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Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Launches David M. Einhorn Institute for Early Relational Health
/PRNewswire/ -- Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) announced today a $50 million gift from Einhorn Collaborative to establish the David M. Einhorn...
Samsung's New Foldables Come With Gemini Notebook Pre-Installed
Google and Samsung have revealed the Gemini-powered AI tools coming to the new Galaxy foldables and smartwatches.
Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 Is for Those of Us Who Can't Stop Scrolling
With a new 4:3 aspect ratio optimized for both horizontal and vertical content, Samsung's wide book-style foldable could be better suited to the way we actually browse, watch and consume content.
Sunlight Boosts Fertility? What Scientists Have Discovered Will Surprise You - Futura-Sciences
Vitamin D, Sunlight, and Sperm: Digging Into the Science A meta-analysis published in the journal Biomedicines reviewed several observational studies that all pointed to a significant link between vitamin D levels—which are mainly produced in humans through sunlight exposure—and sperm characteristics. These studies also suggested a connection between higher blood...
Watch China's Hanfu Boom Is a Political Tool
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Karishma Vaswani says China's Hanfu boom gives young people comfort amid economic uncertainty and the Communist Party a tool for promoting national greatness. But nostalgia cannot create jobs, revive the property market or persuade young people to start families.
Philip Morris Sales Boosted by Growth in International Business
Philip Morris International recorded higher revenue in the second quarter, boosted by growth in its international business and its Zyn portfolio in the U.S.
More Women Own Businesses Than Ever. But Are Female Entrepreneurs Better Off?
More women own businesses than ever, but most earn less than the jobs they left. Why the women-owned business boom isn't the win it appears to be.
Democratic socialists won in liberal cities. Can they do it in a swing state?
Wisconsin’s Francesca Hong hopes the burst of support for democratic socialists in liberal parts of the U.S. will boost her bid for governor in the battleground state.
Flutter Entertainment Stock Falls as Rising Prediction Market Volumes Pressure Traditional Gambling
Flutter Entertainment stock drops nearly 4% as rising prediction market volumes from platforms like Kalshi pressure traditional sportsbooks.
By 39-22% NY’ers Say Online Sports Gambling is Bad for New York
1 in 4 NY’ers Placed a Bet on a Sporting Event in the Last Year Of Bettors: 84% Bet With Online Sportsbooks; 54% Bet With Friends or Family; 41% Bet…
New Science Fiction About Truth and Lies in an Age of War
Three recent novels explore the use of deception by both invaders and the invaded.
New York Yankees news: Max Fried returns, gets start Wednesday
Fried to skip final rehab start; Boone walks back Stanton comments; Domínguez talks trade rumors; Schlittler Cy fave
World Cup lessons for Kansas City small business: Show passion, embrace local, be an 'experience'
Not every business saw a boost from visiting fans, but some leveraged a prime location, ingenuity in planning, or a personal connection to get a boost from the FIFA World Cup's stint in Kansas City.
Airbus Shares Climb on Midterm Profitability Goal
The stock gained more than 7% after the group said it aimed to significantly boost its profitability in the coming years, betting demand will remain strong.
Panera founder and Cava chairman Ron Shaich bets $100 million on Level99, bringing his restaurant industry playbook to entertainment
Act III Holdings doubles its stake in Level99 after the Disney Springs opening, betting restaurant-industry category discipline can build a dominant player in entertainment.
RIBER: FIRST-HALF 2026 BUSINESS ACTIVITY Business growth, resilient order book and continued rollout of ROSIE
FIRST-HALF 2026 BUSINESS ACTIVITYBusiness growth, resilient order book and continued rollout of ROSIE Bezons, July 22, 2026 – 8:00 am – RIBER, the global leader in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) equipment for the semiconductor industry, reported 19% revenue growth for the first half of 2026, supported by strong momentum in services and accessories. Against a commercial backdrop marked by tighter export licensing conditions for Asia, the Company is continuing to roll out its ROSIE strategic roadmap
Dimension Capital's $800M third fund shows the intersection of science and compute is booming
The four-year-old firm's latest fund is 60% larger than its second vehicle announced 18 months ago.
Is PENN Entertainment (PENN) Undervalued After Its Alberta Online Gaming Launch?
PENN Entertainment (PENN) is in focus after launching theScore Bet Sportsbook & Casino in Alberta, along with standalone theScore Casino and Hollywood Casino apps, extending its Canadian online gaming reach across the province. See our latest analysis for PENN Entertainment. The Alberta launch lands while PENN Entertainment’s share price sits at $21.23, with a 7 day share price return of 5.2% and a 90 day share price return of 43.7%. This contrasts with a 1 year total shareholder return of...
Spain’s World Cup win gives Las Vegas tapas restaurant a business boost
Spain’s World Cup win gives Las Vegas tapas restaurant a business boost
How a Former Teacher Built a 50,000-Member Women's Business Community
Amanda Smith started Dallas Girl Gang as a simple Facebook group. Now, the platform is helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch businesses.
Katie Porter ‘done for now’ with politics, will become book influencer
The former Democratic congresswoman plans to offer "book recommendations, book ideas and author content.”
AI and the rise of the universal entertainment app
Over the past decade, streaming platforms competed by dominating individual formats like music, video, podcasts, or audiobooks. Now, as AI makes it easier to create, organize, and recommend content, those distinctions are fading, pushing companies like Spotify, Netflix, YouTube, and TikTok to become all-purpose entertainment destinations instead.
AI and the rise of the universal entertainment app
Over the past decade, streaming platforms competed by dominating individual formats like music, video, podcasts, or audiobooks. Now, as AI makes it easier to create, organize, and recommend content, those distinctions are fading, pushing companies like Spotify, Netflix, YouTube, and TikTok to become all-purpose entertainment destinations instead.
Pressley, Warren, Booker, Moore, Dingell, Adams, Underwood, Colleagues Renew Push to Combat Maternal Health Crisis
Mamas First Act would expand Medicaid coverage to include prenatal, delivery, and postpartum care provided by doulas, midwives, tribal midwives,...
Why China's 'open' AI boom is a terrible business
China's AI models are impressing developers but losing investors. The problem? Open-weight AI is a much worse business than open-source software.
The Lean Startup Playbook Forgot Something Important: These 5 Mental Skills Determine Whether Your Idea Survives
A business school professor shares the mental roadblocks that keep people from innovating.
Cam Schlittler Praises Aaron Boone's Leadership Amid Yankees' Playoff Push
The New York Yankees are looking to get hot out of the All-Star break. Since returning, they've gone 2-2, but have picked up back-to-back wins over the Los Angeles Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates. The Yankees are aiming to make a third straight postseason appearance.
ECFR’s summer entertainment list 2026 – European Council on Foreign Relations
Whether you’re heading off on holiday or staying home this summer, ECFR’s entertainment recommendations—spanning books, podcasts and tv series—will help you rec
Bandai Namco Entertainment details a fully playable GAMESCOM 2026 line-up
Bandai Namco reveals its gamescom 2026 line-up: ACE COMBAT 8, DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE 3 & The Blood of Dawnwalker, all playable at Hall 6.1, booth A20/B021.
Halliday’s latest smart glasses feature a much-improved display
The new display is 1,000 percent less stupid.
Gatorade's First "Body of Science" Study Reveals Disparities in Women's Hydration & Nutrition Patterns
The Science of Her Sweat: Gatorade Sports Science Institute's (GSSI) new research shows women need more tailored hydration and nutrition guidance Key...
American Franchise Act Would Protect Small Businesses, Boost Economy
To: Members of the House Committee on Education and Workforce From: National Taxpayers Union Date: July 21, 2026 Subject: NTU’s views on the July 21 Markup I. Introduction On behalf of National Taxpayers Union, the nation’s oldest taxpayer advocacy organization, we write to express our views on legislation slated for consideration before the House Committee on Education and Workforce on July 21, 2026. While NTU recognizes that the Committee is considering a broader package of legislative propo, Author(s): Alexander Ciccone
90% of Organizations Report Strong AI and Cloud Foundations, but Business Performance Falls Short, Unisys Finds
/PRNewswire/ -- Unisys (NYSE: UIS) has released a new global report, "Unisys AI & Cloud Insights Report 2026: The benchmarks, the gaps, and what to do next,"...
CBO investigating feasibility of using healthcare fraud savings to fund Trump’s war
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is looking into the effectiveness of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ crackdown on waste and abuse in safety net healthcare programs, and whether the efforts could effectively generate tax revenue the government could then spend elsewhere.
Philadelphia offers forgivable $50,000 loans to help small businesses expand
Philadelphia's Boost Your Business program provides funding and other resources for selected companies each year.
Thanks to BookTok, business is booming for some North Texas independent bookstores
Some fear America is experiencing a literacy crisis, but business has been so good at Talking Animals Books in Grapevine that they opened a second location.
Earnings Preview: What To Expect From Live Nation Entertainment’s Report
Live Nation Entertainment will release its second-quarter earnings next month, and analysts anticipate a double-digit profit boost.
ZZ Top, Fetty Wap among 25 shows booked at new Satellite Music Hall
As the September opening of Satellite Music Hall gets closer, the Memphis venue's concert calendar continues to grow.
Radiology Partners names new head of clinical services
The country’s largest imaging group, with over 4,000 radiologists on its payroll, is tapping a former Universal Health Services exec to serve as president of its patient care division.
Fan Favorite Takes on TUF Winner at UFC Paris
Nathaniel Wood is back in action on September 5 in Paris, France. The Englishman puts his four-fight winning streak on the line against The Ultimate Fighter season 32 winner Mairon Santos. Both fighters will meet in the featherweight division.Multiple sources have confirmed the booking to Heavy.com. While both Wood and Santos remain unranked in the […] The post Fan Favorite Takes on TUF Winner at UFC Paris appeared first on HEAVY.
Linklaters partners handed record £2.5mn payday as Asia business booms
‘Magic circle’ law firm cites Hong Kong listings work and growth in US as it reports bumper payouts for top ranks
Bills’ ‘Nightmare’ Scenario Revealed That Could Derail Josh Allen’s Season
The Buffalo Bills made a big decision this offseason when they parted ways with head coach Sean McDermott and promoted Joe Brady to the new role.Buffalo struggled to reach the Super Bowl over the last six seasons, so it needed to take action to give the Bills and their fans a boost, which meant parting […] The post Bills’ ‘Nightmare’ Scenario Revealed That Could Derail Josh Allen’s Season appeared first on HEAVY.
Motorola tablet with 9 JBL speakers confirmed to feature 12.1-inch display
The Moto Pad 70 Groove is set to launch in India. Previously, the company revealed its design and confirmed that it will feature a nine-speaker JBL audio system. Now, the latest teaser reveals details about the tablet’s display and battery.
Boom in business for Wilkesboro as racing fans visit town
“The speedway has always been kind of a glimmer of hope, even when it was closed,” said Lee Huygens, Hampton Inn Wilkesboro.
Garmin CIRQA leaks in four colors with outdated sensor
Shortly before the launch of the Garmin CIRQA, leaked images reveal not only the design but also all four colors and even the sensor module. Garmin appears to be using a slightly older sensor to keep costs down.
Bernstein's Ian Moore on why prediction markets are outpacing sports books
Ian Moore, Bernstein, joins 'Closing Bell Overtime' to talk prediction markets outpacing sportsbooks during the World Cup and what's ahead for predictions markets and sports betting.
Monkeys are surprisingly good at geometry
They may understand shapes as well as your toddler.
Broadcom’s AI Mix Shift: How AVGO’s Booming AI Chip Business Changes the Investment Thesis
The AI sell-off extended on Friday and affected stock markets around the world. Oil prices remained volatile amid the U.S.-Iran tensions. Chip stocks, in particular, took the largest hit after a poor week. There is skepticism that AI chip prices are too high and that demand for computer memory and processors would be unsustainable if […]
Intel Xeon 6 Leaps To 8000 MT/s Memory Now, But The Real Payoff Waits For 8800 MT/s MRDIMM In 2027
Intel introduces 8000 MT/s DDR5 RDIMMs for Xeon 6 CPUs, boosting memory speed by 25% and offering a 20% increase in total memory bandwidth.
Pokémon TCG: Pitch Black ETBs and Booster Bundles Are Back in Stock at Amazon — Snap These Up ASAP For Fast Easy Delivery
Amazon has finally restocked the Pokémon TCG: Pitch Black Elite Trainer Box and booster sets. Get the breakdown on pricing, set list details, and chase cards here.
Cinema Operator AMC Entertainment Rides the Box Office Boom
AMC shares surged after Q2 results beat expectations, with record $321 million adjusted EBITDA, higher attendance and strong box office growth.
As Budget Cuts Loom, French Theater Turns Up the Political Heat
This year’s Avignon Festival has transformed into a staging ground for protests, defiant new works and some early 2027 presidential campaigning.
Jack Owens Obituary 2026
View Jack Owens's obituary, send flowers, find service dates, and sign the guestbook.
3 women's world records set at the annual Lumberjack World Championships
Meredith Ingbretson of Hayward set a world record in the Women's Boom Run, sprinting across the water and back over eight red cedar logs in 13.78 seconds.
AMC Entertainment delivers record Q2 results as summer releases boost results
AMC Entertainment Holdings (NYSE:AMC) shares rose 11% after the movie theater chain reported second-quarter results that exceeded Wall Street expectations, driven by a strong slate of summer blockbuster releases. The company reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.14 for the quarter ended...
Shaky political "science": breakdown of the peer review process
[This article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in December 2025, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting (RCV). Many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first four articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report; the second one analyzed a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report; a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research; and a fourth article that analyzed seven studies sponsored by New America’s political reform program that deployed flawed methodology based on “simulated” elections instead of real-world elections, which when combined with some basic misunderstandings of RCV, produced odd and misleading results]. In this fifth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we examine two flawed studies on the impact of RCV on voter turnout authored by San Francisco State University professor Jason McDaniel. McDaniel’s research in these two papers stands out for its puzzling methodology, inadequate and cherry-picked data, and faulty analyses that not only misunderstands ranked choice voting but reflects a basic misunderstanding of politics in general. The first of the McDaniel studies actually passed through a peer review process and then was subsequently published by the Journal of Urban Affairs, despite its obvious errors. It is perplexing that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the errors and send it back to McDaniel for a rewrite or outright rejection. This calls into question the credibility of the peer review process itself. The peer review process is supposed to represent the intellectual pinnacle of the profession – a way for academics to certify the quality of each other’s work, and to act as a check against sloppy research. In the case of the McDaniel study, the peer review process failed. Yet his flawed study has been cited dozens of times by other political scientists in their own flawed works — an unvirtuous circle of academic research. Here is the first Jason McDaniel study that we analyzed: “Writing the Rules to Rank the Candidates: Examining the Impact of Instant-Runoff Voting on Racial Group Turnout in San Francisco Mayoral Elections,” by Jason McDaniel, 2016, Journal of Urban Affairs. This study covered San Francisco’s use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in mayoral elections, purporting to show that RCV reduces voter turnout overall, increases voter errors, and has a negative impact on “marginal populations,” i.e. racial minorities, mainly as the result of the alleged complexity of RCV asking voters to rank candidates and having to be familiar with multiple candidates and related dynamics. McDaniel reached these conclusions by examining five San Francisco mayoral elections taking place in odd years (i.e. where there are no federal or state races on the ballot) from 1995 to 2011, comparing three earlier non-RCV races (in 1995, 1999 and 2003) with the later two RCV races (in 2007 and 2011). Only two RCV races were studied, and as McDaniel acknowledged, only the contest in 2011 was “competitive” (that contest in 2007 was the first mayoral election using RCV, and incumbent mayor Gavin Newsom won easily in the first round of counting, earning 74% of first choices and far ahead of the second place candidate who had just 6.3% of first choices). Yet even the allegedly competitive contest in 2011was won by an incumbent with a landslide margin of nearly 20 points. No other elections were studied by McDaniel, even though San Francisco elects 17 other offices besides mayor with RCV, including the 11 seats on the Board of Supervisors (the name for the city council) in even years, and six other citywide offices in odd years. Previous academic research has found that competitive elections can stimulate greater voter involvement and higher turnout. For unexplained reasons, this study ignored at least 34 other RCV races between the years 2004 to 2011, many of which were very competitive and had high voter turnout. Instead, McDaniel’s analysis based its conclusions on data from only a single, marginally-competitive mayor’s race using RCV. These 2007 and 2011 mayoral elections were the only two RCV elections that McDaniel used as the sole basis for his small data set to determine the impact of RCV on voter turnout. Despite having no meaningful data to inform his study, McDaniel nonetheless concluded that RCV lowered turnout when compared to the previous three mayoral non-RCV elections using two-round runoffs. Then, using the same inadequate database of San Francisco elections, McDaniel also found that “Instant-runoff voting is associated with a significant decline in Black voter turnout and White voter turnout…On average, Black voter turnout decreases by 18 points and White voter turnout decreases by 16 points …” But how could he credibly arrive at that conclusion when his study was based on voter turnout in two RCV contests that were not even remotely competitive? Beyond that, McDaniel tacitly admits that the key determining factor driving Black voter turnout was not RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable Black candidate. McDaniel wrote, “Black voter turnout was about 17 percentage points higher for the two elections that featured an African American candidate compared to the three elections that did not” — but one of those three elections did not use RCV. The same dynamic was present for White voter turnout, in which higher turnout was not correlated with RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable White candidate. Beyond that, McDaniel’s voter turnout results, whether correlated with the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections, showed no clear patterns. In his Figure 1, he shows low Asian voter turnout in the non-RCV elections in 1999 and 2003 when there was no viable Asian candidate running, but in the 2007 mayoral election using RCV, there is still no viable Asian candidate, yet Asian turnout increases dramatically. For Latinos, voter turnout is virtually the same in 1999 (no viable Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2003 (leading Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2007 (no viable Latino candidate, RCV elections) and 2011 (leading Latino candidate, RCV elections). Meanwhile White voter turnout increased dramatically from a low in the 2007 mayoral election, in which the leading candidate was a white incumbent, to the 2011 election in which there were no leading white candidates that finished any higher than sixth place with 5.6% of the vote. Clearly other factors were determining voter turnout than either the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections. Despite these inconsistent findings, McDaniel boldly marches forth to render conclusions about the impact of RCV on different groups of racial voters, even though his conclusions are not remotely supported by his data. This looks like the worst kind of “data cherry picking” to cover up a puzzling conclusion based on a poor data set involving only two RCV elections, neither of which were remotely competitive. McDaniel’s cherry picking didn’t stop there. In calculating voter turnout for the three non-RCV mayoral elections in 1995, 1999 and 2003, he failed to mention that in each of these years there was a two-round runoff election, with a first round election in November in which no candidate garnered a winning majority of the vote, followed by the decisive runoff in December. So there were two non-RCV elections in each election year. But McDaniel only decided to include one of the two elections in his data set, apparently the December runoff in each year (which had higher turnout in two out of the three mayor’s races, and lower turnout in the third). So he ignored the November 1995 election, the November 1999 election when turnout was only 45 percent, and the November 2003 election when turnout was only 45.7 percent. This is flawed methodology based on blatant cherry picking, since McDaniel simply omitted three elections worth of data that did not fit within his frame. His study should never have made it through a peer review process, and it is an embarrassment to political science that not only was it approved for publication, but it has been uncritically cited by dozens of other political scientists. Share A “study” without wider context or credible data Lacking a data set that included even a single competitive RCV mayoral race, McDaniel declared that RCV lowered voter turnout in 2011, when turnout was 42.5 percent. But he also ignored -- or did not realize -- that voter turnout in mayoral elections during 2011 had sharply declined in all big cities, including far more steeply in nearby Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, San Francisco’s election in 2011 had the second highest turnout of any mayoral election in the nation’s 22 largest cities from 2008-2011. Was 2011 just a particularly low turnout year all across the country, perhaps because the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the housing market collapse in 2008-2010? McDaniel ignored this factor and did not search for alternative explanations beyond his flawed thesis. Furthermore, while McDaniel suggested that RCV leads to more “overvotes” – which is an invalidated ballot in which a voter, in either a non-RCV or RCV race, makes a mistake and selects two candidates for a single choice – he failed to address that in the June 2012 US Senate primary contest, which used the typical “one-choice” plurality method and did not use RCV, there was more than five times as many overvotes in San Francisco and Oakland than in the RCV mayoral elections in those cities. Additionally, turnout had been significantly higher and more representative in RCV elections for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races -- that McDaniel didn’t even bother to study -- as compared to previous “delayed two-round runoffs” for those offices, often higher by as much as 40% in the RCV races. Perhaps the most surprising irony was that an earlier study co-authored by McDaniel (Overvoting and the Equality of Voice under Instant-Runoff Voting in San Francisco by Francis Neely and Jason McDaniel, 2015, California Journal of Politics and Policy) found that overvotes are often more common in lower-income precincts, but that the pattern of overvoting is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. Wrote Neely and McDaniel: “[Overvote] errors appear to be a function of complexity in general and not IRV per se…. the pattern of overvoting is similar in both IRV and non-IRV contests…Even among votes cast in a top-of-the-ticket race like U.S. Senate, overvoting occurs in an uneven fashion” (IRV, or ‘instant runoff voting,’ is another name for ranked choice voting in single-winner contests). So McDaniel not only contradicted his own conclusion in his earlier study with Neely, but the earlier study had been an important corrective for one of the most frequently made mistakes made by anti-RCV political scientists – a continual failure to provide crucial context by pairing a comparative analysis of real world RCV elections with an analysis of real world plurality or other electoral methods. Unfortunately McDaniel’s earlier study does not get cited much by other researchers, and McDaniel did not even cite it in his own flawed study analyzed above. Incredibly, McDaniel cherrypicked McDaniel, even as his flawed study has been cited dozens of times. Despite being a textbook example of poor political “science,” featuring both inadequate as well as cherrypicked data, the shelf life of McDaniel’s study has been extended endlessly by other political scientists and media outlets who have cited it uncritically. Equally troubling, the Journal of Urban Affairs put this paper through its peer review process and published it despite its numerous flaws. McDaniel gets it wrong, Part II Not content with producing one shoddy, confused paper, McDaniel produced another one a few years later, here is the link: Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout in Mayoral Elections: An Analysis of Ranked-Choice Voting by Jason McDaniel. San Francisco State Univ. (McDaniel, 2019). In this paper, McDaniel extended his previous flawed research focused on San Francisco, about voter turnout and voter impact, to multiple RCV cities through the 2018 elections. In his data set he included San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Paul, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Santa Fe. He then compared their turnout in mayoral elections to non-RCV cities, and to mayoral elections in those cities held before first RCV usage, and concluded “a significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3–5 percentage points in RCV cities after the implementation of RCV.” But he replicated many of the same mistakes as his first study presented above. While in this study McDaniel attempted to distinguish between various factors, such as odd year vs. even year elections, competitive races vs. noncompetitive, contests with open seats and other factors, the analysis is superficial and inadequate. He attempts to incorporate so many often-conflicting variables that his conclusions are once again unsupported by the actual data, and ultimately unconvincing (this second study never underwent a peer review process). For example, McDaniel declared that for RCV cities “in elections that are more competitive than average (margin of victory less than 20%), there is no significant RCV effect on voter turnout.” Yet McDaniel is a professor in a city, San Francisco, in which the 2018 special election using RCV to fill a mayoral vacancy was exceedingly close, decided by a margin of only one percentage point, and resulted in the second highest turnout in San Francisco history for a mayoral election. Illustrating the complexity involved in assessing the critical factors in turnout, that special election was held on the same election day as federal and state offices, which tends to boost turnout. Yet more voters participated in that RCV mayoral election than voted on the same day in the non-RCV primary for governor in which former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was running. Even more puzzling, in this study McDaniel inaccurately cited his own previous study from 2015 with Neely. McDaniel wrote, “Neely and McDaniel (2015) examine individual ballot image files within a natural experiment, and find higher rates of ballot errors in RCV elections compared to non-RCV elections” (emphasis added). However, we quoted from that 2015 study several paragraphs above, and in actual fact Neely and McDaniel actually concluded the opposite -- that the pattern of overvoting – which is the most common form of ballot error – is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. McDaniel also ignored the fact that in Bay Area RCV elections held in even years – at the same time as federal and state elections, when turnout is highest -- the “undervote” (that is, the dropoff in ballots cast for governor or mayor) has declined, which contradicts his thesis that the act of ranking ballots in RCV elections is too complex and presents a barrier for certain demographics of voters. To his credit, McDaniel actually acknowledged another contradiction in his own paper, which found a negative RCV turnout effect in some odd-year elections but not others, admitting that “may present a challenge to the theory that increased complexity [from RCV] will have a marginal negative effect on voter turnout.” But he tried to wallpaper over that contradiction by blaming it on an unlikely source -- bad election administration. McDaniels wrote, “This would suggest that the negative impact of RCV on voter participation may be alleviated by high quality election administration,” without presenting any data or even anecdotes to support such an unfounded theory. While competent election administration of any election, whether RCV or non-RCV, is crucially important, there is no credible research that supports the far-fetched notion that the quality of election administration has much of an impact on voter turnout in US elections, whether using RCV or otherwise. Upgrade to a $5 subscription The unvirtuous circle of academic research It is puzzling how McDaniel’s first study could have survived the peer review process for the Journal of Urban Affairs. The mistakes in McDaniel’s first study above should have been obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of ranked choice voting as well as elections in general, and elections in San Francisco specifically. It undermines faith in the credibility of the peer review process to think that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the egregious errors and reject McDaniel’s sloppy research and paper. And it remains a black mark on political science that this thoroughly discredited study has been cited dozens of times by other researchers. Indeed, in our research paper it became apparent that many political scientists cite each other’s flawed research to pad their list of citations and to legitimize their own flawed research, creating an unvirtuous circle of political science. More broadly, McDaniel’s voter turnout studies, like other studies evaluating RCV’s impact on turnout, lacked a recognition that no credible opinion or research can claim that RCV increases voter turnout merely because so many voters are excited to vote for their favorite candidates instead of “lesser evil” candidates without worrying about spoilers. Instead, with respect to turnout, the advantage of RCV has always been that, in most places where it has been used, it has eliminated a pre-November primary or post-November runoff, which usually saw about half the turnout of the November general election. This is especially true during even years when there are state and federal elections on the ballot which substantially drive turnout more than local contests. Any study that does not adequately account for this non-November primary/runoff vs November general election dynamic, or odd year vs even year election factors, is simply not credible. Both of McDaniel’s studies largely failed on those grounds. Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to a $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS…your digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe
Bluehost Expands AI Business Platform with New Simple-to-Use AI & Agentic Solutions Purpose-Built for Small Business
Today, Bluehost, the all-in-one platform trusted by millions of small businesses to build, grow, and run online, today unveiled its next-generation AI business platform for small businesses, introducing intelligent AI agents that can build websites, run online stores, capture leads, answer customer questions, and book appointments, all without requiring technical expertise. The solutions are purpose-built for small business needs, giving entrepreneurs the capabilities of a much larger business w
Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom arrives in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ trailer
Robert Downey Jr. is officially revealed in the ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ trailer. The Marvel veteran returns as comic-book villain Doctor Doom after playing Iron Man for a decade.
Science can serve dark as well as light
I’m not sure how many of you are watching “Star City,” Apple TV’s spin-off of its “For All Mankind” program (2019-present), but it’s one of the better sci-fi series I’ve seen in a while, with an impressively dark political message. (Some light spoilers below.) For the uninitiated, “For All Mankind” presented a slightly tweaked history of the U.S. space program in which it was the USSR that landed on the Moon first in 1969, and shortly thereafter put a woman cosmonaut on the lunar surface. This sparks an ongoing space race that, in the original series, yields a lot of benefits for humanity. President Nixon’s insistence on a female astronaut corps to compete with the Soviets boosts the feminist movement of the 1970s and the ERA passes. New fuels generated for the space program create clean and cheap energy around Earth. There are also some darker changes — the USSR is thriving well into the 2000s, there are terrorist counter-technology movements around the globe, laborers on Mars work in nightmarish conditions and organize strikes and riots, etc. the @smotus report is a reader-supported publication. To support this work, please become a paid subscriber. Subscribe That show offers glimpses into the subtle ways this Earth is different. Teddy Kennedy never went to Chappaquidick because he was racing back to Washington to deal with the space program crisis; he gets elected President in 1972. John Lennon survives his early 1980s shooting but Pope John Paul II does not. The Apple Newton succeeded. Pretty much the whole of season 4 is a setup for an Al Gore joke. Again, mostly, the vision that “For All Mankind” presents is a positive one, with technology advancing many human interests. “Star City” goes in a very different direction. This spin-off show is about the same set of events but from the Soviet perspective. As we meet them, the team of scientists and cosmonauts responsible for the lunar landing are still basking in their hero status, but their program is embedded deep in the Soviet security state of the late 1960s. Everyone’s apartment is bugged. Whole teams of clerical staff spend their days transcribing recordings of people’s lives. People in the program, including respected cosmonauts, are regularly arrested. An incredibly menacing Colonel Lyudmilla Raskova (Anna Maxwell Martin) forces confessions and tortures and kills, expressing little more than annoyance in the process. Meanwhile, the space program’s highly respected Chief Designer (Rhys Ifans) has a vision for the program that he knows the government will not approve. He insists that they need to think past the Moon to focus on colonizing the solar system, starting with Venus. (This is a rough parallel to the Americans’ pivot to Mars in the original show.) He essentially builds a secret space program within the space program, calculating that the government will embrace the mission after it has succeeded. (As an aside, I’m not sure why the Venus obsession, as a successful mission can’t produce the biggest public relations payoff: a cosmonaut standing on the surface holding the Soviet flag. Anyone standing on Venus would be immediately crushed by the 92-bar atmosphere and then cremated in the 900°F temperatures. But in a country with no free press perhaps the visual payoff was less valued.) But the overall vision is that the technological advances have only amplified the most fearsome aspects of the Soviet system. The state is paranoid (but not incorrect) about American spies and does monstrous things to protect its secrets. People are terrified to trust each other. Classic banality-of-evil figures order people to harm those they care about; those people comply rather than get shot. Others are forced into criminal behavior to protect loved ones. We’re reminded all the time these days of what happens when a government despises science. It manifests in the defunding of schools, the elevation of fossil fuels as the rest of the world pivots to solar, outbreaks of measles and diarrhea, etc. But “Star City” offers a vision of a bad government that likes science. It’s not encouraging. It’s not yet clear if there will be a season two of this show. But I strongly recommend season one. It’s both thoughtful and gripping. Share
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