The US Midterm Election

Note: Venue is the
Arts and Humanities library (HF-biblioteket)

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You can also follow the event on Zoom
. Breakfast will be served at the library.

In November, we will see the effects of the 2020 redistricting cycle as US voters will cast their ballot in the midterm election. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and one third of the seats in the Senate are in play. But is the election already rigged?

Following the 2020 census, all fifty states will have redrawn their legislative districts. Although laws and court decisions put constraints on redistricting, many redistricting institutions practice so-called gerrymandering, which involves drawing new districts with the intention of giving a political advantage to specific groups.

What is gerrymandering and why is it so difficult to stop? Is it anti-democratic? What is at stake in the 2022 midterm election?

Panel (on-site):

Gunnar Grendstad is a professor at the Institute for Comparative Politics in the University of Bergen. He has worked closely with American elections and is holding the course on American Politics at the University of Bergen. Gunnar’s key research focuses on judicial behavior and American governance.

Hilmar Mjelde is a political scientist with a PhD in comparative politics (University of Bergen 2014). His research areas are political parties, US politics and government, politics and the media, civil society, the extreme right, radicalization, and immigration debate in the media. He is also an expert media commentator in the area of Americans government and politics, with regular appearances in national media.

Alexander Verdoes is working as a PhD candidate on the Strengthening Regional Democracy – Contributing to Good Democratic Governance project at the institute of comparative politics at UiB. His research focuses on how regional electoral democracy functions in Europe with a particular focus on regional elections, regional government formations, regional electoral systems, and legislative-executive relations at the regional level.

Photo: Victoria Pickering on flickr