My core research interests include campaigns, parties and primaries.
"Suppressing Black Votes: A Historical Case Study of Voting Restrictions in Louisiana." with Luke Keele and Ismail White. American Political Science Review 2021.
Abstract: Southern states have used a variety of methods to disenfranchise African American voters. Empirical data on the effectiveness of these measures is rare. We present a unique data source from Louisiana that allows us to empirically document voter registration rates from the end of Reconstruction to the present. Using basic time series data, we document how voter registration rates changed over time in response to state restrictions. We then conduct a second analysis, which focuses on Louisiana’s use of the Understanding Clause to reduce voter registration among Blacks. We show that in parishes that used the Understanding Clause, Black registration rates dropped by nearly 30 percentage points, with little effect on white registration. The findings of this paper have important implications for understanding the potential for discrimination in the enforcement of modern, ostensibly nonracial, voter eligibility requirements, such as voter ID laws, which grant substantial discretion to local officials in determining voter eligibility.
Earlier versions of this paper include this MPSA paper and a dissertation chapter focused on 1940-2010, available here.
"Saved from a Second Slavery: Black Voter Registration in Louisiana from Reconstruction to the Voting Rights Act" With Ismail White. Prepared for the 2016 Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.
Past working papers are below:
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This is a dissertation chapter, exploring the role of ambition and candidate trainings in descriptive representation through a unique experiment.
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"The Marginal Effects of Direct Mail on Vote Choice" Prepared for the 2015 Midwest Political Science Assocation Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.
This paper presents a field experiment directly testing the marginal effects of direct mail on
individual vote choice. Although most direct mail sent by campaigns is intended to change voter's
candidate choice, the majority of prior research into the effects of direct mail has focused on turnout
effects. This experiment is unique in two respects. Using three State Legislative districts in North
Carolina during the 2014 election I survey individuals on vote choice after the treatment directly
measuring individual level effects, and I vary the amount of mail received by voters. This experiment
found no effect on vote choice from increased amounts of direct mail.
"Cross-Court Communication: Analyzing State Supreme Court Citation Networks" With Jonathan S. Hack. Prepared for the 2015 Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA and the 2015 Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.
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In this paper we explore judicial communication across state supreme courts, using network and dyadic
analysis of interstate citations. In contrast to the literature analyzing state policy change, which asserts
that state legislatures often implement policies adopted by neighboring states, the role of transjudicial
communication as a mechanism for policy diusion has received much less attention. One study estab-
lished that state supreme cite other state supreme courts in a complex web of communication, deference
and derogation (Caldeira 1985). Utilizing a new dataset of all interstate citations by U.S. state supreme
courts in 1995, we show that state supreme court citations of other state courts are highly motivated by
ideology, geography, and prestige.
