Block the vote
There was once a time when the business of running elections concerned none but bureaucrats and volunteers, and sparked the interest of few but civics teachers and politics junkies. Now, thanks to a new wave of controversial voter identification laws in the buildup to the 2012 election, the topic filled the room at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) on Thursday. “Back in the 2000 election, we wouldn’t be having this kind of discussion,” Trey Grayson, director of the Institute of Politics, told the crowd. “Then, we all know what happened.” The hotly contested 2000 presidential election — in which, in Florida, every vote truly did matter because the race was so tight — sparked a renewed interest in election administration and a flood of election laws in the states. Though the number of laws being passed has not increased significantly in the past two years, they...