindsight bias – also known as the knew-it-all-along effect – is a ubiquitous judgment error affecting decision makers. Hindsight bias has been shown to vary across age groups and as a function of contextual factors, such as the decision maker’s emotional state. Despite theoretical reasons why emotions might have a stronger impact on hindsight bias in older than in younger adults, age differences in hindsight bias for emotional events remain relatively underexplored. We examined emotion and hindsight bias in younger and older adults (N = 272) against the backdrop of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Participants predicted electoral college votes for the two presidential candidates before the election and were asked to remember their predictions approximately three weeks later, after the election results had been finalised. Republicans, for whom the electoral outcome was negatively tinged, exhibited greater hindsight bias for President Biden’s result compared with Democrats, for whom the electoral outcome was positive. The asymmetry in hindsight bias between Republicans and Democrats was similar for younger and older participants. This study suggests that negative emotions may exacerbate hindsight bias, and that adult age differences in hindsight bias observed in laboratory settings may not translate to real-world contexts.