The 2000 presidential election was an historic election. Many Americans revisited that institution given its perfunctory three paragraphs in their high school civics texts—the Electoral College. The closeness of the election and the ambiguity of electoral versus popular votes made many question how presidents are chosen. The realization that citizens vote not for candidates, but for electors further complicated understanding. Although many experts detailed the reasons for the Electoral College, the problems associated with it, and the infamous elections resulting from it, little was said about those for whom we actually cast our ballots. Simply put, we know surprisingly little about those who serve as electors. The conventional wisdom is that electors are chosen for their party service and/or their financial contributions. Beyond this impressionistic understanding, a great vacuum of knowledge exists.

The following essay aims to consolidate the learnings of a year-long internship at The Review of Politics, during which time the author read and wrote reports on some hundred articles submitted to the journal.

Asian Americans have received relatively little attention from political scientists. Although a rapidly growing segment of the population, their political behaviors, impacts on political institutions, and the policies affecting them have been rarely studied in our discipline.

More than a century has passed since the fictional Mr. Dooley declared in his rich Irish brogue that “The Soopreme Court follows the illiction returns,” but until now no hard evidence has existed of just how fixated the Court is on presidential elections [but see Flemming and Wood 1997; Mishler and Sheehan 1993]. Fortunately, now we have proof positive, which we serendipitously unearthed from its resting place in the Library of Congress, where it was entombed deep in the personal papers of Justice Harry Blackmun.

Frank R. Baumgartner, professor, political science department, Pennsylvania State University, will spend the 2004–2005 academic year on sabbatical leave at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy and at Science Po in Paris, France.

Jonathan Bendor, Walter and Elise Haas Professor of Political Economics and Organizations, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, was appointed a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Michael Berkman, associate professor, political science department, Pennsylvania State University, will spend the fall 2004 semester on sabbatical leave completing a book on educational politics.

They did not seem to be in a position to help the other body. Yet, on October 10, 2002, members of the House Judiciary Committee listened to witnesses discuss how the Senate could be more efficient. In 2003, Senate committees heard similar testimony. During the hearings, eminent law professors suggested that the practice of allowing filibusters on judicial nominees could not be imposed by previous Senates on the current one. It, therefore, would be within the power of the 51 Republican Senators to uphold a point of order against the filibuster and proceed to govern by majority rule (Kmiec 2003). In Washington, this course of action is called the “nuclear option.” Although the informal use of the nuclear option has several variations, each variation has a common underlying feature that can be formally defined. The nuclear option is a dramatic refusal to recognize delaying tactics permitted under the rules that facilitates the institutionalization of majoritarian procedures in a legislative body. Occurring in legislatures such as the 1881 British House of Commons, the use of the nuclear option can be a watershed event wherever the majority lacks an unassailable way to end debate.

Avery Leiserson died February 14, 2004, at the age of 90. He is survived by his wife, Roxy, of Nashville, Tennessee; three sons, Michael of Spokane, Washington, John of Winchester, Massachusetts, and Alan of Nashville; and a daughter, Nancy Welles of New York.

APSA is pleased to recognize political science faculty members who received campus-wide and department awards for teaching excellence during the 2003–2004 academic year. APSA, Rowman Littlefield Publishers, and Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science honor society, recognize award-winning faculty members each year at the Reception Honoring Teaching at the APSA Annual Meeting. Recognized faculty members receive a certificate noting their accomplishment and their awards are announced in PS and on the APSA web site.

It has been attributed to Mark Twain that he once said no one would do anything if they knew what they were in for. Assuming that most people are risk averse, most people will not gladly expose themselves to experiences or conditions that seem unusually difficult or challenging. With this notion in mind, I have led students through an intellectually, emotionally, and sometimes physically challenging course on urban poverty and social policy. After the course, students were grateful for the challenges, though they did not fully understand what they were getting into at the outset. Such challenges often caught the students by surprise, often leading to new perspectives on policy problems and to introspection of personal values and presuppositions, thereby providing substantial rewards for students as well as their instructor.

William V. O'Brien, Professor of Government Emeritus at Georgetown University, died on July 8, 2003, at his home in Washington of head injuries suffered in a fall.