I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Kansas. From 2004-2007, I served as Director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. I have traveled extensively in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, including a semester as a Fulbright scholar in Ukraine. I have also been an international observer for seven elections in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine.

My research focuses on political institutions, especially election rules. I am the bibliographer for the Representation and Electoral Systems Section of the American Political Science Association, and have performed outreach about elections with government officials, the media, and the public in the U.S. and abroad. I have published my research in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, World Politics, Electoral Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Party Politics, Election Law Journal, Democratization, Europe-Asia Studies, Nationalities Papers, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Journal of Central Asian Studies, and Problems of Post-Communism. I have also published two books with Palgrave Macmillan: Mixed Electoral Systems: Contamination and its Consequences (with Federico Ferrara and Misa Nishikawa) and Elections and Democracy after Communism?.

I am currently working on a collaborative project, funded by the National Science Foundation, that investigates how political parties make personnel decisions. I continue to investigate the role of courts in election disputes, use of deputy requests in Ukraine, and spatial variation in voting in several post-communist countries. More information is available on my CV.