Eric McGhee is a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, and policy director for the Understanding California’s Future research initiative tasked with exploring key trends and challenges facing the state. He focuses on elections, legislative behavior, political reform, and demography. His research on elections and electoral reform has appeared in numerous academic journals, and his work has been profiled on National Public Radio, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and The Economist. He is the creator of the “efficiency gap”—a widely used measure of gerrymandering—and coauthor of a legal test based on the measure that has been presented before the US Supreme Court in high-profile litigation. Before joining PPIC, he was assistant professor of political science at the University of Oregon and served as a congressional fellow through the American Political Science Association. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mindy Romero is the founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy (formerly the California Civic Engagement Project) at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy, in Sacramento. She is also a PPIC adjunct fellow. Her research focuses on political behavior and race/ethnicity, and seeks to explain patterns of voting and political underrepresentation, particularly among youth and communities of color in California and the United States. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Davis.