We consider a social choice problem where only a small number of people out of a large population are sufficiently available or motivated to vote. A common solution to increase participation is to allow voters use a proxy, that is, transfer their voting rights to another voter. Considering social choice problems on metric spaces, we compare voting with and without the use of proxies to see whic...

Abstract Vote buying is a form of political clientelism involving pre-electoral transfers money or material benefits from candidates to voters. Despite the presence secret ballots, vote remains pervasive phenomenon during elections in developing countries. While prior literature has focused on how enforced by parties and which types voters are most likely targeted, we know much less about behav...

This thesis proposes a theory mapping emotional reactions to political information onto a theory of vote decisionmaking and then further onto measurable survey response. Using on-line processing based in emotion, voters form affective summaries about candidates, which store previous information as an emotional response. The act of voting is treated as a single realization of a probabilistic eve...

Thanks to the work of politics and religion scholars, we now know a lot about the relationship between religion and voting in American presidential general elections. However, we know less about the influence of religion on individual vote choice in presidential primaries. This article fills that gap by exploring the relationship between religion and candidate preference in the 2008 and 2012 Re...

We present a structural model of political advertising in equilibrium. Candidates’ choose advertising based on its marginal impact on the probability of winning the election, the returns from winning and the cost of advertising. The voter model takes the form of an aggregate discrete choice model in which advertising affects a voter’s incentive to vote for either candidate or not to vote at all...

We construct a universally verifiable, cryptographic vote casting protocol that enables each voter to determine with high certainty via a receipt that her choices (intended votes) have been accurately represented in the input to a public tally. However, since the receipt, in isolation, can represent a choice for any candidate with equal probability, it does not enable vote buying or coercion. T...

In traditional models, votes are an expression of preferences and beliefs. Psychological theories of cognitive dissonance suggest, however, that behavior may shape preferences. In this view, the very act of voting may influence political attitudes. A vote for a candidate may lead to more favorable interpretations of his actions in the future. We test the empirical relevance of cognitive dissona...