In Switzerland the Federal Chancellery in cooperation with three cantons has carried out since 2003 a number of pilot trials with the aim of evaluating the feasibility of remote e-voting. Based on a legal basis respecting the council of europe's recommendations five pilot trials have been authorized at national referendums in 2004 and 2005. The pilot trials were evaluated for a number of differ...

Voter mobilization campaigns face trade-offs in fragile democracies. In a large-scale experiment implemented in 2013 with the Kenyan Electoral Commission, text messages intended to mobilize voters boosted participation but also decreased trust in electoral institutions, a decrease that was stronger in areas that experienced election-related violence, and for individuals on the losing side of th...

It has been a standard result of the stochastic, or probabilistic, spatial model of voting that vote maximizing candidates, or parties, will converge to the electoral mean (the origin). This conclusion has appeared to be contradicted by empirical studies. Here, a more general stochastic model, incorporating ‘exogeneous’ valence, is constructed. Contrary to the standard result, it is shown in Th...

This paper compares voter behavior in local and national elections to make inferences about whether voters are more vigilant in monitoring the more local level of government. Vigilance is defined as retrospective voting where voters evaluate incumbents based on their overall performance during the entire term in office. We contrast voter behavior in state legislative assembly elections in India...

Using data drawn from a survey conducted shortly after the 2002 elections, we investigate the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) election victory from the perspective of inter-party vote movements. Our aim is not only to identify the parties from which the AKP votes originated, but also the segments of these parties' voter bases the party appealed to in particular. Descriptive statistics sug...

'ote To· Hold Unloft 80ard Election· Agai~ . . '. ' , ': TJte SUI Union Board voted Tuesd:ly night to recall the March All· C!lJIlpUS Union Board election because the name of one of the candi· da~es was omitted when the ballots were printed.· • • ~h:n Newsome, A2, Des Moines, was not on thE' h!,lllJlt jn the 21 ,election. the new election wiJl be on April l"and 18. Only students ill the Col. le...

This paper examines a few of the numerous factors that may have led to increased youth turnout in the 2008 Election. First, theories of voter behavior and turnout are related to courting the youth vote. Several variables that are perceived to affect youth turnout such as party polarization, perceived candidate difference, voter registration, effective campaigning and mobilization, and use of th...

Although low voter turnout in national elections has garnered considerable attention and concern, much lower turnout in municipal elections has often been largely ignored. Using a survey of cities in California, this article examines a series of institutional remedies to low turnout in mayoral and city council elections. Moving local elections to coincide with the dates of national elections wo...