Professor Michael Coulter chaired an eight member Independent Election Commission appointed by the Mercer County Commissioners after some electronic voting machines used in the county failed to record votes in a presidential election. Student Emily Shaheen served as research assistant for the committee. Data that Professor Coulter and Shaheen collected about the performance of the machine compared to the performance of other electronic voting machines led to a state agency decertifying the voting machines and prohibiting the use of those machines in future elections.
2017 Benjamin Allison (’18, national security studies minor) presented research at the 2017 annual meeting and conference of the Midwest Political Science Association. He was one of approximately 25 undergraduates selected to present research on international relations and security.
His research focused on understanding patterns and likelihood of terrorist attacks on bridges and tunnels in the U.S. Among his findings are that counter-terrorism efforts are effective in diminishing the value of bridges and tunnels as targets, and that terrorist organizations do not highly value bridges and tunnels as a means of targeting large numbers of people in a single attack.
2016 Kyle Niehoff (’17, political science major/national security studies minor) presented research at the 2016 annual meeting and conference of the Midwest Political Science Association. He was one of approximately 25 undergraduates selected to present research on international relations and security.
His research focused on political conditions that breed so-called right-wing radicals in the young adult population of the U.S. His findings showed moderate causality between perception of liberal policy agendas and the rise in this population.
U.S. Foreign Policy
Kyra Rumble (’16 political science major/national security studies minor) presented research at the 2016 annual meeting and conference of the Midwest Political Science Association. She was one of approximately 25 students selected to present research on U.S. foreign policy.
Her research focused on the application of negative foreign policy pressure resulting in increased oppression of minority populations. Increased negative pressure in U.S. foreign policy was found to increase oppression of minority groups in sub-Saharan Africa and Southwest Asia.
Race Relations
Danielle DiQuattro ('18 political science major/economics minor) recently presented a paper "Racial Tensions, Discrimination, and Relations and Their Effects on Political Participation" at the 2017 annual Pennsylvania Political Science Association Conference.
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