R. Michael Alvarez
Professor of Political Science, Caltech; USC Annenberg Center for Communications Fellow
R. Michael Alvarez was selected by Scientific American magazine to be on the 2004 "Scientific American 50" for his outstanding scientific and technological contributions to help improve the U. S. voting system. He has taught political science at Caltech since Dec. 1992. He received his B.A. in political science in 1986 from Carleton College; he received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University in 1990 and 1992, respectively. Alvarez has focused most of his research and teaching on the study of electoral politics in the United States. His first book, Information and Elections, was published in 1997: This project examined the question of how much American voters know about presidential candidates and how they obtain that information. His second book, Hard Choices, Easy Answers (with John Brehm), is a study of American public opinion about divisive social and political issues. His book, Point, Click, and Vote: The Future of Internet Voting (with Thad E. Hall), examines the controversies swirling around the Internet voting in the United States. He has also published many articles on electoral behavior and public opinion in the U.S. and other advanced industrial democratic nations.
Alvarez has received a number of honors and grants for his work. He was named the "Emerging Scholar" by the American Political Science Association's Voting Behavior and Public Opinion Section in 2002. He was a John M. Olin Faculty Fellow (1994-95) as well as a John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Faculty Fellow (1994, 1997, 1999, 2002). Alvarez received the Sprague Award with John Brehm for their work on public opinion, and the Durr Award with Jonathan Nagler for their work on modeling elections. Also, Alvarez has received financial support for his research from the National Science Foundation, the IBM Corporation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Knight Foundation. Alvarez edits the Analytical Methods for Social Research book series and is on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals.
Professor Alvarez is Co-Director of the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project, researching technological solutions to electoral problems, and is the Principal Investigator of the "Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment" Evaluation. He has been an expert witness in a series of recent court cases, including California's defense of the blanket primary (California Democratic Party v. Jones), Bradley v. Compton, and Cano v. Davis. He has testified before a number of organizations, including the U. S. Senate. he was an outside consultant for Knight Ridder on their 2000 Hispanic Voter Poll, and in 2004 as a consultant to Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research Inc. in their research on the Hispanic electorate. Alvarez is a frequent guest on Pasadena's National Public Radio affiliate, KPCC-FM and writes opinion pieces for local newspapers. He has been interviewed for National Public Radio, Jim Lehrer's NewsHour, CNN, ABC, NBC News, and for many state, national and international newspapers.
