Does fraud trump partisanship? The impact of contentious elections on voter confidence

Fraudulent elections can reduce citizen trust in elections and other political institutions. But what about the impact of contentious elections that resolve successfully, leading to democratizing change? Do national movements toward democracy trump individual experiences with electoral manipulation? Using public opinion survey data collected before and after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, we evaluate changes in voter confidence in electoral practices, political institutions, and democracy. Although national trends show increased voter confidence overall, subnational variation suggests pervasive partisan differences in opinions about election quality and institutional confidence. Remarkably, we find that direct exposure to fraud matters far less than anticipated; voters who were personally exposed to fraud felt no more or less confident than their co-partisans. We show that partisanship and the national electoral context may interact in ways that complicate the effects of democratizing elections, suggesting important avenues for future research.     

Books in review

His publications include The Ways Out: Utopian Communal Groups in an Age of Babylonand Gone From the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History.     

Protective order legislation: Trends in state statutes

Very little research has examined state legislation on protective orders. This study examined recent state statutes and compared the findings with a landmark 1988 study. Results indicated that more recent laws provided greater access to victims and expanded their eligible populations to include categories that were excluded in earlier legislation (i.e., dating partners, sexual partners, and same-sex partners). Orders increased slightly in duration and there were more access to them outside of normal working hours. Compared with earlier legislation, newer laws were more apt to authorize judges to fashion remedies that address financial matters. Penalties for violations remained relatively stable, although states were increasingly willing to use enhanced sanctions for repeat offenders. States continued to use mandatory arrest to enforce orders, although this trend was not as pronounced as one might have anticipated. Finally, legislators incorporated many aspects of new federal legislation into state statutes.