Black voting, bloc voting, and the Democrats
In: Public opinion, Band 6, S. 12-15
ISSN: 0149-9157
In: Public opinion, Band 6, S. 12-15
ISSN: 0149-9157
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.
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In: Polish political science review: Polski przeglad politologiczny, Band 8, Heft 1, S. 87-99
ISSN: 2353-3773
Abstract
Populist, especially far-right populist, parties have gained votes in recent elections across Europe recently. This observation is true for Poland as well. The far-right populist party Law and Justice (PiS, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) won the parliamentary election in 2015. Next to the well-known nativist and populist messages, PiS promoted a social policy: the Family 500+ programme. Did this programme attract voters? The findings of this study lend reason to answer the question in the affirmative. The inclusion of social policies usually associated with left-wing parties might hence be a path to be explored by other far-right populist parties as well.
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.
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In: Public choice, Band 53, Heft 3, S. 221
ISSN: 0048-5829
In: Public choice, Band 150, Heft 1-2, S. 363-383
ISSN: 1573-7101
In market based societies consumers are able to express the intensity of their preference for an object by paying more for it. However, under some voting systems, consumers are unable to express the intensity of their preference for a candidate due to the constraint of the "one person, one vote" principle. Cumulative voting maintains the equality of the "one person, one vote" principle by allotting each voter the same number of votes, while also allowing for expression of intensity of candidate preference. This paper provides an experimental analysis of voter behavior under different voting systems. Adapted from the source document.
In: PS: political science & politics, Band 36, Heft 4, S. 727-731
ISSN: 0030-8269, 1049-0965
World Affairs Online
In: American review of politics, Band 22, S. 55-91
ISSN: 1051-5054
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.
In: Australian journal of political science: journal of the Australasian Political Studies Association, Band 42, Heft 3, S. 515-521
ISSN: 1363-030X
Conventional democratic institutions aggregate preferences poorly. The norm of one-person-one-vote with majority rule treats people fairly by giving everyone an equal chance to influence outcomes but fails to give proportional weight to people whose interests in a social outcome are stronger than those of other people. This problem leads to the familiar phenomenon of tyranny of the majority. Various institutions that have been tried or proposed over the years to correct this problem-including supermajority rule, weighted voting, cumulative voting, "mixed constitutions," executive discretion, and judicially protected rights-all badly misfire in various ways, for example, by creating gridlock or corruption. This Article proposes a new form of political decisionmaking based on the theory of quadratic voting. It explains how quadratic voting solves the preference-aggregation problem by giving proper weight to preferences of varying intensity, how it can be incorporated into political institutions, and why it should improve equity.
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In: PS: political science & politics, Band 36, Heft 4, S. 727-731
ISSN: 0030-8269, 1049-0965
The implications of Internet voting are explored with attention given to the meaning of voting & whether it is important for people to enter a physical, public space to vote. AZ's recent experiment with Internet voting raised questions as to whether it could be accomplished without fear of fraud & whether it increased voter participation, & these questions as well as arguments for & against Internet voting are discussed. It is concluded that the US is experiencing a shift from citizen participation in the public sphere to citizen existence within a "private world of culture consumption" (Habermas 1989 [1962]). The majority of the population unquestioningly accepts the news & products of the mass media, while elites make decisions behind closed doors. 13 References. L. A. Hoffman
The E-voting promises the possibility of convenient, easy and safe way to capture and count the votes in an election. The advancement in the mobile devices, wireless and web technologies given rise to the new application that will make the voting process very easy and efficient. This research project provides the specification and requirements for E-Voting using an Android platform. The authentication is done through the face recognition through the mobile camera application. In this method the voter has to register using the application and the face recognition will be provided once the registration is successful. The e-voting means the voting process in election by using electronic device. The android platform is used to develop an e-voting application. In the proposed method the concept of e-voting application is created using android.On scanning the face, the voter will be asked for the password. Once the authentication is done the voter is made to proceed with the voting process. The main purpose of implementing this concept is to increase the voting percentage. So that the voter is not required to visit the voting center to cast their vote and also to avoid fake voting.
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In: Private Desires, Political Action: An Invitation to the Politics of Rational Choice, S. 89-109
The ethics of voting is a new field of academic research, uniting debates in ethics and public policy, democratic theory and more empirical studies of politics. A central question in this emerging field is whether or not voters should be legally required to vote. This chapter examines different arguments on behalf of compulsory voting, arguing that these do not generally succeed, although compulsory voting might be justified in certain special cases. However, adequately specifying the forms of voluntary voting that are consistent with democratic norms is likely to be philosophically complex and politically controversial.
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The ethics of voting is a new field of academic research, uniting debates in ethics and public policy, democratic theory and more empirical studies of politics. A central question in this emerging field is whether or not voters should be legally required to vote. This chapter examines different arguments on behalf of compulsory voting, arguing that these do not generally succeed, although compulsory voting might be justified in certain special cases. However, adequately specifying the forms of voluntary voting that are consistent with democratic norms is likely to be philosophically complex and politically controversial.
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