Mason Reece

PhD Candidate in Political Science at MIT

Hi, I’m Mason Reece, and I’m a PhD candidate in MIT’s Political Science department focusing on American Politics and Models & Methods. I am interested in local politics, election administration, and novel methods to use large, original, datasets. My dissertation uses cast vote records to study local politics.

To bring a practical lens to my research, I have served as the lead poll worker in Houston and Cambridge and organized a youth voters conference. In my free time, I love riding my bike, hiking, and trying food from around the world. You can find my CV here.

Selected Working Papers

• Mason Reece and Daniel M. Thompson. (2025+) "Partisan Elections and Partisan Voting: Evidence from Judicial Elections."
  
• Shigeo Hirano, Joseph Loffredo, Mason Reece, and James M. Snyder Jr.. (2025+) "Trends in Nationalization of State and Local Elections."
  
• Mason Reece. (2025+) "Even Faster Ideal Point Estimation Using Variational Autoencoders to Estimate Item-Response Theory Models."
  Most Recent Draft
• Mason Reece. (2024+) "Judges as Candidates: Responsiveness to Judicial Selection Methods."
  Most Recent Draft Github

Publications

• Shiro Kuriwaki, Mason Reece, Samuel Baltz, Aleksandra Conevska, Joseph R. Loffredo, Can E. Mutlu, Taran Samarth, Kevin E. Acevedo Jetter, Zachary Djanogly Garai, Kate Murray, Shigeo Hirano, Jeffrey B. Lewis, James M. Snyder Jr., and Charles H. Stewart III. (2024) "Cast vote records: A database of ballots from the 2020 U.S. Election." Nature Scientific Data.
  Link Github Dataverse
• Lonna Atkeson, MV Hood III, Colin Jones, Mason Reece, and Robert M Stein. (2022) "Postal Voting in the 2020 Election." Journal of Election Administration, Research and Practice.
  Link