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It is known that, in Condorcet's classical model of jury decisions, the proportion of jurors supporting a decision is not a significant indicator of that decision's reliability: the probability that a particular majority decision is correct given the size of the majority depends only on the absolute margin between the majority and the minority, and is invariant under changes of the proportion in the majority if the absolute margin is held fixed. Here I show that, if we relax the assumption that juror competence is independent of the jury's size, the proportion can be made significant: there are then conditions in which the probability that a given majority decision is correct depends only on the proportion of jurors supporting that decision, and is invariant under changes of the jury size. The proportion is significant in this way if and only if juror competence is a particular decreasing function of the jury size. However, the required condition on juror competence is not only highly special – thereby casting doubt on the significance of the proportion in realistic conditions – but it also has an adverse implication for the Condorcet jury theorem. If the proportion is significant, then the Condorcet jury theorem fails to hold; and if the Condorcet jury theorem holds, the proportion is not significant. I discuss the implications of these results for defining and justifying special majority voting from the perspective of an epistemic account of voting.

Mandates — Supervision by United Nations — Territory of South-West Africa — Voting Procedure of General Assembly — Voting Procedure under United Nations.United Nations — Charter of — Interpretation of — Article 18, paragraph 2, on Voting Procedure.United Nations — General Assembly — Procedure of — Voting Procedure — "Important Questions" within the Meaning of Article 18, paragraph 2, of the Charter — Decisions of General Assembly on Questions Relating to Reports and Petitions Concerning Territory of South-West Africa — "Degree of Supervision" of General Assembly in the Matter of Territory of South-West Africa — Whether a Matter of Procedure — Supervision Conforming "so far as possible" with Supervision Exercised by the League of Nations — Whether Implying Continuation of Unanimity Rule Obtaining under Covenant of the League — Whether Voting Procedure under Article 18, paragraph 2, Consistent with Correct Interpretation of Principle that Degree of Supervision of General Assembly Shall Approximate So Far as Possible to That of League of Nations — Interpretation of Previous Advisory Opinion of the Court.

In recent years, several nations and private associations have introduced Internet voting as additional means to conduct elections. To date, a variety of voting schemes to conduct Internet-based elections have been constructed, both from the scientific community and industry. Because of its fundamental importance to democratic societies, Internet voting – as any other voting method – is bound to high legal standards, particularly imposing security requirements on the voting method. However, these legal standards, and resultant derived security requirements, partially oppose each other. As a consequence, Internet voting schemes cannot enforce these legally-founded security requirements to their full extent, but rather build upon specific assumptions. The criticality of these assumptions depends on the target election setting, particularly the adversary expected within that setting. Given the lack of an election-specific evaluation framework for these assumptions, or more generally Internet voting schemes, the adequacy of Internet voting schemes for specific elections cannot readily be determined. Hence, selecting the Internet voting scheme that satisfies legally-founded security requirements within a specific election setting in the most appropriate manner, is a challenging task. To support election officials in the selection process, the first goal of this dissertation is the construction of a evaluation framework for Internet voting schemes based on legally-founded security requirements. Therefore, on the foundation of previous interdisciplinary research, legally-founded security requirements for Internet voting schemes are derived. To provide election officials with improved decision alternatives, the second goal of this dissertation is the improvement of two established Internet voting schemes with regard to legally-founded security requirements, namely the Polyas Internet voting scheme and the Estonian Internet voting scheme. Our research results in five (partially opposing) security requirements for Internet voting schemes. On the basis of these security requirements, we construct a capability-based risk assessment approach for the security evaluation of Internet voting schemes in specific election settings. The evaluation of the Polyas scheme reveals the fact that compromised voting devices can alter votes undetectably. Considering surrounding circumstances, we eliminate this shortcoming by incorporating out of band codes to acknowledge voters' votes. It turns out that in the Estonian scheme, four out of five security requirements rely on the correct behaviour of voting devices. We improve the Estonian scheme in that regard by incorporating out of band voting and acknowledgment codes. Thereby, we maintain four out of five security requirements against adversaries capable of compromising voting devices.

If we want to know what is happening to political parties today, the answer depends in part on how we define the term `party' and in part on the time frame used for analysis. In this paper we focus on parties as voting coalitions in the US House and the Senate over the last 40 years. To assess the ideological placement and cohesiveness of each party in the House and Senate, we use adjusted scores issued by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). Our adjustment corrects for changes in the ADA's scale from year to year. The analysis is carried out by focusing on each of the four main regional factions comprising the parties. The cross-chamber comparisons for the Republicans show a high degree of stability with respect to ideological placement and cohesiveness; eastern Republicans maintain a more liberal stance throughout the period of analysis. For Democrats in both chambers there has been a liberal shift in recent years and an increase in cohesiveness overall; the southern Democrats are distinctively more conservative than the rest of the party, although less so in recent years. Both of the `outlier' factions (eastern Republicans and southern Democrats) unexpectedly display less cohesiveness than do the mainline factions of their respective parties. The paper concludes with some discussion of why this may be the case, what the future holds for outlier cohesiveness, and implications for responsible parties in the United States.

There are two distinct views on how candidate (or party) issue strategies influence mass evaluations. One is the view underlying the classic spatial model that the proximity between the voter's own issue positions and the positions taken by the candidates drives the evaluation. The other view is directionally motivated. In the directional model voters are seen as having only diffuse preferences for one side or the other on an issue, with voter support and opposition stimulated by a candidate taking a strong stand in favor of a particular side. Researchers have long recognized that electorates are heterogeneous. We consider a model in which each of these two different views of issue-based voting is correct for a part of the electorate. We find that candidates trying to optimize support in this heterogeneous environment will generally adopt more extreme positions than those implied by proximity theory and more central positions than those implied by directional theory.

Abstract. During the time of the election, indigenous minorities face enormous problems and difficulties. At times, their basic democratic rights are not always freely exercised. This paper explores the challenges encountered by one of Ethiopia's indigenous minorities, the Hararis, during the sixth national election in Ethiopia. A descriptive, qualitative research method was used to investigate the nature of the problem and resolutions came up. Primary data (published legal documents, court cases and formal letters) were collected from various sources. The National Election Board of Ethiopia has inadvertently attempted to prevent the rights of indigenous minority Hararis (living in other parts of the country) from voting for candidates that form the Harari National Assembly. The basic reasons for the National Election Board to do so have no legal justification and are challenged by the federal and regional constitutions, particularly by articles explicitly addressing minorities and Hararis residing outside the Harari region to vote. The final decisions made by the federal cassation court were found to be correct, fair, acceptable, and in concurrence with the federal and regional constitutions. The study found out that the federal and regional constitutions of the country play a prominent role in protecting the rights of minorities to vote.Keywords. Indigenous minorities; Harari National Assembly; Election; National Election Board of Ethiopia; voting rights.JEL. F21, F68, O53, K23.

Duverger's law holds that single member district rules produce two-party systems, but third party voting remains an important feature of these institutional contexts. To explain the discrepancy between theory and empirical reality, Gary Cox specified four conditions that are necessary for the theoretical expectations to bear out. Yet, subsequent research has focused mostly on just one of these conditions, namely, that voters have correct information about the competitiveness of their preferred party in the district. The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of all four conditions. Using original survey data from the 2015 United Kingdom general election, the analysis suggests that violations of the information condition matter, but that violations of the short-term instrumental rationality condition can be a significant factor as well. Consequently, future research should pay more attention to this condition when seeking to explain third party voting.

"Der Wähler sollte im Idealfall vollständig über die Parteipositionen zu wichtigen politischen Streitthemen informiert sein, um die Partei wählen zu können, deren Interessen und Ideen seinen eigenen am besten entsprechen. Dennoch ist das politische Wissen im Allgemeinen recht gering ausgeprägt. Darüber hinaus ist Wissen über verschiedene soziale Gruppen hinweg ungleich verteilt, wodurch die Legitimität der repräsentativen Demokratie infrage gestellt wird. Der 'Wahl-O-Mat' zielt darauf ab, die Wählerschaft über Parteipositionen zu informieren und hierdurch 'correct voting' zu fördern. Im Zuge des Wahlkampfes zur Bundestagswahl 2013 wurde der 'Wahl-O-Mat' mehr als 10 Millionen Mal genutzt. In diesem Artikel gehen wir der Frage nach, inwiefern der "Wahl-O-Mat" das Wissen seiner Nutzer über die Parteipositionen zu wichtigen politischen Streitthemen fördert. Unsere Analyse basiert auf einem prä-experimentellen Online-Design, das zwei Wochen vor der Wahl durchgeführt wurde. Die zentralen Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Nutzung des 'Wahl-O-Mat' das Wissen zu Parteipositionen erhöht, allerdings nur in geringem Maße. Neben einem Anstieg des Wissens wuchs auch die Anzahl der 'weiß nicht'-Antworten. Das Ausmaß, in dem Individuen durch die 'Wahl-O-Mat'-Nutzung lernen können, hängt stark von ihrem Vorwissen ab, wobei dieses wiederum durch individuelle Motivation und Ressourcen bestimmt wird." (Autorenreferat)

This paper examines the claim that democratic decision making is epistemically valuable. Focussing on communication and voting, circumstances are identified under which groups are able to reliably identify the 'correct alternative.' Employing formal models from social epistemology, group performance under varying conditions in a simple epistemic task is scrutinized. Simulation results show that larger majority requirements can favour the veto power of closed-minded individuals, but can also increase precision in well-functioning groups. Reasonable scepticism against other people's opinions can provide a useful impediment to overly quick convergence onto a false consensus when independent information acquisition is possible.

Color segmentation is one of the most thoroughly studied problems in agricultural applications of remote image capture systems, since it is the key step in several different tasks, such as crop harvesting, site specific spraying, and targeted disease control under natural light. This paper studies and compares five methods to segment plum fruit images under ambient conditions at 12 different light intensities, and an ensemble method combining them. In these methods, several color features in different color spaces are first extracted for each pixel, and then the most effective features are selected using a hybrid approach of artificial neural networks and the cultural algorithm (ANN-CA). The features selected among the 38 defined channels were the b* channel of L*a*b*, and the color purity index, C*, from L*C*h. Next, fruit/background segmentation is performed using five classifiers: artificial neural network-imperialist competitive algorithm (ANN-ICA); hybrid artificial neural network-harmony search (ANN-HS); support vector machines (SVM); k nearest neighbors (kNN); and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). In the ensemble method, the final class for each pixel is determined using the majority voting method. The experiments showed that the correct classification rate for the majority voting method excluding LDA was 98.59%, outperforming the results of the constituent methods. ; This research was funded by the Spanish MICINN, as well as European Commission FEDER funds, under grant RTI2018-098156-B-C53. This project has also been supported by the European Union (EU) under Erasmus+ project entitled "Fostering Internationalization in Agricultural Engineering in Iran and Russia" [FARmER] with grant number 585596-EPP-1-2017-1-DE-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP.

While multivariate analysis has proven valuable in answering factual questions regarding vote dilution, it has produced misleading results about racially polarized voting patterns when used by social scientists serving as expert witnesses for defendants in voting rights cases. The McCord v. City of Fort Lauderdale case is cited as an illustration of problems that arise from using multivariate methods to reach causal conclusions. (1) If there are many more white than black candidates, race cannot explain most of the variance because most of the contests are white vs white. (2) Race in the McCord example is the last variable in a multivariate regression equation with four other variables that are surrogates for race. (3) Factors that account for vote dispersion among individual white/black candidates may be irrelevant to the showing of blacks as a class. A hypothetical election in which voting is as racially polarized as possible is presented, & it is shown that black candidates do not win. (4) The problems are not exacerbated in multicandidate contests. In Misinformation and Misperceptions: A Little Knowledge Can Be Dangerous, Charles S. Bullock, III (U of Georgia, Athens) argues that the testimony & written report submitted to the court in McCord v. City of Fort Lauderdale were concerned with the question of minority vote dilution, not simply with the issue of racially polarized voting. Furthermore, the model discussed by Grofman was only one of three models used, & was used only to examine candidate success. Grofman's claim that race was collinear with four other predictors is refuted. It is acknowledged that minorities are more successful in multicandidate contests, & pointed out that Fort Lauderdale actually contended that situation in the case. In Straw Men and Stray Bullets: A Reply to Bullock, Grofman argues that multivariate analyses lead to a correct conclusion about the pressure of racial polarization sometimes, but for the wrong reasons. It is also argued that the key legal argument for why bivariate rather than multivariate analyses should be used is not addressed in the critique, & that Bullock's analysis does not determine whether blacks supported black candidates & whites did not. 1 Table, 9 References. Adapted from the source document.

The Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT), which provides a justification for democracy, is based on voters who are imperfectly informed insofar as they know the correct policy with a probability of less than one but greater than one-half. We reassess the consequences of the CJT for democracy when extension of the franchise adds equal numbers of non-distinguishable informed and uninformed voters to the collective decision making group. Uninformed voters vote correctly with probability one-half. We show that adding equal numbers of informed and uninformed voters maintains the CJT conclusion that enlarging the group of decision makers increases the likelihood of a correct collective decision. Adapted from the source document.

We argue that integrating citizen deliberation structures into the pre-referendum phase can deliver systematic improvements in democratic outcomes such as alignment between values and vote, ie: correct voting. Using data from three Irish referendums, the research examines the potential of deliberative mini-publics to deliver more informed electorates. An emerging branch of literature argues that direct and deliberative democracy can be mutually supportive. It demonstrates that there is much potential to be realised when the fields of deliberation and the practice of referendums are brought together (Saward, 2001, p 363). Greater understanding of referendum issues can be achieved by mini-publics extending the time allocated to discussing issues, producing rigorous and informed materials which can be used during the subsequent referendum debates and delivering decisions which stem from a citizen institution and from citizens that are more likely to approximate the general public and therefore be more trusted by ordinary voters. Ultimately we argue that deliberative processes enhance subjective and objective knowledge and this leads to referendum outcomes where a larger share of voters cast ballots which align with their own fundamental values. The analysis demonstrates that there was greater alignment between the core values of voters and their vote decisions when a deliberative phase was introduced into the constitutional referendum process; and furthermore that this alignment grew as deliberation became more embedded and normalized.

Intro -- Title Page -- Introduction -- CHAPTER 1: The Early Years -- CHAPTER 2: A Love Of Performing -- CHAPTER 3: Family And Friends -- CHAPTER 4: "Magic At The Symphony" -- CHAPTER 5: Follow Your Dream -- CHAPTER 6: An Absolute Brainstorm -- CHAPTER 7: Why A Donkey And An Elephant? -- CHAPTER 8: Let's Have A Voter Rally -- CHAPTER 9: Oh, To Be Politically Correct -- CHAPTER 10: Forging Ahead -- CHAPTER 11: Promoting The Idea -- CHAPTER 12: Lots To Do -- CHAPTER 13: Your Vote Counts... And Recounts -- CHAPTER 14: What It Took -- CHAPTER 15: Abner's Escapades -- CHAPTER 16: Details, Details... -- CHAPTER 17: An Afternoon Learning How Voting Impacts Us -- CHAPTER 18: How We Vote -- CHAPTER 19: Countdown -- CHAPTER 20: Our Very First Rehearsal -- CHAPTER 21: This Is Really It -- CHAPTER 22: The Illusion Is Reality -- Endnotes -- Research Sources.