We examine the link between voter turnout and institutional features of electoral systems such as the threshold of exclusion and proportionality, and other empirical factors such as competition and the effective number of parties, i.e. factors that previous literature has suggested will probably be closely linked to district magnitude. As in Blais and Arts (2004) and Grofman and Selb (forthcomi...

I consider a two-candidate plurality-rule election in which there is aggregate uncertainty about the popularity of each candidate, where voting is costly, and where participants are instrumentally motivated. The unique equilibrium predicts significant turnout under reasonable parameter configurations, and greater turnout for the underdog offsets the expected advantage of the perceived leader. I...

We reexamine the theory of rational voter participation where voting is by two collusive parties that can enforce social norms through costly peer punishment. This model nests both the ethical voter model and the pivotal voter model. We initially abstract from aggregate shocks to the population of voters in favor of the original Palfrey and Rosenthal [24] model and analyze the subsequent all-pa...

This paper investigates the ways in which grants can be incorporated into the median voter model of local government expenditure. Grants can either be viewed as having income or price effects. Oakes suggested grants might affect the average price as perceived by the median voter. Our initial estimates seem to support this idea. However, econometric problems require a re-estimation of the model....

A journalist reports to a voter on an unknown, policy-relevant state. Competing special interests can make claims that contradict the facts but seem credible to the voter. A reputational incentive to avoid taking sides leads the journalist to report special interests' claims to the voter. In equilibrium, the voter can remain uninformed even when the journalist is perfectly informed. Communicati...

In the framework of peer to peer distributed systems, the problem of anonymity in structured overlay networks remains a quite elusive one. It is especially unclear how to evaluate and improve sender anonymity, that is, untraceability of the peers who issue messages to other participants in the overlay. In a structured overlay organized as a chordal ring, we have found that a technique originall...

Applying the theory of voter model and the theory of stopping time, we investigate the statistical properties of the fluctuations of interfaces model that defined from the voter model. We show that the probability distributions of the fluctuations, under some conditions, converge to the corresponding distribution of a geometric Brownian motion. Key-Words: Fluctuation; interface; voter model; st...

We study a family of opinion formation models in one dimension where the propensity for a voter to align with its local environment depends non-linearly on the fraction of disagreeing neighbors. Depending on this non-linearity in the voting rule, the population may exhibit a bias toward zero magnetization or toward consensus, and the average magnetization is generally not conserved. We use a de...

Voting algorithms are used to arbitrate between variant results in a wide range of highly dependable real-time control applications. These applications include N-Modular Redundant hardware systems and diversely designed software systems based on N-Version Programming. The most sophisticated and complex voting algorithms can even tolerate malicious (or Byzantine) variant errors. Voting algorithm...