Events

The Journal of Election Administration Research & Practice invites you to join us over Zoom for another lunchtime conversation on innovative funding solutions for election administration. This edition of Elections à la Carte will focus on strategies for reducing election costs as well as nontraditional funding source possibilities. Our panel will include: Zach Mohr – professor at the University of Kansas – who will discuss the potential of taxing political advertising to fund election administration; Lucca Carlson – an elections data analyst – who proposes utilizing college students as poll workers as a way for the students to satisfy costs related to any state-funded financial aid they receive, and Jenny Hillary and Nick Fisch – experienced local election officials from Dubuque County, Iowa – who advocate for adding a small convenience fee to driver’s license/non-operator identification issuances and renewals to fund election administration. Our panel will offer a brief explanation of their ideas, which will be followed by an in-depth discussion on avenues for moving these ideas into the real world. Before the webinar, attendees are encouraged to submit questions they would like the panel to discuss to Brandon Fincher at finchrb@auburn.edu. The panel will try to address as many questions as time permits.

When: 12pm Eastern

Each year for the last decade, election officials and researchers from across the country gather for the Election Sciences, Reform, and Administration (ESRA) conference. ESRA gives participants an opportunity to engage with cutting-edge research into election administration and discuss challenges (and possible solutions!) that state and local election officials face every day. The 10th Annual ESRA conference was held this June on the campus of Arizona State University in Phoenix, Arizona. Participants from academia, state and local election government, nonprofits, and research institutes came to Maricopa County to discuss election administration across the US. As with every year, many great ideas were shared within the walls of the conference. Join Ready for Tuesday for A Look Back at ESRA 2026.  We’ll be talking to Bill Gates – Executive Director of the ASU Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory (MODL), former Maricopa County Supervisor, and ESRA 2026 host – as well as other participants who shared work at the conference in June. We’ll also share more about the conference and how you can stay up-to-date about ESRA 2027.

When: 1pm Eastern.

Why does America have the oldest politicians? It’s not by chance, but by design. Join New America’s Political Reform Program and New Voters to understand the systems that reinforce America’s gerontocracy, the structural reforms that could change them, and what young voters actually want out of US politics. We’ll hear from Oscar Pocasangre and Dustin Wahl, authors of The Age Divide, on why youth is underrepresented in politics. In their report, they find that it’s not because youth are apathetic or poor leaders, but that barriers to entry are systemic. Parties don’t invest in young politicians and young people are blocked from organizing into a different party due to the two-party doom loop. Their proposed solutions: proportional representation and a multi-party system. Despite these systemic barriers, young people are still finding ways to be involved in politics. In this discussion, we’ll also hear from New Voters high school leaders about what frustrates and excites them about American politics and how they’re already making change in their communities. And we’ll get their honest reactions—would structural change actually shift how their generation engages?

When: 6pm Eastern