Brian Frederick Schaffner is an American political scientist. He is the Newhouse Professor of
Civic studies
Civic studies is an interdisciplinary field that empirically investigates civic engagement, civic education, and civil society. It also aims to influence the social sciences and humanities in general to take the perspective of intentional human ...
at
Tufts University and a faculty associate at
Harvard University's Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He is also the founding director of the UMass Poll and a co-principal investigator for the
Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), a survey of about 50,000 U.S. voters. He has criticized President
Donald Trump for citing a 2014 study based on data from the CCES as proof that
voter fraud is widespread in the
United States. Of this study, Schaffner told CNN that "Of the people who we were sure were non-citizens, we could not find any who actually cast a vote." He has also said that the authors of the study Trump cited, Jesse Richman and David Earnest, used inaccurate methodology to conclude that millions of non-citizens voted in U.S. elections. He told
MassLive.com
''The Republican'' is a newspaper based in Springfield, Massachusetts covering news in the Greater Springfield area, as well as national news and pieces from Boston, Worcester and northern Connecticut. It is owned by Newhouse Newspapers, a div ...
in January 2017 that "I have been very vocal in speaking out about the study, especially because I feel a sense of responsibility".
Selected works
''Campaign Finance and Political Polarization'': ''When Purists Prevail''','' with Raymond J. La Raja. (University of Michigan Press, 2015 ).
References
External links
Faculty page*
Living people
American political scientists
University of Georgia alumni
Indiana University alumni
University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty
1975 births
{{US-polisci-bio-stub