Current PIE Research

The Project for an Informed Electorate engages in research aimed at understanding how the electorate gets informed, how much citizens know, and what issues there might be with inaccurate knowledge.

PIE Media Lab

Since 2006, we've been partnering with the Sacramento Media Group to encourage informative coverage of elections on local TV news by coding the content of that news.  We also code the campaign ad content and analyze the amount and type of information viewers are getting when the view news programs.  Read the reports here. We are currently working on crunching the last of the 2010 data and recording the 2012 data.

Misinformation

We are doing continuous work on misinformation in the minds of citizens.  An academic piece on misinformation among the otherwise informed by Kimberly Nalder, "The Paradox of Prop 13: The Informed Public's Misunderstanding of California's Third Rail" at CJPP.

Some press on that paper at The Economist "How Voters Decide. What Do You Know? Citizens Are Not As Well-Informed As They Think"

New research on misinformation and the Tea Party coming soon!

Transparency

A piece by PIE Director Kimberly Nalder, PIE Faculty Affiliate (and Center for California Studies Visiting Scholar) Stacy Gordon-Fisher and Matt Lesenyie on public information as a check on special interests "Power to the People: Checking Special Interests in California" at CJPP.

Voting and Election Administration

PIE Faculty Affiliate Elizabeth Bergman at CSU East Bay is working on technology and civic engagement and non-voting in primary elections projects. A recent piece on administering elections and reform is available at CJPP.