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Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law conducted a webinar in the wake of the 2020 US Presidential Election on November 5. It featured Bruce Cain, professor of political science and director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West; Hakeem Jefferson, assistant professor of political science; Didi Kuo, senior research scholar and associate director of Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law; and Nate Persily, JD ’98, the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. These are my notes of the key points made by the speakers.
Nate Persily.
- Election administrators throughout the states have done an outstanding job in successfully conducting a complex election across a diverse landscape. Especially when compared to the sometime uneven performance in some of the primaries (e.g., New York).
- Mail balloting went very smoothly, with very few disqualified. A much smaller share of mail ballots will likely be discounted than in other US elections. [Note: some states like WA and OR have only vote by mail; WA had its last in-person election in 2008.]
- States, like PA, with historically low rates of absentee ballots (about 5%), have scaled up to 50% and is “extraordinary”. Challenges for them included supply chain (e.g., paper ballot production), social distancing…