Ellie Sampson
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Research Mentor(s): Phoebe Henninger
Co-Presenter:
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Political Science / LSA
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Oral5
Session: Session 6 – 4:40pm – 5:30 pm
Room: Breakout room 2
Authors: Phoebe Henninger, Ellie Sampson
Presenter: 5
Abstract
Looking into greater depths of how partisanship interacts with US election administrations is crucial for understanding the true culture of the modern day American political system. Furthermore, conducting this research opens the gate for potential solutions in reducing polarization, and increasing transparency and trust in government. The research process consisted of contacting all of the counties in a state with a public records request of minutes from their Board of Elections’ meeting minutes in the years 2010 to 2021. After collecting the minutes, the names of the commissioners and deputy commissioners, or other respective members who were present from the recorded minutes were coded with what political party they align with. This process was repeated for each US state. Because the data collection is a long, intricate process involving only three people at the moment, no complete results have been obtained yet. However, there have been some findings relating to communication strategies with different counties in different states. The first step in contacting these counties for minutes from their meetings was via email, in which it was found that a very small number of counties actually responded with the records that were requested. Some counties replied stating that they do not keep minutes of any kind due to the scale of the county and members in the meetings. Lastly, most of the counties do not respond in the first place, and the second step had to be taken, which was to mail them a public records request by mail, causing the data collection process to take longer. Although this research is not yet finished, the continuation of the process is valuable because it is another key in better understanding the American political system, elections, and the key aspect of the United States that is still debated on, democracy.
Social Sciences
