Suchergebnisse

Given the weaker ties to community as noted by scholars such as Robert Putnam, survey researchers should not be surprised by a decline in survey participation over the past 10 years. This research analyzes the use of incentives coupled with introductory themes emphasizing cooperation and helpfulness—cooperative norms in American society—to understand their effects on survey response. This article analyzes two separate experiments (one phone and one mail) that provide evidence that norms of cooperation matter in the decision to participate in a survey, suggesting that this is particularly true at the refusal conversion stage. These results indicate that survey researchers may use such themes to their advantage, especially when conducting a nonresponse follow-up in a mail survey.

The question of why some people vote in American national elections and others do not has been the focus of a vast literature in social science. This study builds on previous work emphasizing the political relevance of civic norms prescribing social cooperation. County‐level census response rates were used to measure the strength of civic norms in counties represented in the 1992 National Election Study (NES). The analysis shows that a person's likelihood of voting increases with the census response rate in the county of residence, controlling for the usual set of factors associated with turnout. The probability of voting was also correlated with the incidence of cooperative behavior in other arenas, such as giving to charities or willingly serving on juries. These findings provide support for the importance of cooperative norms in explaining political participation. In addition, the relationship between voting and county‐level census response was significantly greater among respondents who read newspapers more often; hence, newspapers evidently are one means by which social expectations are communicated.

1. Introduction : the context of election reform -- 2. How does definition of the problem affect the solution? -- 3. Did the reforms increase accuracy? -- 4. At what cost? : the unintended consequences of reform -- 5. We mostly eliminated the butterfly ballot.isn't that enough? -- 6. Defining the problem in human terms : who implements reform? -- 7. Conclusion : what have reforms accomplished?

A repeat of the Florida debacle in the 2000 presidential election is the fear of every election administrator. Despite the relatively complication-free 2008 election, we are working with fairly new federal legislation designed to ease election administration problems. The implementation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) raises the question, how effective have reforms been? Could another Florida happen? Helping America Vote is focused on the conflict between values of access and integrity in U.S. election administration. Kropf and Kimball examine both what was included in HAVA and what was not. Widespread agreement that voting equipment was a problem made technology the centerpiece of the legislation, and it has remedied a number of pressing concerns. But there is still reason to be concerned about key aspects of electronic voting, ballot design, and the politics of partisan administrators. It takes a legitimacy crisis for serious election reforms to happen at the federal level, and seemingly, the crisis has passed. However, the risk is still very much present for the electoral process to fail. What are the implications for democracy when we attempt reform?

AbstractThe level of spending for public services is known to be influenced by spending on other services. This interdependency is known in the literature in public budgeting and finance as budgetary tradeoffs. While it is well known that spending in one area affects spending in other areas, the factors that influence budgetary tradeoff decisions are not well understood, and specifically how intertemporal evaluation of funding influences budgetary tradeoffs is not currently addressed in the public budgeting and finance literature. Building on Jacob's theory of intertemporal policy choice, we develop a tradeoff model to test the key predictions of intertemporal policy choice theory. Using data from counties in North Carolina, we find that partisanship and time horizon generally influence budgetary tradeoffs in ways that are consistent with intertemporal policy choice. This research informs the budgetary tradeoff choices that are made at the local level, and it specifically informs the unique case of election administration spending. Our findings lend theoretical support to assertions that election administration is underfunded in the United States because the budgetary tradeoff models suggest that election administration suffers from not having a natural constituency to advocate for it in county governments and because the outcomes from funding or underfunding are only observed intermittently.

AbstractRecently, election administration has been an important part of the national and global conversation about the results of elections. The important issue of election administration spending has not been examined extensively, and the influence of politics on election administration spending levels has not been examined in the United States. While theories of voter turnout and policy preference suggest that politics should influence election administration spending levels in the counties that administer elections, to our knowledge, there has been no evidence produced to support a partisan election administration expenditure effect. This research finds that Republican county commissions in North Carolina spend significantly less on election administration once the county electorate is a sufficient Republican majority. The article presents a novel model and method for estimating election administration spending and calls for additional research to examine the outcomes of these significant differences in spending on election administration.

Voting is the foundation of democracy. Limited data exist about voting characteristics of individuals with neurologic impairment including those living with a traumatic brain injury (TBI). To statistically examine voting characteristics using a convenience sample of registered voters with TBI during elections held in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina—2007, 2008. Data were collected on 51 participants with TBI during May 2007, 2008 general, and 2008 Presidential Election. (i) There was a significant difference between the Competence Assessment Tool for Voting (CAT‐V) total score of participants with TBI who voted and the CAT‐V total score of participants with TBI who did not vote and the CAT‐V total score predicted voting; (ii) the age of the participants with TBI was predictive of voting; and (iii) being married was inversely related to voting. We find that there is variation in voting even among this small sample interviewed for the present study, and that the variation is predictable. Those with the highest CAT‐Vs are most likely to vote. In addition, we find that traditional predictors of voting simply are not predictors among this TBI group, and even one, whether the person is married, has a negative effect on voting.