Ben Williams is a nonpartisan election policy expert serving as FairVote’s Senior Policy Counsel and Researcher. He leads FairVote’s work on election administration and state legislative policy. Before joining FairVote, Williams was the associate director of the Elections & Redistricting program at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), where he led the organization’s work on ranked choice voting, primaries and other party nomination processes, redistricting, campaign finance, ethics, and the partisan composition of legislatures. He also played a key role supporting the program’s work on election administration and convening legislators and staff working on those topics.
Williams has published several academic articles and has written for Slate, The Virginian-Pilot, NCSL Magazine, and NCSL’s State Legislatures News. He has also appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. Williams earned a J.D. from William & Mary Law School, where he was a member of the election law program, and a bachelor’s degree from Tulane University where he double-majored in international relations and history and minored in Latin American studies.
Williams lives with his wife and dog and spends his free time hiking, skiing and kayaking in the Rocky Mountains.