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THIS PAPER PRESENTS A LABORATORY EXPERIMENT DESIGNED TO EXAMINE VOTING BEHAVIOR, WITHIN A SPATIAL ELECTION FRAMEWORK, WHEN SUBJECTS ARE ONLY ENDOWED WITH INFORMATION. IN THE EXPERIMENT, SUBJECTS ARE ASSIGNED IDEAL POINTS ON A SINGLE-ISSUE DIMENSION. WITH THE AID OF AN ENDORSEMENT, THEIR TASK IS TO VOTE FOR THE CANDIDATE WHOSE POSITION IS CLOSER TO THEM. THE RESULTS SHOW THAT UNDER THESE CONDITIONS, SUBJECTS ARE IN FACT PLAYING A LOTTERY, WHERE THE ODDS OF BEING CORRECT IS A FUNCTION OF SPATIAL LOCATION. THE STUDY POINTS OUT THAT RESEARCHERS SHOULD BE AWARE OF AN 'INFORMATION BIAS' IN MODELS THAT USE THIS PARTICULAR INFORMATION SOURCE.

This article challenges the often-untested assumption that cognitive "heuristics" improve the decision-making abilities of everyday voters. The potential benefits & costs of five common political heuristics are discussed. A new dynamic process-tracing methodology is employed to directly observe the use of these five heuristics by voters in a mock presidential election campaign. We find that cognitive heuristics are at times employed by almost all voters & that they are particularly likely to be used when the choice situation facing voters is complex. A hypothesized interaction between political sophistication & heuristic use on the quality of decision making is obtained across several different experiments, however. As predicted, heuristic use generally increases the probability of a correct vote by political experts but decreases the probability of a correct vote by novices. A situation in which experts can be led astray by heuristic use is also illustrated. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for strategies to increase input from underrepresented groups into the political process. 5 Tables, 4 Figures, 80 References. Adapted from the source document.

AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO THE EXPLANATION OF VOTING BEHAVIOR IS OFFERED, SUGGESTING THAT THE STARTING POINT OF ELECTORAL DECISION MAKING IS INDIVIDUALS' RECALL OF THEIR BEHAVIOR IN THE LAST SIMILAR SITUATION. WHETHER OR NOT THIS RECALL IS ACCURATE IS IRRELEVANT IN THIS MODEL, SINCE THE VOTERS' REASONING PROCEEDS FROM THEIR BELIEF ABOUT THEIR EARLIER BEHAVIOR, WHETHER OR NOT IT IS CORRECT. USING THIS APPROACH THE AUTHORS ARE ABLE TO TREAT VOTING FROM A UNIFIED PERSPECTIVE, RATHER THAN ADOPTING THE CURRENT STANCE OF TREATING THE TURNOUT DECISION AS SEPARATE FROM AND PRECEDING THE CANDIDATE CHOICE DECISION.

Transgender people who have transitioned to live in a gender different from the gender assigned to them at birth face unique obstacles to obtaining identification documents that reflect their correct gender. Transgender citizens with inaccurate identification may encounter obstacles to voting. An increasing number of U.S. states have adopted voter identification laws (voter ID laws), which require voters to prove their identity by providing an acceptable form of identification to poll workers before voting in an election. The strictest voter ID laws require voters to present government-issued photo ID at the polls. If North Carolina were to implement a strict photo ID law for voting, this law may create substantial barriers to voting and possible disenfranchisement for nearly 5,000 transgender residents of North Carolina.

Among the many lawsuits filed during the unprecedented California gubernatorial recall election, the one that garnered the most attention was the case challenging the use of punch card voting in six California counties. In that suit, plaintiffs argued that the election should be delayed because the allegedly higher error rates of punch card voting compared to other systems in California denied those voters in punch card counties their equal protection rights under the California constitution & also violated the Voting Rights Act. Professor Hasen argues that the original Ninth Circuit decision delaying the election until punch card voting could be eliminated was correct, & the later en banc decision allowing the election to go forward with the selective use of punch cards was unfortunate, though understandable given the closeness of the recall election. Hasen argues that under the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, the selective use of punch card voting constitutes an equal protection violation. The en banc court did not reach the issue. Hasen concludes that the en banc decision does not preclude other plaintiffs from bringing similar challenges in the future, & that the window remains open for voting reform lawsuits until the Supreme Court interprets Bush v. Gore otherwise. Adapted from the source document.

This article advances a partially epistemic justification of democratic authority by defending what David Estlund has called the democracy/contractualism analogy: the idea that democracy can track justice due to crucial similarities between effective democratic politics and the hypothetical deliberations employed by contractualist liberals to explicate or construct correct principles of justice. According to this analogy, the collective decision making definitive of democracy is best conceived as an attempt to realise the process of intersubjective justification that (according to contractualist liberals) defines what is just; therefore, any tendency democracy might have to produce just outcomes could conceivably be attributed to the success of such an attempt. This article explains why Estlund's arguments against the analogy fail. It argues that in a society in which the modes of reasoning specified by the analogy are widely entrenched, there is a justifiable presumption that majoritarian voting will have a tendency to result in reasonable outcomes. Adapted from the source document.

In the literature on electoral politics full convergence of policy platforms is usually regarded as socially optimal. The reason is that risk-averse voters prefer a sure middle-of-the-road policy to a lottery of two extremes with the same expectation. In this paper we study the normative implications of convergence in a simple model of electoral competition, in which parties are uncertain about voters' preferences. We show that if political parties have incomplete information about voters' preferences, the voters may prefer some degree of policy divergence. The intuition is that policy divergence enables voters to correct policies that are based on a wrong perception of their desires.

AbstractThe literature on correct and consistent voting has focused on issue‐opinions and argument‐positions when examining whether vote decisions correspond to individual political preferences. However, the question whether vote decisions align with basic political values has largely been neglected so far. This paper introduces a novel measure named value consistent voting. It finds that, in Switzerland, around 25% jettison their basic political values when deciding on proposals. Using multilevel regression analysis of survey data, this paper investigates the determinants of value consistent voting. Three theoretical approaches are tested; the sophistication, identification and ambivalence hypotheses. The results show that political sophistication and identification foster value consistent voting. Moreover, there is an interaction between education and adhering to the preferred party's vote recommendation. This finding supports the thesis that highly educated citizens use heuristics most efficiently. However, the more ambivalent people are, the more often they vote against their basic political values.

Political economy models predict that the rich oppose redistribution, and hence vote for conservative parties. Although this seems to fit the data well, I show that this is not true when we control for unobservable characteristics. Using Norwegian survey data, I study to what extent voting is caused by income. Unobserved characteristics correlated with income are handled by using fixed effects panel data discrete choice models. Although a positive association between income and conservative voting persists when controlling for unobservables, the magnitude of the effect is reduced by a factor of five. To correct for measurement error, I instrument income with average income by profession. The magnitude of the coefficients is increased, but the main conclusions remain.

The article is devoted to the study of the dynamics of development of concepts that justify political choice. There is a general turn from the moral justification of political choice to ontological concepts based on the ideas of pragmatic and impartial behavior in the search for criteria for the "correct" decision, which includes the truth and the institutions that ensure it. The epistemic concept of democracy, based on Condorcet's jury theorem, defines the possibility of achieving the correct choice through majority rule voting, implies a competent, independent and sincere voter, which ensures an increase in the probability of the correct choice. The expansion of the composition of participants in political choice increased the role of diversity of knowledge and opinions in the justification, which led to the concept of the "smart plurality", which ensures the correct choice is made by reducing its overall error through random mass participation. The development of social networks and their argumentative function in disputes have contributed to the transition to the concepts of argumentative networks that ensure the correct option is selected through communication. The identified dynamics allow us to conclude that the concept of politics is reviving its importance as a reasoning.

While it is widely accepted that in the United States, political party labels serve as brand names which cue voters about the beliefs and ideologies of members, I explore the possibility that the signals sent by these labels are contingent upon the party membership of the individual voter. More specifically, I draw on social identity theory and hypothesize that individuals will be more likely to perceive heterogeneity among members of their own party. I find support for this hypothesis in perceptions of both the overall ideologies and voting records of US senators. Additionally, I compare respondent perceptions back to actual voting records and find that inpartisans are (1) only more likely to be correct when senators do in fact vote differently and (2) significantly less likely to be correct when senators vote the same way. These results suggest that the partisan differences uncovered are due to psychological bias and not just informational asymmetries and that biases stemming from group membership may lead to distorted opinions of senators and the representation they provide.

Does growing up without both parents decrease voter turnout? I extend and improve upon earlier answers to this question. First, I estimate the long-term effects on voter turnout via analysis of a nationally representative sample of adults. Second, I exploit the quasi-natural experiment of parental death to correct for non-random selection into parental absence. Contrary to previous research, I find no evidence that growing up in an absent-parent household effects white voter turnout. I also present evidence suggesting the negative effects are limited to black voters. Adapted from the source document.