On November 19, 2021, the State Democracy Research Initiative and the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison co-hosted a live-streamed discussion on unfolding redistricting developments, emerging themes, and what to expect moving forward in Wisconsin and around the country. A video recording of this discussion is available below.
Panelist Biographies
Barry Burden
Professor of Political Science @ University of Wisconsin-Madison
Barry C. Burden is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also Director of the Elections Research Center and is the Lyons Family Chair in Electoral Politics. His research and teaching are based in American politics, with an emphasis on electoral politics and representation. He is co-editor of The Measure of American Elections, author of Personal Roots of Representation, and co-author of Why Americans Split Their Tickets: Campaigns, Competition, and Divided Government. Burden has also published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, and Electoral Studies. Burden is affiliated with the La Follette School of Public Affairs, the Center for Demography of Health and Aging, the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership, and the Election Administration Project.
Ruth Greenwood
Director, Election Law Clinic @ Harvard
Ruth is the Director of the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School. She engages in litigation and advocacy on a variety of election law cases, while training the next generation of election lawyers. Ruth litigated two partisan gerrymandering cases from the trial level to the Supreme Court of the United States, Gill v. Whitford and Rucho v. Common Cause, and, with her team, won the first ever tri-coalition claim under the federal Voting Rights Act in Holloway v. City of Virginia Beach. In addition, Ruth has advised dozens of state advocates on drafting and implementing independent redistricting commissions, state voting rights acts, and adopting ranked choice voting. Ruth was previously the Co-Director of Voting Rights and Redistricting at the Campaign Legal Center, Lead Counsel for Voting Rights at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and a Redistricting Fellow with the Democratic National Committee’s Voting Rights Institute.
Robert Yablon
Professor of Law @ University of Wisconsin-Madison
Robert Yablon teaches Civil Procedure, Federal Jurisdiction, and the Law of Democracy. His research interests include political and election law, constitutional law, federal courts, and statutory interpretation. He co-directs the Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative. Professor Yablon received his bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his master’s degree in social policy from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He then earned his J.D. at Yale Law School, where he was an Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal. Following law school, Professor Yablon served as a law clerk for Judge William Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. He also worked in private practice at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Emily Zhang
Ph.D. Candidate @ Stanford
Emily is a Ph.D candidate in political science and a Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow of the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education. She received her JD from Stanford Law School in 2016. From 2017-2019, she worked as an attorney sponsored by the Skadden Foundation Fellowship at the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union litigating voter suppression and redistricting cases in Kansas, Ohio, and New York. Her research focuses on the protection of minority voters in the redistricting process and the enfranchisement of new voters.