HeyJaredObservations
The Observations Podcast, brought to you by the Democracy Volunteers team, brings you insightful coverage of elections—past, present, local, national, and international.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 9
- Latest publication
- Sep 22, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 21, 2026
Latest episodes
Why is the Electoral College still Used? (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Why does the US still choose its president through the Electoral College, a system designed for an 18th-century country of 13 states? To answer this question, Joshua Paisley is joined by Alexander Keyssar, the Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor at Harvard Kennedy School, and author of Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? Together they trace the electoral college from its origins, from a muggy August in Philadelphia to filibusters in the late 1960s. The story of the electoral college is dee
Elections Across the World: Zambia Special (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Zambia's August election was billed as a test of one of Africa's most stable democracies. It ended with the arrest of the main opposition candidate, accusations of a staged assassination attempt, a vote count suspended over unverified reports of violence, and questions raised over discrepancies between the presidential and parliamentary vote counts. In this episode of Elections Across the World, Joshua Paisley is joined by Nicole Beardsworth, Professor of Politics at the University of the Witwat
How to Increase Turnout: Compulsory Voting (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Should voting be compulsory? In this podcast, Joshua Paisley is joined by Shane Singh, Professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, to ask whether compulsory voting could be the answer to declining democratic participation. Compulsory voting is not a new idea, with its roots in antiquity. The policy was introduced in Belgium in 1893 and in Australia in 1924. So why haven't more democracies followed suit, and what would it actually take to make it work? To find out
The Effects of Social Media on our Elections (opens the original)
Read excerpt
In this episode, Joshua Paisley is joined by Professor of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, Kate Dommett, to explain how social media has affected UK Elections. To find out how to get involved as an observer: https://democracyvolunteers.org/
How to Increase Turnout: Internet Voting (opens the original)
Read excerpt
This episode marks the start of a Democracy Volunteers Series where we discuss the radical ideas that countries across the world have implemented to increase turnout and voter participation in elections. In this episode, with the help of Deputy Head for Development and Associate Professor of Technology Research at the University of Tartu Professor Mihkel Solvak, Joshua Paisley breaks down internet voting. A system pioneered by Estonia in 2005, now this form of voting accounts for nearly half of
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Not enough subject data for this period yet.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.