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We discuss sincere voting when voters have cardinal preferences over alternatives. We interpret sincerity as opposed to strategic voting, and thus define sincerity as the optimal behaviour when conditions to vote strategically vanish. When voting mechanisms allow for only one message type we show that this optimal behaviour coincides with an intuitive and common definition of sincerity. For voting mechanisms allowing for multiple message types, such as approval voting (AV), there exists no conclusive definition of sincerity in the literature. We show that for AV, voters' optimal strategy tends to one of the existent definitions of sincerity, consisting in voting for those alternatives that yield more than the average of cardinal utilities. ; Financial support from Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología through grants BEC 2005-00836, SEJ2005-01481/ECON and FEDER, Generalitat de Catalunya through grant 2005SGR00454 and Barcelona Economics-XREA is gratefully acknowledged.

When a group of people with identical preferences but different abilities in identifying the best alternative (e.g., a jury) takes a vote to decide between two alternatives, the question of strategic voting arises. That is, depending on the voting rule used to determine the collective decision, it may or may not be rational for group members to always vote for the alternative believe to be their private information indicates is better (i.e., vote informatively). In fact, we show in this paper that, if a qualified majority rule is used, then informative voting is rational only if the rule is optimal in the class of all qualified majority rules, in the sense the sense that, when everybody votes informatively, none of the other rules in this class would yield a higher expected utility. However, this necessary condition is not sufficient for informative voting to be rational. Specifically, even if the qualified majority rule used is optimal in the above sense, some of those who are least competent in correctly identifying the better alternative may increase the expected utility by sometimes voting for the alternative they believe to be inferior. A sufficient (but not necessary) condition for informative, non-strategic, voting to be rational is that the voting rule is optimal among the class of all qualified weighted majority rules, i.e., rules assigning (potentially) unequal weights to different individuals, this cannot happen: informative, non-strategic voting is rational.

Voting may seem like simple activity – cast ballots, then count them. Complexity arises, however, because voters must be registered,and votes must be recorded in secrecy, transferred securely and counted accurately. Votes can be lost at every stage of the process. Two simpleproblems are to blame, first registration database error and second poor design of system (ballot or machine). In case of Indian election,electronic voting machine like DRE is used from 2004 election. This machine has its own merits & demerits. Voter cast their vote by going tothe polling booth, where he or she has to press one button next to the candidate. But the voters which are 1000 and more kilometer away fromtheir constituency relay on slow postal system. So can we send our vote to particular EVM (booth) in particular constituency by using internet?This is the main theme of this paper Keyword:. Internet voting, e-voting, Global e-voting, local e-voting, multimodal e-voting, E-VS, Security

An analysis of the 1999 elections in Peoria, IL, sheds additional light on cumulative voting, the increasingly popular solution in voting rights litigation. First, the chief beneficiary of cumulative voting was not a descriptive minority candidate (eg, representative of a demographic group), rather it was an individual who might best be called a substantive minority (eg, representative of a political view or policy option). Second, the elections created a "quasi" experiment for comparing voting behavior under cumulative & traditional straight voting systems. This is important not only because there are few empirical studies that compare the hypothesized effects of cumulative voting with actual voting behavior, but also because there are no real-world comparisons of voting behavior under straight voting in a multimember district, the system cumulative voting usually replaces. After providing background material, a series of hypotheses are tested relying heavily on the actual election ballots. First, hypotheses about aggregate differences are advanced & empirically tested. Second, the rationales for these aggregate hypotheses contain assumptions about how particular voters respond to cumulative voting. These assumptions are advanced as separate hypotheses & tested. The analysis reveals that voter behavior under cumulative voting clearly differs from that under a traditional straight election. With a cumulative voting system, participants vote for fewer candidates, voting is more racially polarized, & majority voters appear to alter their voting behavior more than minority voters. Very unexpected was the form of white flight produced by cumulative voting. White voters, who voted for only African-American candidates under straight voting, voted for only white candidates under cumulative voting. In sum, voters appear to understand the rules of both systems, & they adjust their behavior as they move down the ballot shifting from one system to another. 7 Tables, 13 References. Adapted from the source document.

The literature on strategic voting has provided evidence that some electors support large parties at the voting booth to avoid wasting their vote on a preferred but uncompetitive smaller party. In this paper we argue that district conditions also elicit reactions from abstainers and other party voters. We find that, when ballot gains and losses from different types of responses to the constituency conditions are taken into account, large parties still benefit moderately from strategic behaviour, while small parties obtain substantial net ballot losses. This result stems from a model that allows for abstention in the choice set of voters, and uses counterfactual simulation to estimate the incidence of district conditions in the Spanish general elections of 2000 and 2008. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through grant CSO2008-01436.

This paper empirically studies the voting outcomes of Egypt's first parliamentary elections after the Arab Spring. In light of the strong Islamist success in the polls, we explore the main determinants of Islamist vs. secular voting. We identify three dimensions that affect voting outcomes at the constituency level: the socio-economic profile, the economic structure and the electoral institutional framework. Our results show that education is negatively associated with Islamist voting. Interestingly, we find significant evidence which suggests that higher poverty levels are associated with a lower vote share for Islamist parties. Later voting stages in the sequential voting setup do not exhibit a bandwagon effect.

A renewed, energetic interest in voting technologies erupted in political science following the 2000 presidential election. Spawned initially by the recount controversy in Florida, the literature has grown to consider the effects of voting technologies on the vote choice more generally. This literature has explained why localities have the voting technologies (lever machines punch cards, etc.) they use. Although there are racial differences in the distribution of voting technologies used across localities the strongest explanations for why local jurisdictions use particular technologies rest on legacies of past decisions. The bulk of the voting technology literature has focused on explaining how voting technologies influence residual votes, that is, blank, undervoted, and over-voted ballots. With the relative homogenization of voting technology since 2000, prospects for research that examines the effects of different machines on residual votes seem limited. However, opportunities exist to study the effect of voting machines historically the effect of voting technologies on down-ballot rates, and the role of interest groups in affecting which voting technologies are made available to voters. Adapted from the source document.

In this paper, we present a new way to deal with initiatives, i.e. proposals that can be submitted to voting by the citizens of a democracy. We call it "Assessment Voting". It takes place in two rounds. Before the conclusive voting, a given number of randomly-chosen voters casts its votes. These voters have exercised their right to vote irrevocably. The results from this first round are a good assessment of the outcome to be expected from a voting of all citizens. Once the results of the first round are published, the initiative group has the possibility to withdraw its proposal. It can also choose to proceed, so that the remaining voters now vote in the second round. The results of both rounds are added for the final decision. In response to an Assessment Voting, initiatives may also be revised or counterproposals can be made, triggering a restart of the two-round voting process.