Elections Experts

The Pew Center on the States features professionals with extensive expertise in election administration, election reform and election law.  Pew’s experts are available to discuss a variety of topics related to Pew’s elections work including: military and overseas voting, voter registration modernization, voting information and data collection.  Experts can also address other issues which for which Pew has commissioned research or participated in pilot projects such as early voting; vote centers and audits. 
  
Michael Caudell-Feagan is a Deputy Director of the Pew Center on the States.  He oversees the performance unit which includes the Government Performance Project, Public Safety Performance Project, and Election Initiatives. Read More
      
Areas of expertise: election reform; voter engagement; fiscal impacts of election initiatives; and campaign finance         

Doug Chapin is the Director of Election Initiatives at the Pew Center on the States. He was the founding director of Pew’s electionline.org, which has been a nationally-recognized voice in election administration policy since 2001. Read More
   
Areas of expertise:  election reform; election administration; election law; voting information; voter registration; military and overseas voting; data collection and measurement; performance standards; and election audits

David Becker is a Project Director of Election Initiatives at the Pew Center on the States.  He develops and executes strategic and operational plans for specific election initiatives.   Read More

Areas of expertise:  election law; election reform; military and overseas voting; voter registration 
     
Members of the media interested in talking with an expert may contact Stacie Temple at 202.5552.2114.  Election officials, policy makers, businesses or other interested parties may contact Scott Melamed at 202.540.6406. 

Michael Caudell-Feagan 
Michael Caudell-Feagan is a Deputy Director of the Pew Center on the States, oversees the performance unit which includes the Government Performance Project, Public Safety Performance Project, and Election Initiatives. He recently served as the Director of Pew’s Make Voting Work and as the senior program officer overseeing Pew’s campaign finance reform portfolio and the development of new election initiatives. Prior to joining the Trusts, he served as the senior program officer of the Proteus Fund. At Proteus, Michael designed and managed grantmaking programs supporting state-level campaign finance reform, participatory elections initiatives and voter engagement efforts. Michael has provided management and consulting services to private and family foundations such as the Ford Foundation, Frances Fund, JEHT Foundation, Knight Foundation, Open Society Institute, Solidago Foundation and Stern Family Fund. He was the founder and executive director of Equal Justice Works (EJW), an association that organizes, trains and supports public service-minded law students and helps to create summer and postgraduate job opportunities in the government and nonprofit sector. Michael holds a bachelor of arts degree in government from Hamilton College and a law degree from George Washington University’s National Law Center.

Doug Chapin 
Doug Chapin is the Director of Election Initiatives at the Pew Center on the States. He leads efforts to support, translate and disseminate relevant research on election administration reform and to promote adoption of reforms supported with evidence from this research. He began his Pew career in 2001 when he founded Pew’s electionline.org, a nationally-recognized voice in election administration policy that provides timely, centralized and comprehensive news, research and analysis about election reform. Prior to launching electionline, Doug was an attorney in private practice specializing in election and ethics law. He also served as elections counsel to the minority of the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration from 1997 to 2000, where he focused on federal election legislation and participated in the review of the disputed 1996 Senate election in Louisiana. Doug is a frequent speaker on voting technology, voter registration, election law issues and the status of election reform efforts nationwide, and teaches courses on election administration and the law as an adjunct professor at American University, Georgetown University Law Center and William and Mary’s Marshall-Wythe School of Law. He holds a law degree from Georgetown University, a master’s in public administration from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s in politics from Princeton University.

David Becker 
David Becker is the Project Director of Election Initiatives for the Pew Center on the States. He manages Pew’s election reform efforts related to voter registration and military and overseas voters.  Prior to joining Pew, David was an experienced voting rights litigator and litigated cases regarding such issues as redistrictings, voting technology, voter identification and voter suppression.  He served for seven years as a senior trial attorney in the Voting Section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, where he led dozens of investigations into violations of federal voting laws regarding redistrictings, minority language voter rights, alleged voter intimidation and vote dilution.  David is an expert on redistricting, and served as lead counsel for the United States in the Georgia statewide redistricting case, which was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court in Georgia v. Ashcroft.  While at the Department of Justice, he also supervised federal monitoring of elections and helped direct department policy regarding enforcement of the Help America Vote Act. David received both his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.