On May 6, the Pew Research Center issued this report, comparing voter turnout in the most recent important election in each of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). There are 34 countries in OECD.

When turnout is computed using the number of voters as a percentage of the voting-age population, the U.S. places fourth from the bottom. The chart emphasizes that method for comparing turnout, by using blue dots on the graph. The same graph also calculates turnout as a percentage of the number of registered voters. The U.S. does better when that method is used. The graph shows that method also, but with lighter-colored orange dots that aren’t as easy to see. The Report says that the method of calculating turnout as a percentage of registered voters is misleading, because in most OECD countries the vast majority of the eligible electorate is registered to vote, something that is not true in the United States.

The U.S. would have looked far worse if the report had used the U.S. congressional election of 2014 instead of the presidential election of 2012.

On May 6, Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Sly James won a lawsuit in Missouri state court over whether he should be removed from the ballot. He is running for re-election. See this story. The plaintiff, who is running against Mayor James, charged that the Mayor was ineligible to have his name on the ballot because he has underpaid some city taxes.

Ballotpedia has issued this report on competition in U.S. elections for state and federal office. There are so many fascinating and important conclusions, it would be a disservice to readers to try to single out any particular findings. The report shows that U.S. state legislative elections in particular are massively uncompetitive, in both primaries and general elections.

Never before has any group or individual accumulated and published this much data about legislative election returns. The report required the authors to collect and analyze the election returns for all legislative districts, in both primaries and general elections, for the last 42 years. In every even-numbered year, there are always more than 6,000 legislative races.