I chose to take last semester off from grad school because I went to Nepal for my summer internship and decided to stay and support/experience the Constitutional Assembly elections planned for November. Unfortunately, they were postponed, no one was sure if they would actually happen, and the time came for me to return home. Finally, a new date was set for April 10th, and as that date approached, it looked like the election might actually happen. I, along with the entire country and a large part of the international community held my breath that it would be a peaceful and...

In 1964 Phillip Converse wrote his ground breaking work, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics", in which he challenged the idea that most people have structured, coherent opinions on which they base their political decisions. Forty years later this topic still seems to be fascinating to some and scary to others: a recent book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter", by Bryan Caplan attempts to shed new light on the issue, while Arnold Kling worries about "Two Strategies for avoiding Truth". However, to what extent is it (or was it ever) reasonable to expect that the 'average citizen'...

I just came across this FAQ on election day law written by Stanford Law students. It addresses some interesting questions and laws I had never heard of before. I know the Boalt Law School, here at Berkeley has a similar group but I can't find a website.

Please let me know if you find any links worth posting. Happy Election Day.

Few people question that after 2000, voter confidence in the integrity of American elections is a smidgen shaky. At one level, then, any amount of policy movement on this issue is helpful, whether from the Democrats or the GOP. At another level, though, it's striking just how much the GOP's proposed voter ID laws, like this one just struck down in Missouri and this one being proposed in Congress, so completely miss the mark of addressing voter concern.

Now, voter disenfranchisement is no doubt a grave worry among many. Here's the rub, though: they're troubled that too many people are being disenfranchised, not too few. Remember, even if you don't show ID, your name is still on a registration list at each precinct. To illegally vote, then, you'd have to a) know the name of someone registered, b) know which precinct they were assigned to, and c) hope that you arrived at the precinct to vote before they do. When was the last time you heard of widespread voter complaints of false identity? At the very least, more pressing short-term electoral problems exist, not the least of which are security concerns over compromised electronic voting machines.

Stronger voter ID laws may be a logical compliment to the GOP immigration platform, but the effect is so marginal that it's hard to interpret them as much more than election year red herring.