a selection of

reports and publications

Aug. 2024

research and analysis: “election inequities in indian country: understanding native american turnout in federal elections” by Megan gall, kevin stout, and allison neswood

commissioned by the native american rights fund (NARF)

Native Americans are among the fastest growing groups in the nation and Native American voters increasingly hold determinative power in elections, especially in the many areas where populations are concentrated, like reservations. Despite a recent trend of modest growth in turnout, Native American participation trails other racial and ethnic groups. This is due to the considerable obstacles Native Americans face for voter registration and turnout including a lack of home mail delivery and residential addresses on homes, geographic isolation, poor road networks, and technological barriers, among many others. We estimated turnout for the last six federal elections because turnout is a key indicator for understanding inequalities in political participation and working towards equitable solutions for Native American communities. To better understand the issues, we looked nationally and focused in on 13 states with relatively high Native American populations. Results highlight the considerable work ahead of us.

You can read the report and press release here or view the report here.

Aug. 2024

research and analysis: “Disconnected democracy: the impact of mail services on native american voter registration and mail balloting” by Megan Gall, Kevin Stout, and Allison Neswood

COMMISSIONED BY THE NATIVE AMERICAN RIGHTS FUND (narf)

Residential addressing and home mail delivery are critical issues in the voter registration and mail balloting process. While most households have residential addresses in the familiar city-style formats, some rural areas and especially Native American reservations do not have similar addressing systems or full U.S. Postal Service coverage. Lacking a residential address or access to home mail delivery complicates voter registration, election day voting, and vote by mail (VBM) opportunities. Nonexistent or unreliable mail service disrupts the delivery of timeline registration forms and ballots and states often reject registrations from households that do not have a physical address. Even if voter registration is successful, states sometimes fail to mail VBM ballots to these homes or count VBM ballots returned from these homes. And strict voter ID requirements sometimes disenfranchise voters with non-traditional addresses. These issues systematically suppress Native American participation and are especially harmful in states that significantly rely heavily on VBM. And we already know that Native American turnout is often lower than any other group largely because of systematic barriers to voting.

This paper explores the relationship between Native American populations and the availability of home mail delivery service using U.S. Census Bureau data to better understand the geographic and demographic dynamics in these areas. We show that areas with more Native Americans are associated with more unreliable mail delivery. This association is stronger for Native Americans than any other racial or ethnic group and applies to both on- and off-reservation areas. However, the pattern is especially strong in states with high numbers of Native Americans living on reservations. In these states, reservation areas are classified by the Census Bureau as having significantly more mail delivery barriers than off-reservation areas. In sum, the more Native Americans there are in an area—whether it is on a reservation or not—the more likely the area has been assessed by the Census Bureau as having unreliable mail delivery.

You can read the report and press release here and view the full report here.

Nov. 2023

national congress of american indians (NCAI) regional profiles by blockwell consulting, llc

commissioned by ncai

Updated and augmented regional profiles for the National Congress of American Indians in order to support tribal research and a better understanding of demographics, education, and economic characteristics of the Native American population in twelve regions covering 49 states. The data, primarily from the Census, and are broken down by state and race. Topics of interest include population, voting age population, median age, and Section 203 coverage, educational attainment, high school completion, internet access, unemployment, income source, employment by industry, poverty, housing characteristics, vehicle ownership, and turnout. You can access all the regions from the link above but we’ve linked the Southeast Regional profile here.

“As part of NCAI's effort to foster regional supports for tribal research, the NCAI Policy Research Center has developed a series of Regional Data Profiles for all 12 NCAI Areas. These profiles provide region-level population demographic data and some information on trends in education, household, and economic characteristics by states in each region.” - NCAI website

Sept. 2023

Presentation: “existing barriers in indian country: a look a the numbers” by megan gall and kevin stout

presented at the Native American Voting Rights coalition meeting in washington, DC

Collected and analyzed demographic, economic, language, and election data for ten states with large Native American populations in order to better understand challenges and barriers to political participation. The presentation highlighted how poverty, low broadband internet access, lack of postal addresses, and long travel distances to polling places are concentrated in many Native American areas. When comparing reservation counties with homogenous white counties, the heavily white counties tend to have more resources per voter such as poll workers, polling places, and precincts while also reporting easier poll worker recruitment. Data show counties with a higher percentage of Native Americans in nine target states typically see lower voter registration, lower turnout, higher registration rejections and higher provisional ballot rejections.

Feb. 2023

research and analysis: “The death in custody reporting act: past, present, and future” by Megan gall, david janovsky, and bree spencer

commission by the leadership conference education fund

Conducted research and analysis on the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) with a focus on suggesting better data collection strategies to create better transparency and knowledge around deaths occurring from interactions with law enforcement. The report delves into the decades-long history of the law including its motivations, previous versions, and implementation plans. Various agencies have collected data concerning arrest-related deaths and deaths in custody and these efforts are detailed to suggest improvements. In order to meet DCRA’s goals, recommendations include: more continuity and comprehensiveness in the forms used to collect data, better training, wider compliance, more detailed databases, and more timely data releases.

“It is clear from the research on deaths in custody presented in the subcommittee hearing, and the experiences of people who die in custody, that preventable deaths in our nation's jails, state prisons, and federal prisons are a real, urgent concern. The limited data available today show that thousands of people die in government custody each year and that they are disproportionately people of color. This is why DCRA is so important. While DCRA may be a data collection, reporting, and research statute, it is grounded first and foremost in human rights. Policy changes that reduce preventable deaths will not occur until decisionmakers, advocates, and researchers understand the full breadth of this problem. Collecting complete, accurate in-custody death information is a critical step toward reducing deaths.”

You can read the Leadership Conference Education Fund press release here. Senator Ossoff released a press statement and transcript where he requested the report be read into the Congressional record while questioning Attorney General Garland about DCRA. There were also some great articles about the report including this article by NPR titled ‘Deaths in custody are a crisis, and data on them is a black hole, a new report says’ by Jaclyn Diaz and this article by The Grio titled ‘Oversight report finds flaws in DOJ data collection of deaths in police custody’ by Gerren Keith Gaynor.

You can read the full report here.

Book chapter: “Making maps: a practioner’s perspective” by megan gall, karin macdonald, and fred mcbride

published in political geometry: rethinking redistricting in the us with math, law, and everything in between edited by moon duchin and olivia walch published by Birkhäuser

From the back cover: “Why does my congressional district look like a salamander?” Politically engaged citizens have been asking this question for far too long. This volume collects perspectives from a wide cross-section of disciplines to explain what drives gerrymandering, why it can be hard to stamp out, and how we might go about fixing it. With topics ranging from the Voting Rights Act to Markov chains to the geography of communities, this book serves as a 21st century toolkit for how we can better approach this corrosive phenomenon. The volume editors gather experts from a variety of fields to provide as many different perspectives on gerrymandering as possible. Thanks to the breadth of expertise found across these chapters, ranging from lawyers to mathematicians to civil rights activists, readers will discover new ways of thinking about redistricting in the United States. Illustrations and helpful walkthroughs appear throughout to clearly explain otherwise complex ideas from these areas. Political Geometry is a must-have for anybody interested in political representation in the United States elections, and for anyone who’s ever thought, “There must be a better way to do this.”

August 2022

research and analysis: “vote by mail: policy modeling of voter particiPATION in the 2018 midterm electons” by megan gall and kevin stout

Commissioned by deliver my vote education fund, national vote at home coalition, and the andrew goodman foundation

“In this research, we examine the difference between five vote-by-mail policies in place in the 2018 midterm elections. We use statistical modeling to understand the effects of different vote-by-mail policies nationwide and estimate what might have changed in 2018 based on different voting systems. On a continuum from the most restrictive policy to the most expansive, we examine five different vote-by-mail policies: Excuse Required, Excuse Required with an Age Waiver, No Excuse Required, Permanent Mail Ballot Option, and Vote at Home. This study is unique in that we consider multiple vote-by-mail policies across multiple jurisdictions rather than a single policy implementation in a single location.

Vote-by-mail policies have already impacted the political landscape of the United States and have potential to radically expand access and participation for all voters, particularly historically disenfranchised voters. These results are based solely on the 2018 election, but can 1help guide outreach as we prepare for the 2022 midterm elections. Together, we can expand access, increase participation, and advocate for the vote-by-mail policies that make sense in our communities.”

You can read the full report here.

Feb. 2022

research and analysis: “Vote by mail in 2020 and our collective opportunity in 2022” by dr. megan gall

commissioned by the deliver my vote education fund

We analyzed vote by mail (VBM) and absentee vote use in five key states of Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the primary and general elections in 2016, 2018, and 2020. While all states saw increases, VBM and absentee ballots use rate in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin increased by over 30 percentage points from 2018 to 2020. Voters of color were especially likely to adopt VBM and absentee voting in 2020. The increase in VBM and absentee use was especially noticeable among young voters of color in 2020. These findings provide the basis for voter outreach efforts for VBM in future midterm elections.

You can read the report here.

Oct. 2021

Analysis: “California racially polarized voting analyses”by dr. megan gall and dr. kevin stout

proprietary report prepared for the California citizens redistricting commission

This was a proprietary report presented to the CA CRC presenting racially polarized voting analyses for California for the 2020 redistricting cycle.

May 2021

research and analysis: “U.s. census bureau 2020 disclosure avoidance system and implications for redistricting” - proprietary report submitted to the u.s. census bureau by dr. megan gall

proprietary report Commissioned by the Native American Rights Fund for the U.S. Census Bureau

“In 1975 the United States Congress enacted Public Law (PL) 94-171 which was designed to provide states with the data necessary to conduct legislative redistricting. Since 1980, the US Census Bureau releases the PL 94-171 redistricting data summary files after ever Decennial Census, and it is the fundamental data set used in redistricting across the nation. This year the Census Bureau is applying a new disclosure avoidance system (DAS) to protect individual privacy. The DAS algorithm (also known as ‘differential privacy’) is designed to infuse noise into the data, including the PL 94-171 data set used for redistricting. We assessed the impact of the DAS algorithm on redistricting data with respect to existing majority-minority AIAN districts, geography of communities, and the requirements in traditional redistricting principles such as compactness.”

research and analysis: “too many ballots of last resort - disparities in provisional ballot use in ohio’s 2020 election by dr. megan gall and dr. kevin stout

FOR ALL VOTING IS LOCAL

Nearly 6 million Ohioans voted in the 2020 general election, a record turnout. However, amid a pandemic, the way Ohioans cast their ballots changed. Only 2.47 million people voted on Election Day, with the rest of voters utilizing vote-by-mail (VBM) and early-voting options. Of those 2.47 million voters, 154,675 were asked to cast a provisional ballot, and more than 24,000 ballots were ultimately rejected. This report analyzes the use and rejection of those provisional ballots. The trends surrounding provisional ballots in Ohio show increased use, increased rejection rates, and decreased cure rates. The provisional ballot system was originally designed to give voters an opportunity to prove their eligibility to vote rather than to be turned away. However, these trends, and previous research, fit with a larger pattern nationwide where nonwhite, young, and low-income communities cast a disproportionate share of provisional ballots.

You can read the report here.

Sept. 2020

research and analysis: “How Ohio Continued to Silence Black and Brown Voters in a Vote-by-Mail Election” by Shruti banerjee

for Demos

“In the 2020 primary, voters in primarily white neighborhoods of Cuyahoga County were nearly twice as likely to return an absentee ballot and have it counted as voters in majority Black neighborhoods. While white neighborhoods had a 28 percent turnout rate, Black neighborhoods had a 14 percent turnout rate and Hispanic neighborhoods had a 16 percent turnout rate. In comparison, in the county’s 2016 primary elections, voter turnout was higher for all groups but disparities were still apparent: white neighborhoods had a 52 percent turnout, while Black neighborhoods had a 30 percent turnout, and Hispanic neighborhoods had a 34 percent turnout.

In short, we cannot assume that voting by mail will erase, or even begin to shrink, disparities that have long existed in our democracy. Barriers to voting prevent Black and brown communities from electing officials who will fight for policies that address their needs and reflect their experiences in areas like policing, health care, education, housing, voting access, and employment.”

You can read the report here.

May 2020

analysis: “COVID-19 Silenced Voters of Color in Wisconsin” by Shruti banerjee and dr. megan gall

for Demos and all voting is local at the leadership conference education fund

“Although a record number of absentee ballots were returned during the 2020 primary election in Wisconsin, overall vote counts do not tell us how COVID-19 is impacting access to the ballot box for different racial groups. While white wards had an average of 49 percent voter turnout, Black and Hispanic wards had an average of about 18 percent turnout. 

There is a dire and immediate need for all cities and counties to create measures that ensure eligible voters can safely and securely participate in future elections. Centuries of voter suppression and disenfranchisement have led to low voter turnout among communities of color. This compromises our democracy by silencing historically marginalized voters. Providing equal access to the ballot box is the only way to ensure that communities of color can exercise their right to vote and support policies that would benefit their communities, including better health care and economic safeguards.”

You can read the full report here.

2019

tableau infographic: death row usa by dr. megan gall

created for the thurgood marshall institute: a center at naacp ldf

Death Row USA was an infographic powered by Tableau Public that explored the Death Row USA data that gave voice to the names of those lost to death row in the United States as well as explore the trends in historical data, the current state of death row, and the inherent racial disparities.

Although no longer interactive, you can view all of the slides here.

2018

book chapter: "how laquan mcdonald's shooting shook up the cook county state's attorney election" by dr. Megan gall and jennifer patin

In Atlas of the 2016 elections

"On October 20, 2014, a Chicago police officer shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times. At the time, McDonald’s death went relatively unpublicized. A year later, after a judge ordered the police body cam video of McDonald’s shooting to be made public, the fatality got national attention, and communities revived demonstration on a much larger scale. With racial politics and dynamics front and center in the 2016 Cook County election, how did Chicagoans decide their next State’s Attorney? Ecological inference (EI) models give us some insight. These models allow us draw conclusions about individual-level behavior using aggregate level data. We estimated the voting behavior of African-Americans, Latinos, and Whites in the 2016 State’s Attorney Democratic Primary for all of Cook County, the City of Chicago, and the Chicago Townships (or suburbs)."

August 6, 2015

September 2004

report and analysis: state of colorado commuter dynamics atlas

prepared for the colorado deparTMENT of local affairs

The Commuter Dynamics Atlas is a proprietary compilation of maps detailing commute sheds and labor sheds for all of Colorado’s 64 counties using the U.S. Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) dataset data from 2004. This fulsome report was put together for the Colorado Department of Local Affairs.