Wiley: Legislative Studies Quarterly: Table of Contents

Who Claims Fraud? Correlates of State Legislators' Voter Fraud Claims

Samantha Register, Srinivas Parinandi, Alexandra A. Siegel — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 20:07:03 -0700

ABSTRACT

State legislators play a key role in election administration, but have increasingly challenged the legitimacy of elections. Using a dataset of tweets from over 4200 state legislators, we examine the institutional, individual, and state-level factors associated with legislators' propensity to make electoral fraud claims from 2019 to 2022, a period characterized by heightened criticism of status quo electoral procedure. We find that Republican partisanship, state polarization, serving in a state with a higher nonwhite population, and belonging to the state's upper chamber are correlated with more frequent election fraud tweets. Meanwhile, legislative professionalism, committee leadership, unified government, and being a female legislator are associated with making fewer fraud claims. By shifting attention from Congress to state legislatures—institutions that directly oversee election rules and administration—we identify correlates of public contestation of electoral procedure among subnational elites.

Claiming and Blaming: How Minority Party Status Shapes Filibuster Framing in the U.S. Senate

Jessie E. Munson — Fri, 29 May 2026 05:23:22 -0700

ABSTRACT

Why do senators choose to talk about filibustering, a tool widely associated with obstruction and gridlock? This paper examines how senators strategically reference filibustering in official communications, focusing on two rhetorical frames: credit claiming and blaming. Using an original dataset of Senate press releases from the 109th through 118th Congresses, I show that filibuster rhetoric is structured primarily by party status: minority-party senators claim credit for obstruction, while majority-party senators assign blame. Individual-level factors such as electoral safety and ideological extremity play a limited role. Contrary to expectations, filibuster credit claiming has declined over time, while evidence of increased blaming is mixed. Additional analyses show that these patterns persist across institutional contexts, including unified and divided government, respond to changes in filibuster rules for judicial nominations, and shift within senators as party control changes. Filibuster rhetoric serves as a strategic tool for signaling resistance and shifting blame.

Issue Information

Fri, 29 May 2026 05:12:56 -0700

Legislative Studies Quarterly, Volume 51, Issue 3, August 2026.