Walter R. Mebane Jr. APSA Candidate Statement

Career and Accomplishments

Walter R. Mebane, Jr., (BA Harvard 1979, Ph.D. Yale 1985) is professor of political science and professor of statistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Previously he taught at Cornell University. He works on political methodology and American politics, especially elections. His current primary project is Election Forensics, which aims to develop statistical and computational tools for detecting anomalies and diagnosing fraud in election results. His work in this area includes several papers about the 2000 presidential election focused on Florida and a report written for the Democratic National Committee analyzing the 2004 presidential election in Ohio. Recently he has been drawn into work on elections outside the United States. Another project studies strategic coordination among voters in American elections, linked to the separation of powers between the president and the Congress. In earlier work he demonstrated the existence of systematic patterns of election-related manipulation in the relationship between unemployment and social insurance taxes and benefits. Mebane previously served on the council of the Midwest Political Science Association and on the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review and Perspectives on Politics. Currently he is a member of the Board of Overseers of the American National Election Study and the Advisory Board of the National Annenberg Election Study.