My research explores the sources and consequences of bias in electoral representation, voting rights discrimination, election law, and the link between electoral system design and public policy. I'm professor of political science at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and currently serve as senior fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy, where I work at the intersection of voting rights and environmental justice. I am also a faculty scholar at Cal Poly's Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy.
PhD in Political Science, 2008
University of California, Irvine
Masters in Political Science, 2003
University of California, Irvine
BA in Political Science, 1995
California State University, Chico
AA, 1993
Butte Community College
The pandemic has struck an electoral system already plagued by entrenched inequities that make it more difficult for members of Black, …
Voting is at the heart of people power in a functioning democracy. It’s how we choose between competing policy agendas and priorities, …
We present a theory of comparative political institutions based on the concept of consensus democracy and social choice theory. Unlike Lijphart, we argue that “consensus democracy” is not a special form of democracy characterized by mutual vetoes, but rather the simplest form of democracy, which we refer to as PR-majority rule. We construct a typology of political institutions based on differences with this simple model. Contra Tsebelis’s veto players approach, our theory predicts that PR-majority rule should be the most flexible form of democracy. We test this with data on overall patterns of government spending and on welfare state reform.