Strategic ballot removal: an unexplored form of electoral manipulation in hybrid regimes

The literatures on electoral manipulation and rejected ballots have yet to engage one another in a compelling manner. This article provides the theoretical foundations for rejected ballots as electoral manipulation by exploring incidents of suspicious rejected ballot rates and practices around the world with a special focus on Zambia. Not only did the rate of rejected ballots in Zambia double between the 2015 and 2016 presidential elections, but a disproportionate increase was observed in president’s home province. Leveraging an original dataset, the article models a largely unnoticed form of electoral manipulation: the strategic rejection of opposition ballots by biased polling officials. Analysis reveals that more rejected ballots were associated with increased vote shares for the ruling party in the president’s home province, indicating probable electoral manipulation. Raising awareness around this difficult to detect, but likely pervasive, form of manipulation should help to improve electoral quality in hybrid regimes.     

The Higher Power of Religiosity Over Personality on Political Ideology

Political Behavior - Two streams of research, culture war and system justification, have proposed that religious orientations and personality, respectively, play critical roles in political...     

Poverty and Disasters: Do Remittances Reproduce Vulnerability?

Abstract

In many low-income countries, remittances are important in sustaining people’s livelihood and become even more significant during disasters. Meanwhile, the literature suggests that remittances are mainly accessible to middle and upper-income households, rather than to the poorest, thus implying differential capacities amongst households to overcome crises. The present study uses cyclone Evan that hit Samoa in December 2012 as a case study to test this hypothesis. It focuses on the village of Tafitoala and draws on interviews and participatory activities undertaken with the poorest households of the community. It indicates that the poor receive little to no remittances and that they struggled more than the rest of the community to cope with and recover from the cyclone. Their lack of access to remittances had negative consequences on the security and sustainability of their livelihoods. We conclude that remittances reproduce or even increase both inequalities and vulnerabilities existing within the community of origin.