About

Jason M. Roberts is a Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 2005. His research and teaching focus on American political institutions, with a particular emphasis on the U.S. Congress, congressional elections, and election administration. Roberts' current projects include studies on personal relationships in Congress and election administration in North Carolina. Throughout his career, he has contributed extensively to the understanding of American political processes, especially in the areas of congressional behavior, electoral competition, and legislative procedures.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Public relations
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Economics
• Computer Security
• Law and economics
• Public administration
• Social psychology
• Business
• Political economy
• Engineering
• Psychology
• Finance

Selected publications

• Interpersonal Relationships, Bipartisanship, and January 6th

  American Political Science Review · 2024-11-21 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  For a member of Congress to be a successful lawmaker, they must work collaboratively with their colleagues. Previous work has found that interpersonal relationships among lawmakers are a key predictor of legislative collaboration—particularly among members from opposing parties. In the wake of the events of January 6, 2021, many Democratic lawmakers claimed that their relationships with some of their Republican colleagues were irretrievably broken and they would be unable to continue collaborating with members who voted against certifying electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election. Using data on original cosponsorship and legislative effectiveness from the 115th to 117th Congresses (2017–22) we find that Republican lawmakers who voted against the certification of electoral votes lost bipartisan collaborators and saw a drastic decrease in their legislative effectiveness in the 117th Congress.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Dropbox Allocation and Use Among Georgia Voters in the 2020 Election

  Election Law Journal Rules Politics and Policy · 2023-11-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Ballot dropboxes provide voters who fill out mail-in ballots with a secure and convenient method for returning their ballot. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of ballot dropboxes increased dramatically as voters sought to cast ballots safely and conveniently. In the wake of the 2020 election, ballot dropboxes have come under considerable scrutiny as many Republican-controlled state legislatures have sought to eliminate them or sharply reduce the number available and/or limit the hours in which they can be used by voters. This article uses novel data on the number of ballots collected in Georgia dropboxes paired with measures of how accessible these dropboxes were to voters in order to analyze how the allocation of dropboxes affected voting behavior in an election where voters could choose to vote in a variety of ways. When controlling for the number of potential users, dropboxes closer in distance to voters are used at higher rates. Individuals located closer to dropboxes are more likely to vote by mail and are less likely to fail to return requested mail-in ballots. Our findings carry important implications for election administrators seeking to make voting accessible by adding additional ballot dropboxes and for administrators seeking to adjust to mandated decreases in the number of dropboxes provided to voters.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Inter-Personal Relationships and Legislative Collaboration in Congress

  Harvard Dataverse · 2022-02-18

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  This contains data to replicate "Inter-Personal Relationships and Legislative Collaboration in Congress"

  PublisherDOI

• Interpersonal Relationships and Legislative Collaboration in Congress

  Legislative Studies Quarterly · 2022 · 38 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Do interpersonal relationships among and between representatives and senators affect legislative collaboration in the contemporary Congress? The extant literature on Congress suggests interpersonal dimensions of life on Capitol Hill should play a minimal role in the legislative process. However, research in other fields, including psychology, finds that relationships are crucially important within organizations. In addition, many contemporary accounts of congressional deal‐making highlight the role of personal relationships. Drawing on interviews with high‐level congressional staff, and data on CODEL trips taken by members of Congress, we show that interpersonal relationships help promote collaboration across the aisle. These findings have implications for how we understand the contours of conflict and cooperation on Capitol Hill.

  PublisherDOI

• Careerism, Status Quo Bias, and the Politics of Congressional Apportionment

  Journal of Historical Political Economy · 2022-10-31 · 15 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The apportionment of House seats to the several states based on population is one of the defining features of the U.S. Congress. The fact that power in the lower chamber and in the electoral college routinely shifts as the population shifts is taken as a given by most political observers today. This has not always been true, however. Apportionment was a controversial issue for much of American history, culminating in the failure of Congress to enact a reapportionment bill following the 1920 Census. In this article, I recount the history of apportionment and analyze the apportionment failure in the 1920s. I argue that a series of electoral reforms combined with institutional changes inside Congress to increase the value of a House seat to incumbent members and made retention of a seat more dependent on the actions of individual incumbent members. I demonstrate that members responded to these institutional changes by pursuing strategies that would increase their likelihood of retaining their seats and extending their House careers. This growth of individualistic and careerist behavior by members of the House best explains why the crisis occurred and persisted in the 1920s. This article highlights the important role that institutions — both endogenous and exogenous — play in shaping political outcomes.

  PublisherDOI

• Processing Temporal Modulations in Binaural and Monaural Auditory Stimuli by Neurons in the Inferior Colliculus and Auditory Cortex

  UNC Libraries · 2021-07-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Processing dynamic changes in the stimulus stream is a major task for sensory systems. In the auditory system, an increase in the temporal integration window between the inferior colliculus (IC) and auditory cortex is well known for monaural signals such as amplitude modulation, but a similar increase with binaural signals has not been demonstrated. To examine the limits of binaural temporal processing at these brain levels, we used the binaural beat stimulus, which causes a fluctuating interaural phase difference, while recording from neurons in the unanesthetized rabbit. We found that the cutoff frequency for neural synchronization to the binaural beat frequency (BBF) decreased between the IC and auditory cortex, and that this decrease was associated with an increase in the group delay. These features indicate that there is an increased temporal integration window in the cortex compared to the IC, complementing that seen with monaural signals. Comparable measurements of responses to amplitude modulation showed that the monaural and binaural temporal integration windows at the cortical level were quantitatively as well as qualitatively similar, suggesting that intrinsic membrane properties and afferent synapses to the cortical neurons govern the dynamic processing. The upper limits of synchronization to the BBF and the band-pass tuning characteristics of cortical neurons are a close match to human psychophysics.

  PublisherDOI

• Nomination Struggles in the Post-nuclear Senate

  The Forum · 2021-12-01 · 2 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Three times in the last decade Senate majorities have re-interpreted the rules of the Senate to limit the ability of Senate minorities to obstruct presidential nominees. Each of these invocations of the so called nuclear option have either reduced the threshold of votes needed to invoke cloture on a nominee or shortened the amount of post-cloture debate on nominees. In the current Senate, cloture can be invoked on nominees with a simple majority vote and most nominees are subject to only two hours of post-cloture debate. Despite these re-interpretations of the Senate’s rules, presidents are still struggling to secure confirmation for many of their nominees. As of this writing, fewer than 40% of President Biden’s nominations have secured confirmation, and more than 140 who have cleared committee are awaiting floor action in the Senate. We explore the factors that are inhibiting the confirmation process and discuss potential changes in the process that could expedite the confirmation of executive nominations.

  PublisherDOI

• Ballot Architecture in the Contemporary Partisan Era

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2020-11-27

  book-chapterSenior author

  This chapter provides detailed case studies of recent ballot reform efforts in Michigan and North Carolina. These states have detailed data on the level of straight ticket voting by county. These data are used to demonstrate how county characteristics such as race, ethnicity, and poverty interact with straight ticket voting and ballot rolloff. We find a strong connection between straight-ticket voting, minority populations, and ballot rolloff. This chapter concludes with analysis of recent changes in Iowa and West Virginia. The findings for Iowa suggest that the effects of ballot design changes are muted in areas that have lower proportions of non-white residents and that are less densely populated.

  PublisherDOI

• The Cost of Majority-Party Bias: Amending Activity under Structured Rules

  UNC Libraries · 2020-04-18

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  All major legislation in the House necessitates a special rule from the Rules Committee before it can be brought to the chamber floor. These rules often strictly limit floor amendments to bills considered by the House. Scholars of political parties have argued that the House majority party can bias policy output away from the floor median through its usage of restrictive rules. In this article, we argue that in order to secure the passage of restrictive rules, the majority often makes concessions to centrist legislators through the amending process. We examine this theory using a newly collected data set that includes all amendments considered by the Rules Committee during the construction of structured rules in the 109th, 110th, and 111th Congresses (2005–2010). Our results are mixed, but they do suggest that moderate members of the majority party often receive concessions via amendments for their support of the majority party's agenda-setting regime.

  PublisherDOI

• The Whips: Building Party Coalitions in Congress

  Political Science Quarterly · 2020-01-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Steven S. Smith

  Washington University in St. Louis

  60 shared

• Ryan J. Vander Wielen

  Stony Brook University

  55 shared

• Jamie L. Carson

  University of Georgia

  10 shared

• Erik J. Engstrom

  University of California, Davis

  9 shared

• Douglas C. Fitzpatrick

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  4 shared

• Anthony J. Madonna

  4 shared

• Nicholas O. Howard

  3 shared

• James M. Curry

  University of Utah

  3 shared