Internet voting and the secret ballot in Norway: principles and popular understandings

The secret ballot is considered a central feature of democratic elections, but its practical implications may be contested when Internet voting (and remote voting in general) is introduced. How do citizens understand the principle of the secret ballot in practice? The issue was brought to the fore in a trial with Internet voting that was conducted in 12 Norwegian municipalities for the 2013 parliamentary election. Based on a representative population survey, we explore how Norwegian voters approached the principle of the secret ballot in the context of Internet voting. A large majority supported the general principle, but the picture became more nuanced when it was put to the test of concrete situations. Unless the situation involved coercion or undue influence, many people were willing to accept that voting can be observed by others – even if this was a breach of legal regulations.     

Dual ballot effects on French presidential vote choice

Relatively little is known about how voters behave under dual ballot voting systems. Do voters follow different decision rules at each ballot? Do they weigh relevant considerations differently on the second ballot, as compared to the first ballot? Does political sophistication condition the way people vote on the first and second ballots? Using survey data from five French presidential elections, we examine these questions and find that voters in France do indeed treat first and second ballots differently. More precisely, we find that both partisanship and ideology matter more on the second ballot. Demographics, socioeconomic status, and political issues, on the other hand, weigh more heavily in the first round. Political sophistication, for its part, does not condition nor reinforce these effects.     

Urban Citizenship: Campaigns to Restore Immigrant Voting Rights in the US

International migration challenges traditional notions of citizenship as mobile citizens may retain or regain their right to vote in elections. This article examines the rebirth of noncitizen voting rights in US local elections during the past decades. While some campaigns provide voting rights only to authorized immigrants, other campaigns extend voting rights to all noncitizens regardless of their status. Some efforts have been led by immigrant rights organizations and other campaigns arose at the initiative of elected officials. Some measures have been passed—or were defeated—by a majority of voters in a jurisdiction (ballot proposal) while other measures have been passed—or were defeated—by elected representatives (as local statutes). Who spearheaded these campaigns for immigrant voting rights and why? What are key ingredients to the success or failure of these campaigns? What have been their impacts? Using qualitative and quantitative data gathered from field research and public records over the past decade, this article addresses these questions and their implications for advancing immigrant incorporation and democratic practice.     

Does Voting by Mail Increase Participation? Using Matching to Analyze a Natural Experiment

Megan Mullin Department of Political Science, Temple University, 408 Gladfelter Hall (025-22), 1115 West Berks Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122-6089 e-mail: mmullin{at}temple.edu (corresponding author) Would holding elections by mail increase voter turnout? Manyelectoral reform advocates predict that mail ballot electionswill boost participation, basing their prediction on the highturnout rate among absentee voters and on the rise in voterturnout after Oregon switched to voting by mail. However, selectionproblems inherent to studies of absentee voters and Oregon giveus important reasons to doubt whether their results would extendto more general applications of voting by mail. In this paper,we isolate the effects of voting in mail ballot elections bytaking advantage of a natural experiment in which voters areassigned in a nearly random process to cast their ballots bymail. We use matching methods to ensure that, in our analysis,the demographic characteristics of these voters mirror thoseof polling-place voters who take part in the same elections.Drawing on data from a large sample of California counties intwo general elections, we find that voting by mail does notdeliver on the promise of greater participation in general elections.In fact, voters who are assigned to vote by mail turn out atlower rates than those who are sent to a polling place. Analysisof a sample of local special elections, by contrast, indicatesthat voting by mail can increase turnout in these otherwiselow-participation contests. Authors' note: We are grateful to the Haynes Foundation forsupporting this project, Karin MacDonald for bringing mail ballotprecincts to our attention, Anup Pradhan for providing criticaldata, Shawn Treier for his helpful comments on an earlier draft,and Sam Deddeh and Mike Binder for data entry assistance.     

Approval voting,Condorcet's principle,and runoff elections

Approval voting allows each voter to vote for as many candidates as he wishes in an election but not cast more than one vote for each candidate of whom he approves. If there is a strict Condorcet candidate — a candidate who defeats all others in pairwise contests — approval voting is shown to be the only nonranked voting system that is always able to elect the strict Condorcet candidate when voters use sincere admissible strategies. Moreover, if a strict Condorcet candidate must be elected under ordinary plurality voting when voters use admissible strategies, then he must also be elected under approval voting when voters use admissible strategies, but the converse does not hold. The widely used plurality runoff method can also elect a strict Condorcet candidate when voters use admissible strategies on the first ballot, but some of these may have to be insincere to get the strict Condorcet candidate onto the runoff ballot. Furthermore, there is no case in which the strict Condorcet candidate is invariably elected under the plurality runoff method when voters use admissible first-ballot strategies. Thus, approval voting is superior to the plurality runoff method with respect to the Condorcet principle in its ability to elect the strict Condorcet candidate by sincere voting and in its ability to guarantee the election of the strict Condorcet candidate when voters use admissible strategies. In addition, approval voting is more efficient since it requires only one election and is probably less subject to strategic manipulation.     

Who would vote NOTA? Explaining a ‘none of the above’ choice in eight countries

In this study, we investigate who would vote ‘none of the above’ (NOTA) if this were available on the ballot paper using original data from eight European countries. In particular, we examine whether NOTA would be used by abstainers and voters to protest within the electoral process. We also test whether socioeconomic factors and specific and diffuse support for democracy and its institutions correlate with a NOTA vote. We find that having NOTA on the ballot would reduce invalid balloting more than abstention and much more than protest party voting. Our results also suggest that NOTA is related to socioeconomic status, political interest, political knowledge and distrust in political institutions and authorities, but not to broadly undemocratic attitudes. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the increasingly large amounts of abstention and invalid voting, as well as the growing distrust of political institutions, in democratic countries. They also hold lessons for electoral reformers.     

Coping with complexity: Ballot position effects in the Finnish open-list proportional representation system

Many studies show that the order of candidates’ names on the ballot has an effect on voting. Less informed and indifferent voters may simplify the voting process by using the ballot position of candidates as a voting cue. By studying six parliamentary elections in Finland, this study first demonstrates that the relationship between ballot position and preference votes follows a reversed J-shaped curve. Candidates listed early on the ballot win the most preference votes, while candidates listed near the end have an advantage over those listed in the middle. Furthermore, the ballot position effect grows stronger with the complexity of the electoral environment. The ballot position effect increases as the number of candidates on the party list increases, the candidates-to-seats ratio increases and the number of incumbents on the list decreases.     

Mobilizing different types of voters: The influence of campaign intensity on turnout in direct democratic votes

A well-established body of literature links voter turnout to political campaigns. In this view, intensive campaigns increase the perceived salience of a decision, fostering information-seeking and, ultimately, turnout. The existing literature has also advanced our understanding of how direct democratic institutions influence turnout in elections. Yet we still know little about whether and to what extent campaign efforts influence voter turnout in direct democratic votes, and we know even less about who is mobilized. We claim that campaign intensity has differentiated effects across voters, depending on voters’ participation profile. To test this claim we use a rich dataset of official turnout data covering more than 40 direct democratic votes in Switzerland. The results support our claim. While intensive political campaigns overall foster citizens to turn out to vote, they do so especially for “selective” (or “intermittent”) voters, who need to decide anew at each ballot whether to turn out or not. Interestingly, we also find that frequent abstainers are not immune from campaign effects, and get almost as strongly mobilized as selective voters in highly intensive campaigns.     

Spatial voting in non-partisan cities: A case study

In spatial voting theory, voters choose the candidate whose policy preferences are most like their own. This requires that (a) voters and candidates have policy preferences that can be meaningfully summarized in terms of low-dimensional “ideal points” on a left-right scale; (b) voters are able to discern, either directly or through relevant cues, the ideal points of the candidates who are running for office; and (c) voters incorporate this information into the choices they make at the ballot box. Perhaps more than in any other elections, it is not clear that any of these requirements are met in non-partisan municipal elections: policy preferences may not be ideologically structured, information may be inadequate, and voters may choose candidates for reasons other than ideology. This makes non-partisan municipal elections an especially hard test for spatial voting theory. Using novel data from both municipal candidates and eligible voters in a major non-partisan municipal election in Canada, we show that municipal policy attitudes are ideologically structured and that these municipal policy ideal points are strongly related to mayoral and council vote choice. Thus, despite the institutional and informational obstacles, spatial voting can play an important role in non-partisan municipal elections.     

Voter satisfaction and electoral systems: Does preferential voting in candidate-centred systems make a difference?

Abstract.  Over the years, many scholars have examined the relationship between electoral systems and measures of voter satisfaction with democracy. The tendency in these studies has been to explore the traditional Proportional Representation/non-Proportional-Representation dichotomy, assessing whether more proportional systems produce higher levels of satisfaction. This article examines another dimension of electoral system variation – namely the degree to which the ballot structure incorporates ordinal, or preferential features. Given that proponents of such systems extol their virtues as offering voters 'greater choice', it is interesting to explore how this actually plays with the voters. The article makes use of cross-national data from the comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project to examine the relationship between preferential voting and levels of satisfaction with democracy.     

Do voters have a cue? Television advertisements as a source of information in citizen–initiated referendum campaigns

Abstract. In this article we examine the scope for campaign effects in citizen–initiated referendum (CIR) elections. Given the context of CIR elections, television effects can be seen to be even bigger and more important than in candidate elections. We use survey data on information demands made upon voters in CIR campaigns, and the information sources they use, in order to gauge the relative importance of various sources that voters rely upon in making voting decisions. We then examine the relative importance of television advertising as a source of information in CIR campaigns. We find that voters report using many sources of information, with few voters relying exclusively upon television advertisements. Rather than telling voters which way to vote, television campaigns may simply raise awareness of CIRs and so encourage voters to seek cues elsewhere, in particular from ballot guides where cues are more readily discerned.     

A new barrier to participation: Heterogeneous application of voter identification policies

In democratic societies there is a tension between maximizing ballot access and minimizing voter fraud. Since the 2000 presidential election, this tension has been central to discussions about election reform at the national, state, and local level. We examine this tension by focusing on the implementation of voter identification laws in one state that has experienced significant issues in recent elections, and that is currently implementing election reform: New Mexico. We hypothesize that Hispanic voters are more likely to show some form of identification than other types of voters. Using a voter data set from New Mexico's First Congressional District in the 2006 election, we find that Hispanic, male and Election Day voters are more likely to show some form of identification than non-Hispanic, female and early voters. In addition, using an overlapping study of Bernalillo County 2006 poll workers, which almost entirely overlaps with the First Congressional District, we find no evidence that differences in poll worker partisanship or ethnicity produce differences in voter identification procedures. Our findings suggest that broad voter identification laws, which may be applied unequally, may be perceived as discriminatory.     

Strategic voting in local elections: evidence from Portugal (1979–2013)

Do voters behave strategically in local elections? Does democratic experience influence voters’ capacity to behave strategically? Is there a relation between education and voters’ capacity to anticipate the mechanical effects of electoral statutes and adapt their behaviour accordingly? Using an original data set covering the complete democratic period, this paper studies strategic voting at the local level in Portugal. Using an ecological inference approach, we contribute to a vast body of literature on strategic voting by testing whether theories developed for national contexts travel to local contexts. Our findings suggest that (1) voters consistently defect to non-viable lists to support viable lists; (2) democratic experience helps voters to learn how to maximize their utility; and (3) education is important for voters’ ability to identify a strategic setting.     

Electoral registration and the control of votes: The case of Chile

We investigate how the employment relationship may lead employers to control the voting behavior and to induce the electoral registration of their workers. Forced registration and the control of votes become feasible when voting behavior is observable, as in open ballot elections. Workers whose vote is controlled are more likely to be registered as compared to other eligible voters, increasing their impact on electoral outcomes. Increasing the secrecy of the vote (for instance with the adoption of a secret ballot) significantly reduces the control of votes. Electoral registration, however, remains biased as long as the probability of voting behavior disclosure induces less ideologically motivated voters to comply with the political preference of the employer. We provide empirical support for the predictions of the model examining the effects of the introduction of the secret ballot in Chile in 1958.     

Getting things straight: The effects of ballot design and electoral structure on voter participation

This paper considers the implications of the straight-party voting option (STVO) on participation in judicial elections. Voters using straight-party options (by definition) do not vote for candidates in nonpartisan elections. Consequently, ballot roll-off in these elections is more likely to occur when people are given the chance to vote the party ticket and complete the voting process quickly. This is the case because nonpartisan judicial elections are considerably less salient than statewide and federal partisan elections. This article separates out the effects of the institutional structure of the election on political participation with the effects of ballot design. We find that in nonpartisan elections, the straight-party option decreases voter participation since voters who utilize the straight-ticket option may erroneously believe that they have voted for these nonpartisan offices, or simply ignore them. However, in nonpartisan elections without straight-ticket voting, participation is increased compared to nonpartisan elections with straight-ticket voting. Additionally, both forms of nonpartisan elections have less participation than partisan elections, all of which have the straight-ticket option. Thus, voter participation is affected not only by the type of election, but the type of voting rules in the election.     

Eliciting preferences for land use alternatives: A structured value referendum with approval voting

This article discusses an experimental application of the Structured Value Referendum (SVR) with approval voting. The decision context is selecting the best land use for an undeveloped area of publicly owned suburban land in Richmond, British Columbia. Subjects were a random sample of 200 registered voters, selected in a "mall‐intercept" format. Subjects reviewed relevant information, completed a ballot, and then completed a survey about their satisfaction with the approval voting format. The results are of substantive interest for the land use decision, and show a high preference for an approval voting format. The results show ease in understanding the task and information provided, as well as a belief that this approach could be useful in guiding public policy. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The effect of the secret ballot on voter turnout rates

Secrecy in the voting process eliminated an important motivation for voting. No longer able to verify the voters' choices, political parties stopped offering payments in return for votes. Within the rational voter framework, it will be shown that these payments were a prime impetus for people to vote. Without a vote market to cover their voting costs, many voters were rational to stay away from the polls. This hypothesis is supported through a series of empirical tests culminating in a multivariate legislative regression. When other electoral laws are controlled for, the secret ballot accounts for 7 percentage points lower Gubernatorial turnout.     

Do Perceptions of Ballot Secrecy Influence Turnout? Results from a Field Experiment

Although the secret ballot has been secured as a legal matter in the United States, formal secrecy protections are not equivalent to convincing citizens that they may vote privately and without fear of reprisal. We present survey evidence that those who have not previously voted are particularly likely to voice doubts about the secrecy of the voting process. We then report results from a field experiment where we mailed information about protections of ballot secrecy to registered voters prior to the 2010 general election. Consistent with our survey data, we find that these letters increased turnout for registered citizens without records of previous turnout, but they did not appear to influence the behavior of citizens who had previously voted. The increase in turnout of more than three percentage points (20%) for those without previous records of voting is notably larger than the effect of a standard get‐out‐the‐vote mailing for this group. Overall, these results suggest that although the secret ballot is a long‐standing institution in the United States, beliefs about this institution may not match the legal reality.     

Taking cues from the government: heuristic versus systematic processing in a constitutional referendum

Abstract

One of the main criticisms of direct democracy is that it places excessive demands on voters. Are citizens competent enough to vote directly on policy issues? When stakes are high, do citizens mainly follow elites’ signals or do they decide in line with their issue preferences? This article addresses these questions in a multi-method setting by combining observational and experimental data from an original three-wave panel survey conducted during the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum. In particular, Finite Mixture Models are employed to model voters’ heterogeneous strategies of information processing. Findings show that heuristic voting based on government evaluation prevails over policy-related voting. More specifically, less politically sophisticated and partisan voters relied on government assessment as a heuristic, while sophisticated and independent voters based their decisions mostly on their assessment of the reform. Implications for the question of citizens’ competence in direct democracy are discussed.     

Endogenous economic voting: evidence from the 1997 British election

Using panel surveys conducted in Great Britain before and after the 1997 general election, we examine the relationship between voting behavior and post-election economic perceptions. Drawing on psychological theories of attitude formation, we argue that those who voted for Labour and the Liberal Democrats perceived the past state of the British economy under the Tory government more negatively than they had prior to casting their ballot in the 1997 election. Similarly, we posit that Labour supporters would view the future state of the national economy under Labour more positively than they had before the election. This indicates that, contrary to many assumptions in the economic voting literature, voting behavior influences evaluations of the economy as voters seek to reduce inconsistencies between their vote choice and evaluations of the economy by bringing their attitudes in line with the vote they cast in the election. It also means that voters’ post-election economic perceptions are, at least in part, influenced by and thus endogenous to their vote choice. This finding has two major implications: first, cross-sectional models of economic voting are likely to overestimate the effect of economic perceptions on the vote. Second, the endogeneity of economic perceptions may compromise the quality of economic voting as a mechanism for democratic accountability.