the American electoral system. Several private commissions—one headed by former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter—have already reached their conclusions and proposed changes to the way we run our elections. Since the founding of this country, state and local governments have had primary responsibility for running congressional elections. Congress has the authority to override state and lo...

This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between officeholder and the electorate, where everyone is initially uninformed about the officeholder’s ability. If office-holder effort and ability interact in the determination of performance in office, then an office-holder has an incentive to learn i.e. raise effort so that performance becomes a more accurate signal of her abil...

Nearly two million more young Americans under the age of 30 voted in the 2008 presidential elections as compared to the 2004 elections, according to new Census data analyzed and released by CIRCLE. The increase is a continuation of the trend observed in the 2004 and 2006 elections. Youth turnout was 11 percentage points higher than in 1996, which was the low point after decades of decline. Whil...

We provide a welfare analysis of early elections in a dynamic model of political competition with endogenous political blockades. Blockades arise if a party wins an election due to the support of voters with extreme policy preferences. We show that flexible election timing has the advantage that political blockades are overcome and political decisions are taken more frequently, but also the dis...