William T. Adler, PhD

Bipartisan Policy Center · 2023–present

I am the Senior Associate Director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Some of the pieces I've written or contributed to are:

• W Orey, WT Adler. (2026). Do Documentary Proof of Citizenship Requirements Disadvantage One Party More Than the Other? The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• WT Adler, C McIsaac, M Germer, G Cohn-Postar. (2026). United in Security: How Every State Protects Your Vote in 2026. The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• WT Adler, T Menon, W Orey. (2026). What are Electronic Poll Books? The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• W Orey, WT Adler. (2025). What Adding Motor Vehicle Data to USCIS's SAVE System Means for Election Administration. The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• W Orey, WT Adler. (2025). What are the Federal Voluntary Voting System Guidelines? The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• G Klinefelter, A Buffett, WT Adler, L Harootunian. (2025). The Protection and Advocacy System: A Little-Known Program Strengthening Community Living and Voting Access for People with Disabilities The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• D Jackson, W Orey, WT Adler. (2025). Generative AI Is a Multi-tool, Not a Magic Wand for Election Administration. The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• WT Adler, D Chapin, K Gregorowicz, L Kincannon, J Lempert, T Menon, L Nielson, W Orey, DV Alonso. (2025). Measuring the Impact of Recent Grants to Election Administrators Under the Help America Vote Act. The Bipartisan Policy Center, Fors Marsh, U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
• G Klinefelter, WT Adler, W Orey. (2025). Training for Election Officials: A 50-State Analysis. The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• G Klinefelter, T Menon, WT Adler, W Orey. (2024). Why We Might Not Know Election Results Right Away. The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• W Orey, WT Adler, T Menon, J Lempert. (2024). Where Voters Look for Information Ahead of the 2024 Election. The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• The Bipartisan Policy Center and the Associated Press. (2024). How Media Outlets Call Races from Unofficial Election Results.
• D Jackson, M Weil, WT Adler. (2024). Preparing for Artificial Intelligence and Other Challenges to Election Administration. The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• T Menon, WT Adler, J Lempert. (2024). The State of State Election Policy in 2024. The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• T Menon, WT Adler. (2024). More Election Offices are Adopting Verified, .gov Websites. The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• WT Adler. (2024). Understanding the Election Administrator Job Market. The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• WT Adler, E Cassin, G Cohn-Postar, M Germer, C McIsaac. (2024). United in Security: How Every State Protects Your Vote. (En español) The Bipartisan Policy Center.
• WT Adler, T Menon. (2024). Beyond the First Choice: Improving Alaska's Election Reporting Process. The Bipartisan Policy Center.

Center for Democracy & Technology · 2020–2023

I led the Elections & Democracy project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, working to ensure that American elections are fair, accessible, and secure. Some of my pieces there included:

• DW Jackson, WT Adler, D Dougall, S Jain. (2023). Seismic Shifts: How Economic, Technological, and Political Trends are Challenging Independent Counter-Election-Disinformation Initiatives in the United States. The Center for Democracy & Technology.
• WT Adler. (2023). Towards Better Post-Election Audits: Insights from Election Experts. The Center for Democracy & Technology.
• WT Adler, N Maréchal. (2023). To Protect Elections, Protect Researchers. The Center for Democracy & Technology.
• A Aboulafia, WT Adler. (2023). How Many Disabled People Vote Over the Internet? We Need Better Data. The Center for Democracy & Technology.
• WT Adler. (2022). De-Weaponizing and Standardizing the Post-Election Audit. The Center for Democracy & Technology.
• WT Adler, J Doyle, MM Kiran, ML Jones, P Ohm. (2022). Only 1 in 4 Election Websites Uses the .gov Domain. That's a Problem — and an Opportunity. The Center for Democracy & Technology.
• WT Adler. (2022). No Simple Answers: A Primer on Ballot Marking Device Security. The Center for Democracy & Technology.
• WT Adler. (2022). Do Ballot Barcodes Threaten Election Security? The Center for Democracy & Technology.
• WT Adler, D Thakur. (2021). A Lie Can Travel: Election Disinformation in the United States, Brazil, and France. The Center for Democracy & Technology and KAS.
• J Wachspress, WT Adler. (2021). Split Decisions: Guidance for Measuring Locality Preservation in District Maps. The Center for Democracy & Technology.
• WT Adler, D Levine. (2021). Trusting the Vote: Establishing a Presidential Commission on Election Resilience and Trust. The Center for Democracy & Technology and The Alliance for Securing Democracy.
• WT Adler, M Knodel. (2021). An Agenda for U.S. Election Cybersecurity. The Center for Democracy & Technology and KAS.

Georgetown University Law Center · 2023

I was an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, where I taught two semesters of Computer Programming for Lawyers.

AAAS Congressional Fellowship · 2019–2020

In 2019–2020, I was a AAAS Congressional Science & Engineering Fellow in the Office of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. While I was there, I drafted legislation and conducted oversight investigations of the federal government and private sector, especially on tech issues.

Princeton Gerrymandering Project · 2018–2019

I worked to advance the cause of redistricting reform at the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. I wrote a few pieces, including:

• WT Adler, SA Thompson. (2018). The 'blue wave' wasn't enough to overcome Republican gerrymanders. The New York Times.
• WT Adler, E Koeze. (2019). One way to spot a partisan gerrymander. FiveThirtyEight.
• WT Adler, SSH Wang. (2019). Response to Cho and Liu, "Sampling from complicated and unknown distributions: Monte Carlo and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for redistricting." Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. [pdf]
• B Williams, WT Adler, SSH Wang. (2018). Lawmakers should fix inequitable district lines. The Virginian-Pilot.

Scientist Action and Advocacy Network · 2016–2019

I founded the Scientist Action and Advocacy Network (ScAAN), which partners scientists with organizations that are creating positive social change, usually in the production of brief reports. ScAAN has worked on policy issues such as juvenile justice reform, environmental justice in New York City, vaccines, and plastic bag fees. I wrote a piece about how other scientists can start similar groups at their institutions:

• WT Adler. (2018). Here's how scientists can become more politically engaged. Scientific American.

Some ScAAN reports include:

• Scientific support for raising the age of criminal responsibility. [pdf]
• Scientific support for a plastic bag reduction law. [pdf]
• Scientific support for restricting non-medical vaccination exemptions in New York State. [pdf]

NYU PhD · Computational Neuroscience · 2013–2018

I did my PhD in neuroscience at NYU with Wei Ji Ma. For my dissertation [pdf], I tested various computational models of human confidence, resulting in these three papers:

• RN Denison*, WT Adler*, M Carrasco, WJ Ma. (2018). Humans incorporate attention-dependent uncertainty into perceptual decisions and confidence. Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. [pdf]
• WT Adler, WJ Ma. (2018). Comparing Bayesian and non-Bayesian accounts of human confidence reports. PLOS Computational Biology. [pdf]
• WT Adler, WJ Ma. (2018). Limitations of proposed signatures of Bayesian confidence. Neural Computation. [pdf]