The paper presents evidence on the effect of voter demobilization in the context of the Canadian 2011 federal election. Voters in 27 ridings (as of February 26, 2012) allegedly received automated phone calls (‘robocalls’) that either contained misleading information about the location of their polling station, or were harassing in nature, claiming to originate from a particular candidate in the...

In the 1998 general election, Minnesota had a voter turnout of 60 percent in a nonpresidential year. While this was also the highest turnout in the nation, a significant number of Minnesotans still did not exercise their right to vote. In fact, 1.4 million eligible voters of the state did not vote and 119 million people did not vote nationwide, a 36 percent participation rate. It is not surpris...

The paradox between an individual’s decisions to head to the polls and the absence of strictly rational arguments for this action has intrigued – and troubled – many scholars.The present article surveys various theoretical contributions to resolve this paradox of (not) voting. We assess these approaches based on their ability to explain a number of ‘stylised facts’ with respect to voter turnout...

We present a theory of voting that predicts that elections are more likely to be close, and voter turnout is more likely to be high when citizens possess better public information about the composition of the electorate. These findings suggest that providing more information to potential voters about aggregate political preferences (e.g., through pre-election polls or expert forecasts) may unde...

Prêt à Voter is an electronic voting system with very high security properties. We aim to make the system truly usable and applicable in elections with many races and candidates by allowing the vote to be formed using a voting machine and by printing a minimalistic receipt. We also introduce the procedure/technology mix concept to describe the use of procedures, people and technology to secure ...