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The book, Accessible Elections: How the States Can Help Americans Vote (2020) from the Oxford University Press by Michael J. Ritter and Caroline J. Tolbert, examines how American state election laws and administrative provisions impact voter turnout, turnout equality, and campaign activity in the USA. Recently, this book was the centerpiece of an author-meets-critics “Accessible Elections” roundtable discussion at the 2023 American Political Science Association conference, a roundtable replete with numerous experts on American and French election studies. Promoting a Franco-American comparative election studies research dialogue was a key goal of this roundtable and the resulting essays. This essay summarizes, examines, and explores the Accessible Elections research, the roundtable discussion, similarities and dissimilarities between the American and French electoral systems, and foreshadows possible areas of future comparative election studies research. The “Accessible Voting” roundtable discussion and the resulting essays offer key insights regarding elections and democracy in the USA, France, and other countries.

The tetraspanin CD81 is one of the main entry receptors for Hepatitis C virus, which is a major causative agent to develop liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Here, we identify CD81 as one of few surface proteins that are downregulated in HCV expressing hepatoma cells, discovering a functional role of CD81 beyond mediating HCV entry. CD81 was downregulated at the mRNA level in hepatoma cells that replicate HCV. Kinetics of HCV expression were increased in CD81-knockout cells and accompanied by enhanced cellular growth. Furthermore, loss of CD81 compensated for inhibition of pro-survival TBK1-signaling in HCV expressing cells. Analysis of functional phenotypes that could be associated with pro-survival signaling revealed that CD81 is a negative regulator of NF-κB. Interaction of the NF-κB subunits p50 and p65 was increased in cells lacking CD81. Similarly, we witnessed an overall increase in the total levels of phosphorylated and cellular p65 upon CD81-knockout in hepatoma cells. Finally, translocation of p65 in CD81-negative hepatoma cells was markedly induced upon stimulation with TNFα or PMA. Altogether, CD81 emerges as a regulator of pro-survival NF-κB signaling. Considering the important and established role of NF-κB for HCV replication and tumorigenesis, the downregulation of CD81 by HCV and the associated increase in NF-κB signaling might be relevant for viral persistence and chronic infection.

Ritter and Tolbert’s Accessible Elections: How the States Can Help Americans Vote (2020), the centerpiece of the “Accessible Voting” roundtable discussion at the 2023 American Political Science Association conference, provides a foundation for further research on elections, election laws, and election administration in the USA, France, and beyond. This essay summarizes the roundtable discussion, the resulting response essays, and offers thoughts on future areas of research.

As a 2010 earthquake and cholera response project, in 2013–2014, an international non-governmental organization, working with local organizations, installed water systems in two Haitian communities. In 2016, 2 years after installation, we conducted a mixed-methods evaluation to assess sustained effectiveness, including 20 infrastructure assessments, 199 household surveys, water quality testing, 30 key informant interviews, and financial analysis of two water committee records. One of 14 (7.1%) installed kiosks were functional during the evaluation, with 42–60% of survey respondents near installed sources reporting using system water for drinking. No household water sample had detectable chlorine residual and non-detectable E. coli, except when household water treatment was reported. Informants expressed appreciation for the project, and discussed difficulties with operations, maintenance, and community engagement. Revenue was initially sufficient for operations and maintenance, although not sustainable because lack of trust led to poor quality service and then lack of payment. While the functional kiosks did provide water to some residents, overall project sustained effectiveness was not reached due to operational and maintenance issues, and lack of governance and community engagement. We recommend future implementers of small-scale water systems in complex contexts like Haiti plan for the technical and social components necessary for sustained effectiveness.

Objective. How does economic inequality shape participation in political campaigns? Previous research has found that higher inequality makes people of all incomes less likely to participate in politics, consistent with relative power theory, which holds that greater inequality enables wealthier citizens to more fully reshape the political landscape to their own advantage. Campaign activities, however, demand more time and money than previously examined forms of participation and so might better conform to the predictions of resource theory, which focuses narrowly on the ramifications of inequality for individuals’ resources. Methods. We combine individual-level data on donations, meeting attendance, and volunteer work for political campaigns with measures of state-level income inequality to construct a series of multilevel models. Results. The analyses reveal that, where inequality is higher, campaign participation is lower among individuals of all incomes. Conclusions. Patterns of participation in even resource-intensive campaign activities provide support for the relative power theory.

Despite documented health benefits of household water treatment and storage (HWTS), achieving sustained use remains challenging. In prior evaluations of a long-term HWTS program in Haiti, multiple marketing interventions failed to increase use or had prohibitively high costs. Using mobile phones is a potentially cost-effective way to change HWTS behavior. We conducted a randomized experiment to evaluate the impact of sending short-message service (SMS) messages to promote household chlorination in this program in Haiti. Households (n = 1327) were randomly assigned to: One of four SMS frequencies; one of ten behavioral constructs; “cholera” or “disease” framing; and one or zero household visits from a sales agent. During the three-month campaign, there were no statistically significant relationships between the four outcomes related to chlorine purchases and any SMS frequency, any behavioral construct, or either “cholera” or “disease” framing. Receiving one visit increased the probability of purchasing a bottle of chlorine by 17.1 percentage points (p < 0.001) but did not affect subsequent purchase behavior. Costs of managing the SMS campaign were higher than expected. SMS campaigns may not be cost-effective behavior change interventions in certain contexts. If pursued, we recommend simple interventions, timed with the target behavior, and tailored to mobile phone usage patterns of the target population.

The implications of the persona theory pose a problem for the interpretation of Juvenal’s early satires, because it presents the satirist as intent on nullifying his didactic stances. This leaves us with an unsatisfactory conclusion that excises Juvenal’s persistent treatment of themes consistent with contemporaneous authors who were similarly engaged in blackening the reputations of the famous dead. This article argues that a strict application of persona theory isolates Juvenal’s satirist from his volatile contemporary climate by excluding him from the reality that these authors—similarly directing their works to the past—were unabashedly writing only after the tyrant was safely dead. Tacitus and Pliny had lamented the servility and silence that predominated during Domitian’s reign, in which the Roman world endured fifteen years of terror without uttering a word. Into this literary milieu Juvenal announces his satirist, who begins with an echo of that silence: semper ego auditor tantum? With the death of Domitian and a new atmosphere that permitted the defamation of the deceased, Juvenal injects his venomous voice into the mix, taking advantage of contemporary literary appetites that allowed for the punishment, no matter how belated, if not of the person then of the guilty one’s memory. Any evaluation of Juvenal’s satiric project must be firmly rooted in this, his most immediate, context.

Mechanical failure of soft tissues is characteristic of life-threatening diseases, including capillary stress failure, pulmonary emphysema, and vessel wall aneurysms. Failure occurs when mechanical forces are sufficiently high to rupture the enzymatically weakened extracellular matrix (ECM). Elastin, an important structural ECM protein, is known to stretch beyond 200% strain before failing. However, ECM constructs and native vessel walls composed primarily of elastin and proteoglycans (PGs) have been found to fail at much lower strains. In this study, we hypothesized that PGs significantly contribute to tissue failure. To test this, we developed a zipper network model (ZNM), in which springs representing elastin are organized into long wavy fibers in a zipper-like formation and placed within a network of springs mimicking PGs. Elastin and PG springs possessed distinct mechanical and failure properties. Simulations using the ZNM showed that the failure of PGs alone reduces the global failure strain of the ECM well below that of elastin, and hence, digestion of elastin does not influence the failure strain. Network analysis suggested that whereas PGs drive the failure process and define the failure strain, elastin determines the peak and failure stresses. Predictions of the ZNM were experimentally confirmed by measuring the failure properties of engineered elastin-rich ECM constructs before and after digestion with trypsin, which cleaves the core protein of PGs without affecting elastin. This study reveals a role for PGs in the failure properties of engineered and native ECM with implications for the design of engineered tissues.

The US population is steadily aging: while currently comprising only 12% of the population, adults over the age of sixty-five will likely grow to comprise one-fifth of the populace in the next twenty-five years. As the average age of the population increases, so will the number of queer elders in nursing homes throughout the country -- a situation for which many nursing homes in the country are largely unprepared. This note argues that because nursing homes across the country are ill-prepared to offer effective care to the influx of queer elderly patients they will see in the near future, the federal government should increase its protections pertaining to the sexual orientation and gender identity of nursing home residents under the Nursing Home Reform Act (NHRA). Amending the NHRA to add a right of nondiscrimination, mandate sensitivity training, and eliminate discretionary enforcement, would make the Act a much more effective deterrent of neglect, abuse, discrimination against and stigmatization of queer nursing home residents.