- Associate Professor
Biography
Dr. Michael Ritter teaches and conducts research on subjects relating to American politics, methods, and comparative politics. He received his bachelor’s degrees in political science and English literature from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, and his Ph. D. in Political Science from the University of Iowa. His primary areas of research are elections, voting and voter registration laws, election administration, and inequality. His research has appeared in the Election Law Journal, Social Science Quarterly, French Politics, and the Sociology Compass. He has a 2020 book, Accessible Elections: How the States Can Help Americans Vote (Oxford University Press), that examines the unique voting and election administration systems of the American states, and their impact on voter turnout, voter turnout equality, and campaign mobilization. He is the co-creator (Ritter and Tolbert 2024) of the County Election Administration index, designed to compare the performance of county election administrations throughout the U.S., and the creator (Ritter 2023) of the Postal Index, designed to assess how well the U.S. Postal Service facilitates absentee and mail voting in various parts of the United States. His current scholarship focuses include several article and book projects on elections and election administration
Education
- Ph.D., University of Iowa
- M.A., University of Iowa
- B.S., University of Wisconsin-River Falls
Research Interests
American politics, comparative politics, methods, political behavior, political institutions, elections/election administration, public policy
Recent Publications
- Ritter, Michael. 2024. “Building a Cross-National Research Dialogue on Elections and Election Administration between the USA and France. French Politics. 1-7.
- Ritter, Michael, and Caroline Tolbert. 2024. “Measuring County Election Administration in the United States.” Election Law Journal 23(3): 258-276.
- Ritter, Michael. 2023. “Assessing the Impact of the United States Postal System and Election Administration on Absentee and Mail Voting in the 2012 and 2020 U.S. Midterm and Presidential Elections.” Election Law Journal 22(2): 166-184.
- Ritter, Michael, and Caroline Tolbert. 2020. Access Elections: How the States Can Help Americans Vote. Oxford University Press.
- Ritter, Michael, and Frederick Solt. 2019. “Economy Inequality and Campaign Participation.” Social Science Quarterly 100(3): 678-688.