ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN STATE JUDICIAL ELECTIONS: TOWARD GREATER JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY?

Abstract

The role of elections in promoting accountability to popular sentiment is a central tenet of democratic theory. The extent to which such accountability is enhanced in judicial elections in the American states, however, is threatened by low levels of citizen involvement in contests for the state judiciary—due in part to ballot roll‐off: many voters, though already at the polls, simply ignore judicial contests. Critics of elections as a means of selecting state judiciaries contend that high ballot roll‐off renders citizen participation too low for such elections to secure greater judicial accountability. This research—an analysis of seventy‐one Kentucky counties voting in recent state supreme court elections—suggests that an emerging electoral technology, the electronic voting machine, substantially reduces ballot roll‐off in judicial elections, thereby increasing citizen participation in state judicial elections. These findings have significant implications for the debate over judicial selection by popular ballot.