Welcome to my academic portfolio. I have been Assistant Teaching Professor of Politics at Drexel University since Fall 2018. My research is on American political institutions in comparative and historical perspective.

My regular course offerings are introduction to American politics, political parties, electoral systems (qua American political reform), and undergraduate research methodology. I also have taught courses on American political development, social movements, urban politics, state politics, and the U.S. Congress.

In More Parties or No Parties (2022), I urge caution about ranked-choice voting and propose a 'shifting coalitions' theory of reform in general. The book draws mainly on archival data from cities that had (and failed to adopt) proportional representation during the Progressive Era and New Deal. The first few pages can be read here. A video with key points is here.

Other projects look at change in the U.S. party system, current developments in electoral reform, and how those reforms might affect representation.

Georgetown University granted my Ph.D. in July 2017. I majored in comparative government and minored in American. That major incorporated coursework on political institutions generally, completed during an earlier M.A. (2009) from Georgetown's Democracy & Governance program. Between those degrees, I ran ElectionGuide.org at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. I also worked at the Campaign Finance Institute in Summer 2008.

I was a Research Fellow at the Democracy Fund for the 2017-8 academic year, then an adjunct professor in James Madison University's DC program. Before graduate school, I worked for FairVote, Café Bonaparte, and a congressional district office in Connecticut.

Recent journal articles