Biographies – living electoral scientists and reformers

This page presents a selection of academic political scientists, electoral reform advocates, prominent NGO figures, writers and others currently active in the field of electoral science.

(Suggestions for additions and revisions to this page are very welcome.)

Amy, Douglas: American political scientist and advocate for proportional representation. Works include Real Choices / New Voices: The Case for Proportional Representation Elections in the United States (1993).

Ansolabehere, Steven: US political scientist, Professor of Government at Harvard University 2008-; formerly Professor, Department of Political Science, MIT 1998-2009. Ansolabehere’s work focuses on elections law including campaign finance and the gerrymandering of electoral district boundaries. Ansolabehere has been called as an expert witness in district boundary litigation in recent years, including the Harris v McCrory litigation from North Carolina. Works include Going Negative: How Political Advertising Divides and Shrinks the American Electorate (1996, with Shanto Iyengar), The End of Inequality: One Person, One Vote and the Transformation of American Politics (2009, with James M Snyder, Jr), American Government (13th edition 2013, with Benjamin Ginsberg and Kenneth Shepsle) and Cheap and Clean: How Americans Think About Energy in the Age of Global Warming (2014, with David Konisky).

Balinski, Michel: (1933-); Polish-American mathematician, econometrician, and political scientist. In 1982 he co-authored with Peyton Young a thorough review of the rival methods of apportionment, concluding that the Webster/Sainte-Lague method was the one with least bias for or against large or small states/parties. Works include Fair Representation: Meeting the Ideal of One Man, One Vote (1982, with Peyton Young) and Majority Judgment: Measuring, Ranking, and Electing (2010, with Rida Laraki).

Bartels, Larry: (1956-); American political scientist; Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and Shayne Chair in Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University. The focus of Bartels’ work is on income equality issues and their relation to electoral politics. Works include Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice (1988), the essay What’s the matter with What’s the matter with Kansas (2006) and Unequal Democracy: The political economy of the new gilded age (2008).

Berman, Ari: US journalist and online writer; senior contributing writer for The Nation magazine. Berman is an advocate for electoral reform in particular with regard to voting rights. Works include Herding Donkeys (2012) and Give Us The Ballot (2015).

Boix, Charles: Robert Garrett Professor of Politics and Public Affairs in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Research focused on political economy and comparative politics, particular on empirical democratic theory, the choice of institutions and their consequences for growth and inequality. Author of many books on political science, including Democracy and Redistribution (2003).

Blais, André: Canadian political scientist active from the 1980s onward; holder of the Research Chair in Electoral Studies at the Université de Montreal since 2001; leader of the Making Electoral Democray Work Project; chair of the Planning Committee of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES); fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; research fellow with the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship (CSDC), the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative (CIREQ), and the Center for Interuniversity Research Analysis on Organizations (CIRANO); past president of the Canadian Political Science Association. Blais’ research interests are elections, electoral systems, turnout, public opinion, and methodology. (Twitter)

Blau, Adrian: British political scientist; Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. Research focuses on democratic theory and practice, including deliberative democracy, deliberative policy-making, electoral systems and party systems, corruption, Hobbes, history of political thought, and research methods. (Twitter)

Bogdanor, Vernon: (1943-) British political scientist (Kings College London and Oxford), leading constitutional scholar and psephologist. Prominent advocate for the adoption of proportional representation electoral systems.

Bonham, Kevin: Australian psephologist, political commentator and research consultant based in Tasmania. Focus is on Tasmanian elections and politics, wider Australian politics, and ongoing political opinion polling in Australia as well as electoral science. Author of the Pseph website. (Twitter)

Brams, Steven: (1940-); US game theorist and political scientist at New York University Department of Politics; expert in the application of game theory, public choice theory, and social choice theory to voting systems and fair division problems. A consistent proponent of the use of approval voting.

Brent, Peter: Australian psephologist, academic (Swinburne University) and journalist/political commentator. Brent’s doctoral thesis covered the history of electoral administration in Australia. Author of the Mumble blog site covering Australian electoral and political matters. (Twitter)

Butler, Sir David: (1924-); CBE, FBA; British social scientist and psephologist, active at Nuffield College, Oxford University. British election commentator 1950-2001. Pioneered the use of the ‘swingometer’, a means of displaying change in the two-party vote, especially relevant to the era when the UK saw a very strong two-party system from WWII to the mid-1970s. Lead co-author/editor of the Nuffield Election Studies examining each general election for the UK House of Commons since 1945. Member of the editorial board of the journal Representation. Works include Political Change in Britain: Forces Shaping Electoral Choice (with Donald Stokes, 1969) and Governing Without a Majority: Dilemmas for Hung Parliaments in Britain (1986). (Twitter)

Carella, Leonardo: graduate student in European politics at the University of Oxford, active commentator on European political and electoral matters on Twitter.

Carty, Ken: Canadian political scientist; Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, and Head of Department 1996-2001 and 2006-07; Brenda & David McLean Chair in Canadian Studies (2005-08); Director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions (2007-09); member of the Board of Governors of the Vancouver School of Theology (1997-2007, chair 2001-06); member of the federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for British Columbia (2002-03), Director of Research for the BC Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform (2003-04); Chair of UBC Press (2009-2015); President of the Canadian Political Science Association (2012); Mildred Schwartz Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Political Science Association (2013); trustee for the Vancouver School of Theology Foundation (2014-). Research focuses on political parties and electoral systems. Works include Party and Parish Pump: Electoral Politics in Ireland, Grassroots Politicians: Party Activists in British Columbia (with D Blake and L Erickson), Canadian Political Parties in the Constituencies, Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics (with W Cross and L Young), Politics is Local: National Politics at the Grassroots (with M Eagles), When Citizens Decide: Lessons from Citizen Assemblies on Electoral Reform (with P Fournier, H van der Kolk, A Blais and J Rose) and Big Tent Politics: The Liberal Party’s Long Mastery of Canada’s Public Life.

Carr, Adam: Australian psephologist. Carr created and maintains the Psephos Archive website, a massive archive of election result data for most of the world’s national parliaments and presidential elections. (Twitter)

Coakley, John: Irish political scientist; Emeritus Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin and Distinguished International Professor at Queen’s University Belfast; Secretary General of the International Political Science Association  1994-2000. Coakley’s work focuses on comparative politics, ethnic conflict and Irish politics, both in the North and the Republic. Coakley is associated with the term consociationalism, referring to political institutions aimed at overcoming ethnic conflicts. Works include Reforming political institutions: Ireland in comparative perspective (2013)

Colomer, Josep: Catalan-Spanish professor of political science and blogger; Research Professor at the Higher Council for Scientific Research CSIC, in Barcelona, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Georgetown University, in Washington. Colomer’s areas of expertise include democratization, forms of government, voting systems, and the Spanish transition to democracy.  Active as a comparative scholar of voting systems and elections, political institutions and institutional change, Colomer has used game theory and social choice theory for applied analyses. Works include Game Theory and the Transition to Democracy: The Spanish model (1995), Strategic Transitions (2000), Political Institutions. Democracy and Social Choice (2001), Handbook of Electoral System Choice (2004), The Science of Politics: An Introduction (2010), Personal Representation: The neglected dimension of electoral systems (2011), How Global Institutions Rule the World. (2015) and The European Empire (2016).

Cook, Charlie: (1953-); US political analyst and election forecaster and commentator, former pollster and campaign consultant. Publisher of the Cook Political Report website.

Cox, Gary: US political scientist; William Bennett Munro Professor in Political Science, Stanford University. Works include The Efficient Secret: The Cabinet and the Development of Political Parties in Victorian England, (1983), Legislative Leviathan (with Mathew D McCubbins, 1993), Making Votes Count (1997) and Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives (2005).

Curtice, Sir John: (1953-); British political scientist; Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde; Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (1992); Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2004); Fellow of the British Academy (2014); Senior Research Fellow at NatCen Social Research; President of the British Polling Council; Knight Bachelor (2018). Focus of research includes electoral behaviour, researching political and social attitudes, and Scottish independence. Curtice is a regular broadcast and media commentator during UK and Scottish elections. Works include British Social Attitudes (editor, with other authors, of the 24th to 27th reports, 2008 to 2010) and Revolution or Evolution?: The 2007 Scottish Elections (2007, with D McCrone, N McEwen, M Marsh and R Ormston). Blogs at What Scotland Thinks, and on Twitter.

Day, Wilf: Canadian lawyer and electoral reform advocate, Secretary of the National Council of Fair Vote Canada; maintains an active blog on electoral matters in Canada.

Dow, Jay: US political scientist. Works include Electing the House, the adoption and performance of the US single member district electoral system (2017), in which Dow strongly advocates for the retention of SMD plurality voting for congressional elections.

Downs, Anthony: (1930-); American economist specializing in public policy, including transport economic, and public choice theory; senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution (1977 -). His early work was highly influential in the development of social choice theory as a discipline. Downs proposed a left-right ‘axis’ as a means of understanding voter behavior, which would later lead to the development (by Duncan Black and others) of the median voter theory. Downs’ later work on transport economics and congestion has influenced transport management, congestion charging and infrastructure choice in several developed nations. Works include Economic Theory of Democracy (1957), Inside Bureaucracy (1967), Stuck in Traffic (1992) and Still Stuck in Traffic (2004).

Dunleavy, Patrick: British political scientist, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, London School of Economics; founder of LSE Public Policy Group in 1992; founding member of the Academy of the Social Sciences in 1999. Co-director of the online research and news site Democratic Audit. Works include Theories of the Democratic State (2009).

Dummett, Michael: British philosopher and voting theorist. Works include Voting Procedures (1984) and Principles of Electoral Reform (1997).

Emerson, Peter: Irish Psephologist; founder of the de Borda Institute.

Farrell, David: (1960 -); British political scientist; Professor of Politics, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin; formerly professor and head of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester; member of the Royal Irish Academy; President of the Political Studies Association of Ireland 2012; Speaker of the Council of the European Consortium for Political Research 2013, 2016. Work focusses on political parties, elections, electoral systems and members of parliament, and deliberation in constitutional reform processes. Founding co-editor of the journal Party Politics. Works include Do Political Campaigns Matter?: Campaign Effects in Elections and Referendums (2003, with Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck), Representing Europe’s Citizens?: Electoral Institutions and the Failure of Parliamentary Representation (2007, with Roger Scully), Political Parties and Democratic Linkage (2011), Electoral Systems (2011, 2nd ed), The Act of Voting: Identities, Institutions and Locale (2015, with Johan Elkink) and A Conservative Revolution?: Electoral Change in Twenty-First Century Ireland (2017, with Michael Marsh).

Fishburn, Peter: (1936-) US decision theorists. Winner of the John von Neumann Prize (1996). In collaboration with Steven Brams he promulgated the approval voting method (1977).

Gallagher, Michael: Irish political scientist; Professor of Comparative Politics (2006-) and head of the Department of Political Science, Trinity College, University of Dublin; previously visiting Professor at New York University and at City University of Hong Kong. Member of the Royal Irish Academy (2013). Gallagher’s research focuses on aspects of elections, electoral systems and political parties in a comparative context. He is a proponent of the use of the least-squares method (hence known to electoral scientists as the Gallagher Index) for measuring vote-share/seat-share disproportionality. Works include the How Ireland Voted series (1989-2016), The Politics of Electoral Systems (2005 and 2008, co-edited with Paul Mitchell), Politics in the Republic of Ireland (4th ed., 2005, co-edited with John Coakley), and Representative Government in Modern Europe (4th ed., 2006, co-edited with Michael Laver and Peter Mair). Gallagher serves on the editorial boards of journals including Electoral Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Representation, Party Politics and Irish Political Studies. Gallagher’s website at Trinity College includes tools for calculating disproportionality.

Ghose, Katie: British barrister, campaigner and NGO executive; Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society 2010-16. (Twitter)

Green, Antony (AO): (1960-) Australian psephologist and media commentator; resident electoral matters commentator for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) since 1991; Officer of the Order of Australia (2017). Green hosts election night commentary on the ABC for on all Australian national and state elections, and Antony Green’s Elections Blog, a wide-ranging blog on Australian and world electoral matters, is published by the ABC. (Twitter)

Grenier, Éric: Canadian election analyst and commentator; Senior Writer, Polling Analysis with the Canadian Broadcasting Corportation’s Parliamentary Bureau. Grenier is a prominent media commentator specialising in electoral systems and events. Grenier established the 308dotcom electoral science website, which he has recently announced is inactive.

Grofman, Bernard: (1944-); American political scientist with strong interest in electoral science (University of California, Irvine). Among numerous published works (often with co-authors) are Choosing an Electoral System (with Arendt Ljiphart) (1984), A Unified Theory of Voting (1999), and A Unified Theory of Party Competition (2005).

Hanretty, Chris: British political scientist; Reader in Politics, University of East Anglia. Expert and regular commentator on the UK electoral system, elections and data, including polling. (Twitter)

Hasen, Richard (Rick): US political scientist, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science, University of California, Irvine School of Law. Hasen’s research focuses on on election law and campaign finance regulation. Hasen is an expert on US election law and is now the leading author of Election Law, Cases and Materials, the leading text on electoral law in the United States (established by Daniel Lowenstein in 1995). Other works include Voting Wars – from Florida 2000 to the Next Meltdown (2012) and Plutocrats United (2015). Hasen is a regular media commentator in election law issues and is the lead author of the ElectionLawBlog site. (Twitter)

Hill, Steve: US political scientist, author and advocate for electoral reforms.

Hughes, Darren: (1978-); former Member of the New Zealand House of Representatives (2002-2011); Minister for Statistics and Minister for Social Development and Employment (2007-2008); Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society of the UK (2016-).

Inglehart, Ronald: (1934-); American political scientist; University Michigan; co-director of the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics in Moscow and St Petersburg. Inglehart’s work focuses on political values held by publics. In 1981 Inglehart founded the World Values Survey network of public opinion research active across over 80 nations. Works include The Silent Revolution (1977), Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (1990), Modernization and Postmodernization (1997), Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World (2003, with Pippa Norris), Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (2004, with Pippa Norris), Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (2005, with Christian Welzel), Changing human beliefs and values, 1981-2007 (2010, with Miguel Basanez) and The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (2015).

Kimber, Richard: British political scientist, author of the Politics Resources website focused on UK and US electoral matters.

Kreuzer, Marcus: Associate Professor of Political Science, Villanova University (2008).

Latner, Michael: US political scientist; associate professor of political science at California Polytechnic State University; Kendall Voting Rights Fellow for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC. Research focuses on the link between voting inequalities and public policy, voting rights, electoral system design, and representation. Works include Gerrymandering in America (with other authors, 2016). (Twitter)

Lavergne, Réal: Canadian international development specialist and electoral reform advocate; President of Fair Vote Canada. (Twitter)

Leip, David: (1970-); US electrical design engineer based in Massachusetts; author of the US Election Atlas website, which tracks and published election result data for the US President (including primaries), US Senators and state governors.

Li, Michael: American lawyer, Senior Counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, focusing on redistricting, voting rights, and elections. (Twitter)

Lijphart, Arendt: (1936-); Dutch/American political scientist specialised in comparative politics, elections and voting systems, democratic institutions, and ethnicity and politics; active at the universities of Yale, Leiden, and University of California, San Diego (Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science); selected works: Choosing an Electoral System (with Bernard Grofman) (1984), Electoral Systems and Party Systems (1994), Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (1999); proponent of proportional representation; further developed Duverger’s theory concerning the impact of electoral systems on the development of a national party configuration.

Lowenstein, Daniel Hays: (1943-); American political scientist, Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law; co-author of the California Political Reform Act of 1974 and founding chairman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission 1974; Chief Deputy Secretary of State 1975-?; director of UCLA Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions 2009-. Lowenstein is an expert on US election law and was the original author of Election Law, Cases and Materials, the leading text on electoral law in the United States, for its first edition in 1995.

McAllister, Ian: Scottish-born Australian political scientist, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. Chair of the Comparative Study of Electoral System project (2004-09); editor of the Australian Journal of Political Science (2004-10). Director of the Australian Election Study (1987-), a 30-year survey of Australian public opinions on electoral and political matters. Works include The Australian Voter (2011).

McDonald, Michael: US political scientist, Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Florida, formerly at George Mason University; maintains the United States Elections Project site, a major resource for US electoral registration and voting statistics, in particular for estimations of the ‘vote-eligible population’ (VEP). (Twitter)

McGhee, Eric: American adacemic; Research Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. In 2015, together with Nicholas Stephanopoulos, McGhee developed the concept of the efficiency gap for measuring partisan bias in electoral district boundary-making.

Mackerras, Malcolm: (1939- ); AO; Australian political scientist and elections commentator; lecturer at the Department of Government at Royal Military College Duntroon (1974-1999); Associate Professor in Political Science, School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Australian Defence Force Academy (1999-2004); Visiting Fellow in the Public Policy Institute, Australian Catholic University (2004-). One of Australia’s most active psephologists since the 1970s, Mackerras popularised the use of the ‘pendulum’ presentation of safe and marginal parliamentary seats, a convenient tool for analyzing two-major-party swings at elections. Works include Australian General Elections (1972), Elections 1975, Elections 1980, The Mackerras 1990 Federal Election Guide, The Malcolm Mackerras 1993 Federal Election Guide, Australian Political Facts (1997, with Ian McAllister and Carolyn Brown Boldiston) and Constitutional Politics: The Republic Referendum and the Future (2002).

Maley, Michael: Australian electoral official (retired), researcher and commentator. Maley was a senior officer of the Australian Electoral Commission during the enactment of the modern Commonwealth Electoral Act (1983-84) and afterword. Maley continues to comment widely on public debates on Australian electoral matters and policy. (Twitter)

Marsh, Michael: Irish political scientist; Emeritus Professor of Political Science in Trinity College University of Dublin; Member of the Royal Irish Academy. Work focuses on political parties, elections and public opinion. Marsh was the principal investigator for the 2002, 2007 and 2011 Irish National Election Studies. Works include The Irish Voter (2008, editor), and How Ireland Voted 2016 (2016 and four earlier editions, editor).

Marsh, David: (1946 -); British political scientist; Professor of Political Sociology and the Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Birmingham; Fellow at the Institute of Governance and Policy Analysis. Formerly Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University. Focus of work includes political participation and governance. Works include Theory and Methods in Political Science (1995).

Massicotte, Louis: Canadian political scientist; Professor at the Department of Political Science at Université Laval, Québec; research focuses on electoral systems, legislatures and federalism. Works include Establishing the Rules of the Game: Election Laws in Democracies (with André Blais and Antoine Yoshinaka) (2003), ‘Canada: Sticking to First-Past-the-Post, for the Time Being’ in The Politics of Electoral Systems (2005) and ‘Electoral Reform in Canada’ in To Keep or to Change First Past the Post? The Politics of Electoral Reform (2008).

Morris, G Elliott: American undergraduate student of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, computer programmer and writer. Morris is interested in various projects and research relating to American and world politics. In 2016 he created the Crosstab –Data in Politics blogsite. (Twitter)

Norris, Pippa: (1953-); Anglo-American political scientist, active in Britain, the US and Australia. Her work involves public opinion and elections, democratic institutions and cultures, gender politics, and political communications. Works include Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Government (1999), Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism (2002), Electoral Engineering (2004), Radical Right: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market (2005), Driving Democracy: Do Power-Sharing Institutions Work? (2008), Democratic Deficit (2011), Making Democratic Governance Work (2012), Why Electoral Integrity Matters (2014), Why Elections Fail (2016) and Strengthening Electoral Integrity (2017). (Twitter)

Nurmi, Hanno: Finnish political scientist. Works include Voting Paradoxes and How to Deal With Them (1999).

Pilon, Dennis: Canadian political scientist, Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at York University, Toronto. His work focuses on democratization and democratic reform in western countries, including the history of electoral systems and their relation to class politics. Works include: The Politics of Voting: Reforming Canada’s Electoral System (2007) and Wrestling with Democracy: Voting Systems as Politics in the Twentieth Century West (2013).

Powell, G Bingham: American political scientist, Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester; President of the American Political Science Association 2011-12; a leading expert in comparative political analysis. Works include Contemporary Democracies: Participation, Stability and Violence (1982), Comparative Politics: A Theoretical Framework (1993, with Gabriel Almond and Robert Mundt), Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions (2000), and the Comparative Politics Today series of textbooks (12 editions to 2017).

Pukulsheim, Friedrich: German political scientist; Institut für Mathematik, Universität Augsburg.

Rae, Douglas: (1939-); US political scientist; Chief Administrative Officer of the City of New Haven 1990-91; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Scientists. Pioneer of comparative electoral science, focusing on issues such as party proportionality and vote/seat ratios, theories of equality and urbanism. Works include The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws (1967, 1971) and Equalities (1981).

Raue, Ben: Australian electoral analyst and media commentator, focusing on Australian elections including detailed geographical analysis and mapping; publisher of the Tallyroom website since 2008. (Twitter)

Renwick, Alan: British constitutional scholar and political scientist; Deputy Director at the University College London Constitution Unit, responsible for the Unit’s activity on electoral systems. Works include A Citizen’s Guide to Electoral Reform (2011), The Politics of Electoral Reform: Changing the Rules of Democracy (2011) and Faces on the Ballot: The Personalization of Electoral Systems in Europe (2016). (Twitter)

Richardson, Charles: Australian political writer, author of The World Is Not Enough blog on electoral matters at Crikey online magazine.

Ritchie, Ken: (1946-) British psephologist. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2006). Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society 1997-2010. Stood for parliament three times as a Labour candidate.

Richie, Rob: US political reform advocate; co-founder and Executive Director of the leading US electoral reform organisation FairVote (1992-). Prominent advocate for electoral system reforms including ranked choice voting (preferential voting). Frequent media commentator on US electoral systems. Works include Every Vote Equal and Whose Votes Count. (Twitter)

Russwurm, Laurel: Canadian author, political activist and writer on electoral science; author of the Whoa!Canada blogsite dealing with electoral issues in Canada; supporter of proportional representation. (Twitter)

Saari, Donald: (1940-) Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Economics and director of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at the University of California Irvine. Expert in voting methods and lottery odds. Works include Chaotic Elections! A Mathematician Looks at Voting (2001). Author and co-author of numerous papers on mathematical aspects of voting systems.

Santucci, Jack: American political scholar and electoral writer. Santucci’s doctoral dissertation Proportional Representation in American Cities (2017) deals with the history of the use of proportional representation in states and cities in the United States during its prominent period from 1915 to 1948, and discusses the partisan reasons why proportional representation was withdrawn. (Twitter)

Schlechta, Henry: Australian blog author who writes on Australian and international electoral matters at International Elections; undergraduate student at the Australian National University. (Twitter)

Schulze, Markus: German political scientist and voting methods theorist. His Schulze method (a procedure for selecting a winner should their be no majority/Condorcet winner) is one of the more advanced formulations of the Condorcet method.  (Not to be confused with Markus Schulz, a German-American DJ and music producer.)

Shugart, Mathew Søberg: US orchardist and political scientist, Professor of Political Science at University of California, Davis. Research focuses on electoral systems and constitutional design, particularly in latin America. Maintains the Fruits and Votes blogsite. (Twitter)

Silver, Nate: (1978- ); US statistician, journalist, writer and prominent analyst of baseball and electoral statistics. Leading US election forecaster since 2008. Established the FiveThirtyEight blog, formerly linked to the New York Times but now owned by ESPN. Works include The Signal and the Noise – the Art and Science of Prediction (2012). (Twitter)

Steed, Michael: (1940 -); British psephologist, political scientist, elections commentator and broadcaster, activist and politician (Liberal Democrat party); lecturer in Government at Manchester University 1966-??; President of the Liberal Party 1978-79; currently Honorary Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent. Steed was a prominent elections commentator and broadcaster in the 1960s and 70s. From 1964 until 2005 Steed (later with John Curtice) carried out statistical analysis for David Butler’s Nuffield college British General Election series of publications. Steed was a supporter of both British membership of European political institutions as well as devolution of political powers in Britain to regional authorities.

Stephanopoulos, Nicholas: American academic; Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Focus of work includes election law, constitutional law, legislation, administrative law, comparative law, and local government law. In 2015, together with Eric MCGhee, Stephanopoulos developed the concept of the efficiency gap for measuring partisan bias in electoral district boundary-making.

Syddique, Eric Mahmood: British psephologist and Liberal Democrat politician. Former chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society; Secretary of the Electoral Reform Society’s Electoral Reform International Services company, which provides assistance in conducting elections worldwide. Has written extensively for the publications Voting Matters and Representation.

Taagapera, Rein: (1933-); Estonian former legislator, physicist, international relations theorist, political scientist; winner of the American Political Science Association’s Hallett (1999) and Longley (2003) Awards; member of the Estonian Constitutional Assembly (1991), presidential candidate (1993, winning 23% of the vote) and chairman of the Res Public political party (1993). His work focuses on elections systems focuses on quantitative analysis and modelling, and he is associated with the development of the ‘effective number of parties’ measures. Works include Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems (1989) and Predicting Party Sizes: The Logic of Simple Electoral Systems (2007).

Tideman, Nicholas: (1943-); American economist and voting systems scholar, Professor of Economics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, formerly at Harvard University. In 1987, he devised the ranked pairs method for determining a majority candidate (or Condorcet winner). In 2000 he devised the CPO-STV proportional voting method. Tideman also proposed that voting methods should satisfy the independence of clones criterion. Editor of the journal Voting Matters since 2010.

Tokaji, Daniel P: American political scientist, Duncan/Day Designated Professor of Law at Ohio State University. Tokaji is an expert on US election law and is the third author (since 2012) of Election Law, Cases and Materials, the leading text on electoral law in the United States.

Tuffin, Anthony: British psephologist, retired pensions consultant and FCIS, FPMI. Member of the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) from the early 1960s; member of the ERS Council 1999 to 2012. Campaigner for the single transferable vote (STV) voting system and lead author of the STV Action website and blog.

Waldman, Michael: American political advisor and NGO leader; President of the Brennan Centre for Justice at New York University School of Law (2005 -). Waldman was an advisor to President Bill Clinton on campaign finance 1993-94 and as Director of Speechwriting 1995-99. As President of the Brennan Centre, Waldman is a leading commentator on electoral matters in the United States. Works include A Return to Common Sense: Seven Bold Ways to Revitalize Democracy (2008), The Second Amendment: A Biography (2014) and The Fight to Vote (2016). (Twitter)

Wassserman, Dave: US election analyst, editor on US House of Representative matters at the Cook Political Report website. (Twitter)

Weiser, Wendy: Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and author of many of the Brennan Centre’s voting publications, focuses on voting rights, campaign finance, redistricting and electoral litigation. (Twitter)

Winter, Owen: (1999-); British electoral reform advocate; member of the UK Youth Parliament 2015; founding member of Making Votes Matter electoral reform NGO and spokesman for the group’s campaign in 2017; currently an undergraduate student at the University of Oxford. (Twitter)

Wolf, Stephen: US elections analyst, journalist and political map-maker on the writing staff of Daily Kos Elections, focusing on voting rights, redistricting, electoral reform and related matters. (Twitter)

Young, Peyton: US mathematician and economist. Co-author (with Michel Balinski) of the important work Fair Representation: Meeting the Ideal of One Man, One Vote (1982).

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