{"id":372,"date":"2012-10-11T17:32:13","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T00:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.reed.edu\/politika\/?p=372"},"modified":"2014-03-18T10:10:21","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:10:21","slug":"my-voter-file-moment-at-vanderbilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/2012\/10\/11\/my-voter-file-moment-at-vanderbilt\/","title":{"rendered":"My voter file moment at Vanderbilt"},"content":{"rendered":"

My day in\u00a0Nashville\u00a0<\/a>has been wonderful–thanks again to John Geer and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions for hosting me.<\/p>\n

My lecture had one lowlight and one highlight. \u00a0I wonder if the highlight is shared by my good friends in the elections community such as\u00a0Doug Chapin<\/a>,\u00a0Charles Stewart<\/a>,\u00a0Dan Smith<\/a>, and others.<\/p>\n

The lowlight is easy: I never realized that this was a course on elections, not introductory American politics! \u00a0When I answered in response to a question that the demographic profile of the early voter mirrored many of the biases in American politics that they have “read about in the interest groups chapter”–even using the \u00a0“what accent the heavenly chorus” quote from\u00a0Schattschneider<\/a>–I wonder if the students knew what class they were in.<\/p>\n

To Geer’s credit, he told me afterward that the students will probably be panicked, and maybe that’s a good thing!\"\"<\/p>\n

The highlight was so much fun that I high-fived the instructors (Geer along with\u00a0Josh Clinton<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Bruce Oppenheimer<\/a>).<\/p>\n

One thing I enjoy doing is showing citizens how much information is available on the internet about voter registration and voting turnout. \u00a0In this case, I decided to do a quick analysis of the\u00a0North Carolina<\/a>\u00a0absentee voter file. \u00a0I harvested 10 addresses that appeared to be students at Vanderbilt. \u00a0I tried to anonymize them as best I could, reporting just first names and cities. \u00a0The display is shown below.<\/p>\n

I put this up on the overhead, and up goes a hand in the back of the room. \u00a0“I’m Natalie” came a voice from the back of the room. \u00a0“I’m Brian” said another student. \u00a0It turned out that\u00a0five of the ten names\u00a0were students in the room.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
10 Vanderbilt University addresses from the NC absentee file<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

A few students seemed to be nodding off to my somnolent presentation. \u00a0They all woke up after that.<\/p>\n

Fun times in Nashville. \u00a0My daughter, Katie, and I are off to\u00a0Puckett’s Grocery f<\/a>or dinner and some music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My day in\u00a0Nashville\u00a0has been wonderful–thanks again to John Geer and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions for hosting me. My lecture had one lowlight and one highlight. \u00a0I wonder if the highlight is shared by my good friends … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty","category-paul-gronke","category-voting-and-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":548,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}