Electronic elections Alvarez, R. Michael
2010., 20100125, 2010, 2008, 2008-01-01, 20080101
eBook
Since the 2000 presidential election, the United States has been embroiled in debates about electronic voting. Critics say the new technologies invite tampering and fraud. Advocates say they enhance ...the accuracy of vote counts and make casting ballots easier--and ultimately foster greater political participation.Electronic Electionscuts through the media spin to assess the advantages and risks associated with different ways of casting ballots--and shows how e-voting can be the future of American democracy.
Elections by nature are fraught with risk. Michael Alvarez and Thad Hall fully examine the range of past methods and the new technologies that have been created to try to minimize risk and accurately reflect the will of voters. Drawing upon a wealth of new data on how different kinds of electronic voting machines have performed in recent elections nationwide, they evaluate the security issues that have been the subject of so much media attention, and examine the impacts the new computer-based solutions is having on voter participation. Alvarez and Hall explain why the benefits of e-voting can outweigh the challenges, and they argue that media coverage of the new technologies has emphasized their problems while virtually ignoring their enormous potential for empowering more citizens to vote. The authors also offer ways to improve voting technologies and to develop more effective means of implementing and evaluating these systems.
Electronic Electionsmakes a case for how e-voting can work in the United States, showing why making it work right is essential to the future vibrancy of the democratic process.
How did Republicans manage to hold the White House through much of the past half century even as the Democratic Party held the hearts of most American voters? The authors of this groundbreaking study ...argue that they did so by doing what Democrats have also excelled at: triggering psychological mechanisms that deepen cultural divisions in the other party’s coalition, thereby leading many of its voters either to choose the opposing ticket or to stay home.
In a Borda count, BC, M. de Borda suggested the last preference cast should receive 1 point, the voter's penultimate ranking should get 2 points, and so on. Today, however, points are often awarded ...to (first, second,..., last) preferences cast as per(n,n−1, ..., 1) or more frequently, (n−1, n−2,..., 0). If partial voting¹ is allowed, and if a first preference is to be given n or n − 1 points regardless of how many preferences the voter casts, he/she will be incentivised to rank only one option/candidate. If everyone acts in this way, the BC metamorphoses into a plurality vote... which de Borda criticized at length. If all the voters submit full ballots, the outcome—social choice or ranking—will be the same under any of the above three counting procedures. In the event of one or more persons submitting a partial vote, however, outcomes may vary considerably. This preliminary paper suggests research should consider partial voting. The author examines the consequences of the various rules so far advocated and then purports that M. de Borda, in using his formula, was perhaps more astute than the science has hitherto recognised.
This paper analyzes the effects on voting behavior of information disseminated over the Internet. We address endogeneity in Internet availability by exploiting regional and technological ...peculiarities of the preexisting voice telephony network that hindered the roll-out of fixed-line infrastructure for high-speed Internet. We find negative effects of Internet availability on voter turnout, which we relate to a crowding-out of TV consumption and increased entertainment consumption. We find no evidence that the Internet systematically benefits specific parties, suggesting ideological self-segregation in online information consumption. Robustness tests, including placebo estimations from the pre-Internet period, support a causal interpretation of our results.
Scholars typically understand vote buying as offering particularistic benefits in exchange for vote choices. This depiction of vote buying presents a puzzle: with the secret ballot, what prevents ...individuals from accepting rewards and then voting as they wish? An alternative explanation, which I term “turnout buying,” suggests why parties might offer rewards even if they cannot monitor vote choices. By rewarding unmobilized supporters for showing up at the polls, parties can activate their passive constituencies. Because turnout buying targets supporters, it only requires monitoring whether individuals vote. Much of what scholars interpret as vote buying may actually be turnout buying. Reward targeting helps to distinguish between these strategies. Whereas Stokes's vote-buying model predicts that parties target moderate opposers, a model of turnout buying predicts that they target strong supporters. Although the two strategies coexist, empirical tests suggest that Argentine survey data in Stokes 2005 are more consistent with turnout buying.
How does the threat of becoming a victim of terrorism affect voting behavior? Localities in southern Israel have been exposed to rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip since 2001. Relying on variation ...across time and space in the range of rockets, we identify the effect of this threat on voting in Israeli elections. We first show that the evolution of the rockets’ range leads to exogenous variation in the threat of terrorism. We then compare voting in national elections within and outside the rockets’ range. Our results suggest that the right-wing vote share is 2 to 6 percentage points higher in localities that are within the range—a substantively significant effect. Unlike previous studies that explore the role of actual exposure to terrorism on political preferences and behavior, we show that the mere threat of an attack affects voting.
We study retail shareholder voting using a nearly comprehensive sample of U.S. ownership and voting records. Analyzing turnout within a rational-choice framework, we find participation increases with ...ownership and expected benefits from winning and decreases with higher costs of participation. Even shareholders with a negligible likelihood of affecting the outcome have non zero turnout, consistent with consumption benefits from voting. Conditional on participation, retail shareholders punish the management of poorly performing firms. Overall, our evidence provides support for the idea that retail shareholders utilize their voting power to monitor firms and communicate with incumbent boards and management.
Brexit: surname diversity and voting patterns Borja, Mario Cortina; Stander, Julian; Valle, Luciana Dalla
Significance (Oxford, England),
08/2016, Letnik:
13, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
Mario Cortina Borja, Julian Stander and Luciana Dalla Valle examine associations between the results of the EU referendum and the prevalence of unique surnames across the UK
Mario Cortina Borja, ...Julian Stander and Luciana Dalla Valle examine associations between the results of the EU referendum and surname diversity
A widespread mistrust towards the traditional voting system has made democratic voting in any country very critical. People have seen their fundamental rights being violated. Other digital voting ...systems have been challenged due to a lack of transparency. Most voting systems are not transparent enough; this makes it very difficult for the government to gain voters' trust. The reason behind the failure of the traditional and current digital voting system is that it can be easily exploited. The primary objective is to resolve problems of the traditional and digital voting system, which include any kind of mishap or injustice during the process of voting. Blockchain technology can be used in the voting system to have a fair election and reduce injustice. The physical voting systems have many flaws in it as well as the digital voting systems are not perfect enough to be implemented on large scale. This appraises the need for a solution to secure the democratic rights of the people. This article presents a platform based on modern technology blockchain that provides maximum transparency and reliability of the system to build a trustful relationship between voters and election authorities. The proposed platform provides a framework that can be implemented to conduct voting activity digitally through blockchain without involving any physical polling stations. Our proposed framework supports a scalable blockchain, by using flexible consensus algorithms. The Chain Security Algorithm applied in the voting system makes the voting transaction more secure. Smart contracts provide a secure connection between the user and the network while executing a transaction in the chain. The security of the blockchain based voting system has also been discussed. Additionally, encryption of transactions using cryptographic hash and prevention of attack 51% on the blockchain has also been elaborated. Furthermore, the methodology for carrying out blockchain transactions during the process of voting has been elaborated using Blockchain Finally, the performance evaluation of the proposed system shows that the system can be implemented in a large-scale population.
•Examines the value of dual-class equity crowdfunding as a digital governance model.•Uses a sample of 491 offerings on the UK platform Crowdcube in the period 2011–2015.•Finds that separation between ...ownership and control lowers the probability of success of the offering.•Finds that separation between ownership and control lowers the probability of post-campaign success.•Finds that professional investors care about implementation of thresholds for the attribution of voting rights.
This paper examines for the first time dual-class equity crowdfunding as a digital ownership model. Unique to this context, companies can set an investment threshold under which no voting rights are granted, making the issuance of Class A vs. Class B shares, depending on individual investors. Using a sample of 491 offerings on the UK platform Crowdcube from 2011 to 2015, we find that a higher separation between ownership and control rights lowers the probability of success of the offering, the likelihood of attracting professional investors, as well as the long-run prospects. Different from small investors, professional investors care about the implementation of a threshold for the attribution of voting rights and often bid the Class A threshold exactly. Family businesses, although less attractive to small investors, are relatively safer investments, because of their lower chances of failure.
PDF
