Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the executive and judiciary, and for regional and local government. This process is also used in many other private and business organizations, from clubs to voluntary associations and corporations.
After the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, many of us are concerned about the state of American democracy. ESAL Founder & Chair Arti Garg shares her thoughts on the importance of election integrity. She suggests steps we can each take to engage with our local governments about this issue.
Biophysicist Leah Cairns was a voter protection volunteer in the 2020 election as part of a "ballot curing" team in North Carolina. She shares her thoughts on how engaging locally can help fight voter suppression.
ESAL volunteer Rachel Burckhardt is a microbiologist and science communicator in Bethesda, Maryland. She wrote about volunteering as a poll worker for the first time in the 2020 election, amid extra precautions due to COVID-19.
On October 12, ESAL co-hosted “Science, Technology, and the Vote”, a virtual panel with the AAAS Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues. Panelists discussed how science and technology can help ensure the fairness, integrity, and security of the voting process.
In this month's "Stories from the Field", we talked to Thomas Beatty, an assistant research professor in astronomy at Pennsylvania State University who is skilled at charting distant worlds. He applies some of the same STEM principles to the more down-to-earth subject of gerrymandering, which has been the subject of recent court rulings and ongoing political debate.
