Wendy Schiller, professor of political science and director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy, announced a new student-led voting rights research program in September 2022. The initiative analyzes voter turnout data to “figure out who voted and how (changing election policies) might have … oppressed voter turnout, and in some cases, expanded voting turnout,” Schiller said in an interview with The Herald.
The program is part of Schiller's overarching goal to transform the Taubman Center into a “one-stop shopping center for American politics for Brown and the greater community.”
Othniel Harris, who was named the voting rights program manager, joined the Taubman Center in June after analyzing election policies and voting rights in North Carolina for the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign.
Harris’ experience working on the campaign exposed him to U.S. election law, skills he plans to use while overseeing the Taubman Center’s new program. “I take that knowledge, and I put it into the project and basically disseminate that to the research assistants.”
The research team consists of four undergraduate students and one student pursuing a master’s in public administration.
“I was having a hard time finding opportunities that interested me that kind of aligned with what I was studying,” said Mia Hamilton ’25, one of the undergraduate researchers. “It was a great opportunity.”
Each student researched one electorally competitive state with recently changed voting policies. Schiller encouraged them to “really look at the effects (of these state policies) on underrepresented communities.”
The first semester of research involved “diving into the legislation in the books and waiting for the midterm to unfold,” said Logan Danker ’24. Now, the team is analyzing voting patterns in the wake of the 2022 midterm elections.
Danker’s research focused on Georgia’s shifting signature matching policy, which invalidated signatures on mail-in ballots that did not exactly match the signature on the voters’ absentee ballot applications.
Danker also examined changes in ballot drop box locations. In 2021, Georgia passed election legislation that, among other measures, decreased the number of absentee ballot drop box locations, especially in minority-populated urban areas.
“This legislation could be harmful or disenfranchise members of certain groups,” Danker said. “It just disproportionately affected the ballots of people of color.”
Hamilton’s analysis focused on Texas legislation, including an “exact match policy” that increased the required amount of identification information, the application process for mail-in ballots and the inability of election officials to offer mail-in ballots to those who didn’t specifically request them.
In November, the research team began analyzing the results of the 2022 midterm elections. While the project is waiting on more detailed voter turnout data, its preliminary results show that changes to turnout demographics, including the decrease in minority voter populations, “can be attributed to the change in the laws,” Hamilton said.
Working on this project has improved Hamilton’s policy research skills. “Being able to look at legislation, read it, understand what it's saying and find the meaningful parts of it (will be) helpful for me in the future,” she said.
“I really liked the diverse, methodological approach that we're taking — the ability to analyze turnout data in a meaningful, quantitative way,” Danker said.
The project plans to create informational videos about these election laws for the Taubman website, as well as publish a written report on its findings, Schiller said. She added that they intend to publish these resources by April.
Harris hopes that this project will be “informational to our political leaders and policymakers of all stripes.” When reflecting on the future of the project, Harris said that he “wants this to be a part of a research line that shows what is actually inhibiting American democracy from taking shape."
Owen Dahlkamp is a Section Editor overseeing coverage for University News and Science & Research. Hailing from San Diego, CA, he is concentrating in political science and cognitive neuroscience with an interest in data analytics. In his free time, you can find him making spreadsheets at Dave’s Coffee.
