A Civil Beat Investigation: In Hawaii’s workers’ comp system, people with long-lasting injuries are often forced to battle doctors hand-picked by insurance companies to get treatment and disability payments.
Donald Trump’s election as president — despite having lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton and all sorts of concerns about hacking and lying — has got many folks wondering how good America’s election system really is.
“Overall, the U.S. electoral system has about as much integrity as those in Argentina, Mongolia and Rwanda,” according to the joint project from Harvard University and the University of Sydney.
The study surveyed more than 700 American political scientists on the perceived integrity of their states’ electoral systems. The experts were asked to rate the state’s performance on everything from election laws and procedures to district boundaries, voter registration and campaign finance laws.
Unlike many other Western democracies, there is wide variance in the integrity of individual systems in American states, which have the constitutional authority to administer elections, draw their own district lines and set rules that govern voter access.
The survey says Vermont has the best electoral system in the United States while Arizona and Wisconsin ranked at the bottom.
Hawaii is at No. 8 in the rankings. We scored best for how we handle electoral procedures, and worst for — oddly enough — media coverage.
(Looks like somebody’s not reading Civil Beat. We live, breathe and eat elections.)
The study also includes a map that does not include Hawaii and Alaska, even though they are surveyed. Sad! One simply expects more from HA-verd.
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Chad Blair is the Politics and Opinion Editor for Civil Beat. You can reach him by email at cblair@civilbeat.org or follow him on Twitter at @chadblairCB.
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