by Harvard Ash Center
From rank-choice voting to reconciliation, American democracy is headline news. Let’s talk about it. Join Harvard Ash Center's Archon Fung and Stephen Richer for a weekly conversation about the latest developments in American politics. Blending perspectives from both the political right and left, Terms of Engagement addresses breaking news, providing insights from research and practice to deliver a unique perspective you won’t hear anywhere else.
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Publishing Since
7/16/2025
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August 6, 2026
<p><strong>Thomas Hicks</strong> was in the middle of booking his travel to an election conference when he received an email from the White House saying was no longer a commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission—the agency he had served for eleven years and chaired. Hicks’ firing is the first in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in <i>Trump v. Slaughter</i>, which gave the president power to dismiss independent agency heads. The same email went to his colleague Benjamin Hovland, while the lone Republican on the commission, Christy McCormick, was allowed to resign. Now for the first time since 2014, the agency Congress created after the Florida recount to help America run its elections has nobody at the top at all. Hicks joins <i>Terms of Engagement</i> hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to discuss what breaks down when the EAC has no quorum, what worries him about who might fill its four seats before 2028, and to explain what the EAC does—including certifying voting machines, moving federal money to states, and maintaining the national voter registration form.</p> <p><strong>About our Guest:</strong></p> <p><strong>Thomas Hicks</strong> is an attorney who spent more than a decade as one of the four people responsible for the federal government’s role in American elections. He was nominated by President Obama, confirmed unanimously by the Senate in December 2014, and sworn in as a commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in January 2015. He went on to chair the EAC three separate times, including in the run-up to the 2020 election and again beginning in February of this year. At the EAC, his signature work was on accessibility, including a pocket voter card in Braille and large print, election security, and recruiting young people and veterans as poll workers. During his career he has also worked as senior elections counsel on the Committee on House Administration—focusing on campaign finance, election reform, contested elections, and oversight of the EAC and the FEC—and as a policy analyst at Common Cause. He earned his bachelor’s in political science and government at Clark University and his JD at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law.</p> <p><p><strong>About Terms of Engagement </strong></p><p>From rank-choice voting to reconciliation, American democracy is headline news. Let’s talk about it. </p><p>Join Harvard Ash Center's Archon Fung and Stephen Richer for a weekly conversation about the latest developments in American politics. Blending perspectives from both the political right and left, Terms of Engagement addresses breaking news, providing insights from research and practice to deliver a unique perspective you won’t hear anywhere else.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Contact Us</strong></p><p>Send questions, ideas, and feedback to us at <a href="info@ash.harvard.edu">info@ash.harvard.edu</a>. </p><p> </p><p><strong>About the Hosts</strong></p><p><strong>Archon Fung</strong> is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance with a focus on public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He received two S.B.s — in philosophy and physics — and his Ph.D. in political science from MIT.</p><p><strong>Stephen Richer</strong> is the former elected Maricopa County Recorder, responsible for voter registration, early voting administration, and public recordings in Maricopa County, Arizona, the fourth largest county in the United States. Prior to being an elected official, Stephen worked at several public policy think tanks and as a business transactions attorney. Stephen received his J.D. and M.A. from The University of Chicago and his B.A. from Tulane University.</p><p>Stephen has been broadly recognized for his work in elections and American Democracy. In 2021, the Arizona Republic named Stephen “Arizonan of the Year.” In 2022, the Maricopa Bar Association awarded Stephen “Public Law Attorney of the Year.” In 2023, Stephen won “Leader of the Year” from the Arizona Capitol Times. And in 2024, Time Magazine named Stephen a “Defender of Democracy.”</p><p> </p><p><strong>About the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation</strong></p><p><a href="https://ash.harvard.edu/">The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation</a>, a research center at Harvard Kennedy School, is Harvard’s hub for the study, discussion, and analysis of democracy. The Ash Center’s mission is to develop ideas and foster practices for equal and inclusive, multi-racial and multi-ethnic democracy and self-government.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Music Credit: </strong>Straight to the Point, <i>Music Media Group</i></p></p>
July 30, 2026
<p><strong>Richard Hanania</strong> spent a decade as an influential voice on the online right — first pseudonymously in the alt-right, later as what <i>New York</i> magazine called "an intellectual muse of the Silicon Valley right." Then he watched his own ideas take power and, in his words, "was horrified at what I had helped create." His new book <i>Kakistocracy</i> is an argument that populism does not fail by accident but for structural reasons, that the cause is not elite failure but communications technology, and that the solution is not more democracy but better elites. He joins Terms of Engagement hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to talk about populism, elites, and who should wield power in American politics.</p> <p><strong>About our Guest:</strong></p> <p><strong>Richard Hanania</strong> is a writer, commentator, and president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, a think tank he founded to study how ideology shapes policy and institutions. He holds a PhD in political science from UCLA and a JD from the University of Chicago. He's the author of the books “Kakistocracy” and "The Origins of Woke," and his writing has appeared in outlets ranging from The New York Times to The Atlantic to The Washington Post. He is a prominent voice in online political commentary, publishing frequently on his Substack and known for provocative takes that draw both fans and detractors across the political spectrum.</p> <p> </p> <p><p><strong>About Terms of Engagement </strong></p><p>From rank-choice voting to reconciliation, American democracy is headline news. Let’s talk about it. </p><p>Join Harvard Ash Center's Archon Fung and Stephen Richer for a weekly conversation about the latest developments in American politics. Blending perspectives from both the political right and left, Terms of Engagement addresses breaking news, providing insights from research and practice to deliver a unique perspective you won’t hear anywhere else.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Contact Us</strong></p><p>Send questions, ideas, and feedback to us at <a href="info@ash.harvard.edu">info@ash.harvard.edu</a>. </p><p> </p><p><strong>About the Hosts</strong></p><p><strong>Archon Fung</strong> is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance with a focus on public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He received two S.B.s — in philosophy and physics — and his Ph.D. in political science from MIT.</p><p><strong>Stephen Richer</strong> is the former elected Maricopa County Recorder, responsible for voter registration, early voting administration, and public recordings in Maricopa County, Arizona, the fourth largest county in the United States. Prior to being an elected official, Stephen worked at several public policy think tanks and as a business transactions attorney. Stephen received his J.D. and M.A. from The University of Chicago and his B.A. from Tulane University.</p><p>Stephen has been broadly recognized for his work in elections and American Democracy. In 2021, the Arizona Republic named Stephen “Arizonan of the Year.” In 2022, the Maricopa Bar Association awarded Stephen “Public Law Attorney of the Year.” In 2023, Stephen won “Leader of the Year” from the Arizona Capitol Times. And in 2024, Time Magazine named Stephen a “Defender of Democracy.”</p><p> </p><p><strong>About the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation</strong></p><p><a href="https://ash.harvard.edu/">The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation</a>, a research center at Harvard Kennedy School, is Harvard’s hub for the study, discussion, and analysis of democracy. The Ash Center’s mission is to develop ideas and foster practices for equal and inclusive, multi-racial and multi-ethnic democracy and self-government.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Music Credit: </strong>Straight to the Point, <i>Music Media Group</i></p></p>
July 23, 2026
<p>The 2026 midterms are still months away, but a new tool shows where the trouble is most likely to erupt. Samantha Tarazi, co-founder and CEO of the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab (VRL), joins Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to walk through VRL's new Election Risk Heat Map, which scores every state and county in the country on "Election Risk Index" measured from 1 to 100.</p> <p>This episode examines what the map actually measures, assesses whether its risk factors are appropriate, and considers some of the difficult communications challenges in the space, including: How can we inform people about real threats to election administration without scaring them away from the ballot box? In light of President Trump’s recent primetime address on "election integrity," we explore whether the threats he described are real, the role he may play in the broader risk environment, and where 2026 sits on the danger scale.</p> <p><strong>About our Guest:</strong></p> <p><strong>Samantha Tarazi </strong>is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Voting Rights Lab, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded in 2017 that tracks and works to strengthen voting laws across all fifty states. As founder and former chief operating officer, she built VRL's signature Election Policy Tracker—now a tool used daily by journalists, lawmakers, and advocates to monitor voting legislation in real time nationwide—and led the organization's move into grassroots advocacy and cross-partisan democratic engagement. Her newest project is the 2026 Election Risk Heat Map, which VRL released this month. </p> <p>Before VRL, Tarazi was the inaugural chief engagement officer at Everytown for Gun Safety, where she helped grow Moms Demand Action from a small online group into a national volunteer network of more than 55,000 leaders. She's been described as a "serial social-impact entrepreneur and seasoned community organizer," with expertise spanning election administration, voter participation, mis- and disinformation, and the role of social media and AI in elections. She also serves with the National Task Force on Election Crises. </p> <p> </p> <p><p><strong>About Terms of Engagement </strong></p><p>From rank-choice voting to reconciliation, American democracy is headline news. Let’s talk about it. </p><p>Join Harvard Ash Center's Archon Fung and Stephen Richer for a weekly conversation about the latest developments in American politics. Blending perspectives from both the political right and left, Terms of Engagement addresses breaking news, providing insights from research and practice to deliver a unique perspective you won’t hear anywhere else.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Contact Us</strong></p><p>Send questions, ideas, and feedback to us at <a href="info@ash.harvard.edu">info@ash.harvard.edu</a>. </p><p> </p><p><strong>About the Hosts</strong></p><p><strong>Archon Fung</strong> is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance with a focus on public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He received two S.B.s — in philosophy and physics — and his Ph.D. in political science from MIT.</p><p><strong>Stephen Richer</strong> is the former elected Maricopa County Recorder, responsible for voter registration, early voting administration, and public recordings in Maricopa County, Arizona, the fourth largest county in the United States. Prior to being an elected official, Stephen worked at several public policy think tanks and as a business transactions attorney. Stephen received his J.D. and M.A. from The University of Chicago and his B.A. from Tulane University.</p><p>Stephen has been broadly recognized for his work in elections and American Democracy. In 2021, the Arizona Republic named Stephen “Arizonan of the Year.” In 2022, the Maricopa Bar Association awarded Stephen “Public Law Attorney of the Year.” In 2023, Stephen won “Leader of the Year” from the Arizona Capitol Times. And in 2024, Time Magazine named Stephen a “Defender of Democracy.”</p><p> </p><p><strong>About the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation</strong></p><p><a href="https://ash.harvard.edu/">The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation</a>, a research center at Harvard Kennedy School, is Harvard’s hub for the study, discussion, and analysis of democracy. The Ash Center’s mission is to develop ideas and foster practices for equal and inclusive, multi-racial and multi-ethnic democracy and self-government.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Music Credit: </strong>Straight to the Point, <i>Music Media Group</i></p></p>
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From rank-choice voting to reconciliation, American democracy is headline news. Let’s talk about it.
Join Harvard Ash Center's Archon Fung and Stephen Richer for a weekly conversation about the latest developments in American politics. Blending perspectives from both the political right and left, Terms of Engagement addresses breaking news, providing insights from research and practice to deliver a unique perspective you won’t hear anywhere else.
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