Thanks to Mike and Thad for inviting me to participate in this blog.

For those of you not familiar with my work, I’ve been conducting research into American elections and public opinion for about 20 years. I’ve worked for two of the premier survey research organizations in the United States–the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, where I obtained my BA; and the National Elections Study at the Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan, where I got a PhD.

I teach at Reed College in Portland, OR, where the sun is shining and we can still ski on a 200 inch base at Timberline!

In the past 18 months, I’ve become increasingly interested in the phenomenon of early voting, methods by which voters cast their ballots at places other than the precinct place and at times prior to election day. I’ll write more about early voting in coming days.

My blog, earlyvoting.blogspot.com, has been used to post news stories and news updates. I am going to move that work over to here, as well as use the opportunity given to me by Mike and Thad to post longer commentaries on research and policy development.