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, with a grant from the United States Election Assistance Commission, Cobb established 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 then, 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, iVote, and the Boston Election Advisory Committee. She is a monthly contributor to the SCRUM on NPR’s Morning Edition on WGBH. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her AB from Bryn Mawr College.Â
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