Jonathan Cervas

Publications

How a democracy draws its district lines and counts its people decides whose voice actually counts. My research studies the rules that determine who holds power — how districts are drawn, how votes translate into representation, and what happens when those rules are manipulated, litigated, or broken. These questions sit at the center of the most urgent challenges facing American democracy, from partisan gerrymandering and the future of the Voting Rights Act to public confidence in the count itself.

My work moves along two connected tracks. The first, in political science, examines electoral geography and partisan competition — measuring partisan bias and gerrymandering and the determinants of electoral competitiveness. The second, in law reviews, addresses the legal and institutional dimensions of redistricting; because judges read and cite law review scholarship, this work has shaped active litigation rather than only being cited by other scholars. What ties the two together is the ability to move between the rigorous empirical analysis these questions demand and the courtrooms and commissions where they are actually settled — I have not only written about these problems, but been appointed by courts to help fix them. On joint papers, my contributions are typically the data construction, statistical and geographic analysis, and modeling.

Peer-Reviewed Articles & Chapters

Op-Eds & Public Commentary