We combine Duverger's Law (1954) with Demsetz's (1968) theory of natural monopoly to provide a novel perspective on electoral competitiveness in a single member district, plurality rule system. In the framework we develop, competitiveness depends on the contestability of elections, which...

It has been suggested that preferential voting systems encourage moderate candidates in polities where electoral loyalties are habitually expressed along communal lines. Only two deeply divided territories in the world – Fiji and Northern Ireland – currently use preferential voting systems...

In the first discussion paper in this two paper series, Filer and Wood (2021) derived two measures of human well-being from the 2000 national census and sought to establish the relative strength of their association with 12 geographical variables in a comparative study of the 85 partially rural...

We combine Duverger’s Law (1954) with Demsetz’s (1968) theory of natural monopoly to provide a novel perspective on electoral competitiveness in a single member district, plurality rule system. In the framework we develop, competitiveness depends on the contestability of elections, which...

We compare and contrast methods for measuring malapportionment from different disciplines: law, political science, and economics. For example, in political science, the comparative politics approach to measuring malapportionment has been in terms of an adaptation of standard measures of...

It is well understood that even small differences in population can have a disproportionate impact on representation in the U.S. House of Representatives after a decennial census because of the peculiarities of rounding rules that require integer allocations. While the COVID-19 pandemic can be...

The amount that has been uttered/written about massive electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election is immense, made even larger by the vast number of times the same gets repeated. Virtually all of the claims have been extensively fact checked by election officials, journalists, and...

We address recent skepticism by Chief Justice Roberts about the usefulness of social science tools of analysis in litigation about redistricting. Limiting our discussion to race-related redistricting litigation, we demonstrate that social science methodology has been able to provide reliable...