{"id":81151,"date":"2022-10-11T17:53:21","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T17:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/?p=81151"},"modified":"2022-10-11T18:24:16","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T18:24:16","slug":"the-idea-of-democracy-is-simple-its-execution-is-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2022\/10\/the-idea-of-democracy-is-simple-its-execution-is-complicated\/","title":{"rendered":"The idea of democracy is simple. Its execution is complicated."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In 2016, 137.5 million Americans voted in the presidential election. For some, casting their ballot wasn\u2019t easy. Six years later, voters are the most polarized they\u2019ve been in decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How do we sustain a republic? Restore faith in the election process, says <a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/urivotes\/meet\/macht\/\">Gretchen Macht<\/a>. Macht is an assistant professor of mechanical, industrial and systems engineering at the 溏心vlog免费B站 and the founding director of 溏心vlog免费B站 VOTES.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Established in 2017 with the aim of using data and technological advances to help shorten voter wait times and improve voting procedures, <a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/urivotes\/\">溏心vlog免费B站 VOTES<\/a> takes an engineer\u2019s approach to election science. Macht and her team of graduate and undergraduate students study voting through various lenses: voting in person versus voting by mail, how the accessibility of polling places affects persons with disabilities, strategies to avoid COVID infection in polling places, election law, allocating election resources, and the arrangement of polling place facilities, among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Simply put, 溏心vlog免费B站 VOTES studies how a system \u2013 an election \u2013 functions and how to improve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Macht, \u201cPeople will believe the outcome of an election under two conditions: one, their person won; two, their voting experience was easy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She notes some of the issues in the past presidential election were related to the length of time it took election administrators to count mail ballots. \u201cWhen the counts didn\u2019t meet voters\u2019 expectations, they thought things were wrong with the election.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Recently named an election expert by the Board of MIT\u2019s Elections Lab, Macht says, \u201cMy elections work is a calling. It is inspiring to watch democracy at work, and now it\u2019s become a question of how can I continue to make this happen? How can I continue to help?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>To schedule an interview, contact:&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dawn Bergantino, 溏心vlog免费B站 Communications, at 401.874.4147 or&nbsp;<a href=\"mailto:dawn_bergantino@uri.edu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dawn_bergantino@uri.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2016, 137.5 million Americans voted in the presidential election. For some, casting their ballot wasn\u2019t easy. Six years later, voters are the most polarized they\u2019ve been in decades. How do we sustain a republic? Restore faith in the election process, says Gretchen Macht. Macht is an assistant professor of mechanical, industrial and systems engineering [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":81152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81151"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81158,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81151\/revisions\/81158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}