About:

Rachael V. Cobb, Ph.D. is Chair and Associate Professor of Government at Suffolk University. Cobb specializes in U.S. elections, election administration, electoral politics, civic engagement, and political participation.

In 2006, Professor Cobb received a grant from the United States Election Assistance Commission to establish the University Pollworkers Project, a nonpartisan program designed to recruit college students as poll workers as a response to reports of an estimated shortage of 500,000 poll workers nationwide. Since 2006, more than 500 students from the Greater Boston area have received training and worked as poll workers.

In 2008, Professor Cobb served as co-principal investigator on the Boston Area Colleges Exit Poll, in collaboration with D. James Greiner (Harvard Law School) and Kevin Quinn (Harvard Government Department). Her work as appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science and Studies in American Political Development. Professor Cobb serves on the board of MassVOTE and the Boston Election Advisory Committee. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her AB from Bryn Mawr College.

Relevant Media:

• Half of registered voters expect to have some difficulty voting, according to the Pew Research Center in CNBC
• Desperate voters book last-minute flights to the polls: ‘Five hours of flying is more than worth it’ in the Washington Post
• Undeterred and ready for a change: twice the usual number of poll workers have signed up to serve Boston’s polling stations in the BU News Service
• Americans traveling miles during pandemic to vote in person in The Guardian

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