Absentee Ballots Research Articles

Adding Up the Costs and Benefits of Voting by Mail

Adding Up the Costs and Benefits of Voting by Mail

Internet voting in the USA: analysis and commentary

PurposeThe first American internet voting (I‐voting) implementation was in 2000. Since then many attempts and trials have taken place in this field. This paper aims to analyze these various attempts and discuss their benefits and vulnerabilities.Design/methodology/approachI‐voting can provide ease to elderly citizens and people with disabilities. Some also believe that the convenience that the internet offers will attract young voters, and hence increase voter turnout. I‐voting can also solve the problems of late delivery of absentee ballots “which leads to discarding the votes”.FindingsElection officials believe that I‐voting can be considered a valid voting option if it offers at least the same level of security as traditional remote voting methods. On the other hand, many data security experts doubt that the current internet infrastructure is safe enough to support such an important function. I‐voting is still far from being a voting option for US citizens residing in the States; however, it is considered a promising alternative to facilitate voting for those living overseas.Originality/valueThe authors believe this paper contains the most comprehensive analysis of the I‐voting trials that have been carried out in the USA over the last decade.

Let Your Voice Be Heard—Vote

You have accessThe ASHA LeaderASHA News1 Oct 2010Let Your Voice Be Heard—Vote Kate Frye Kate Frye Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.AN1.15122010.23 SectionsAbout ToolsAdd to favorites ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In As the mid-year elections approach, ASHA has mobilized its “Let Your Voice Be Heard, Vote!” campaign to help members navigate the sometimes complex political and electoral process. The legislators elected to the next Congress will face many issues critical to speech-language pathologists and audiologists, including reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and continued coverage of speech-language and hearing services. Don’t let others with competing interests take your vote for granted. ASHA members account for more than 140,000 votes across the country—a group with a powerful message to share. The right to vote, and in doing so to provide our input on the future of the country, remains one of our greatest liberties as American citizens. But many of those eligible do not vote, even in popular election years. The 2008 elections, for example, drew the largest voter turnout in history, yet still only 60% of the eligible electorate voted. Even with the balance of power in Congress up for grabs this year, the numbers of voters could drop by as much as 50% this November. Visit the Get Out The Vote section of the ASHA website for a robust library of election resources. First-time voters and seasoned campaign veterans will find information tailored to their preferred level of involvement: Don’t have a free moment to go to the polls? Find out how to get an absentee ballot. Haven’t registered to vote? Get state registration deadlines. Interested in hosting a campaign event for a candidate? Find how-to information. Things to Do Before Nov. 4 Early/Absentee Voting. Votes can be cast prior to Nov. 4 with some advanced planning. Early voting can take place remotely—such as by mail—or in person, usually in designated early voting polling stations. Requirements vary by state; visit the ASHA webpage for location-specific information. Be Informed. Visit the ASHA advocacy website to find out the individuals running for office in your jurisdiction and where the candidates stand on issues important to you. National organizations, major newspapers, and certain special interest groups also produce voter guides that highlight candidates’ positions on specific issues and may also track their legislative voting history. Volunteer. Donating your time is a great way to further your relationship with future legislators and ensure they understand the issues that matter to you. Contact a candidate’s campaign office to learn more about volunteer opportunities. Organize a group of your friends and/or colleagues for extra impact. ASHA-PAC: Your Voice in Congress ASHA is doing its part to affect the November elections in favor of the speech-language and hearing community through its political action committee. ASHA-PAC helps elect candidates to Congress who understand and support the needs of speech-language pathologists, audiologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists. In advance of the November elections, ASHA-PAC has supported more than 50 candidates through more than $200,000 in financial contributions. The PAC relies on voluntary contributions from ASHA members to continue its vital work. Look for more information about ASHA-PAC online. Author Notes Kate Frye, director of political advocacy, can be reached at [email protected]. Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Additional Resources FiguresSourcesRelatedDetails Volume 15Issue 12October 2010 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in print: Oct 1, 2010 Metrics Downloaded 96 times Topicsasha-topicsleader_do_tagleader-topicsasha-article-typesCopyright & Permissions© 2010 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationLoading ...

Using re-voting to reduce the threat of coercion in elections

Voter coercion, such as vote buying, has been minimised for decades with the private voting booth. Cellphone videos, absentee ballots, voter receipts and internet voting re-introduce the possibility of coercion because they are methods to prove a vote. This article presents a mathematical model of the voting process to show that giving voters the option to re-vote removes this proof because an observed vote is not necessarily final. Re-voting can also be used to spot threats such as viruses and Trojan horses that subvert voting machines. Re-voting mechanisms require cryptography techniques to separate user identifiers from votes cast, enabling the system to track votes by time without providing the specific identity of the user or the details of the vote cast. Mix-nets and homomorphic encryption provide the necessary tools.

The Capacity to Vote of Persons With Serious Mental Illness

Despite legal protections, persons with mental illness continue to experience discrimination that limits their access to voting in elections. In response, a number of states have adopted individualized functional determinations of mental capacity to vote. A 2001 federal court decision offered clear criteria for determining voting capacity that are based on understanding the nature and effect of voting ("the Doe standard"). This study explored the performance on these criteria by a sample of individuals with serious mental illness. The Doe standard has been operationalized with the Competency Assessment Tool for Voting (CAT-V) along with measures of reasoning and appreciation. Performance was assessed with the CAT-V in a sample of 52 community-dwelling persons with serious mental illness and then compared on measures of cognition, verbal IQ, and symptom severity. The interview questions were scored with good interrater reliability and took an average of less than five minutes to administer. Performance was high, with 92% scoring a 5 or 6 out of 6 possible points on the Doe-standard criteria. Performance did not correlate with cognition, verbal IQ, or symptom severity. The CAT-V is an easy and efficient method of determining voting capacity according to the Doe standard. Assuming that the high scores in this sample are confirmed in other groups, in general it may be appropriate to assume that even persons with serious mental illness are capable of voting. When a person's capacity to vote is called into question, screening instruments such as the CAT-V may be useful to guide an assessment.

The Capacity to Vote of Persons With Serious Mental Illness

The Capacity to Vote of Persons With Serious Mental Illness

Electoral Simultaneity: Expressing Equal Respect

The principle of simultaneity—that citizens should vote as far as possible at the same time—is more significant than is usually appreciated. It is based on a fundamental value of democratic theory, and it has substantial implications for electoral practice. It also invites further normative and empirical research. The most important value that simultaneity expresses is a form of equality—equal respect. First, if citizens have only information they would have had if they were voting at the same time, the value of each citizen's choice is no greater than that of any other citizen. Second, when citizens go to the polls on the same day, publicly participating in a common experience of civic engagement, they demonstrate their willingness to contribute to the democratic process on equal terms. Taking simultaneity seriously has implications for electoral practices. It would limit the practice of media projections of election results, including the reporting of exit polls, and the calling of elections before all the polls close. It also casts doubt on the increasingly widespread use of early voting—absentee ballots and voting by mail. Early voting weakens the value of the experience of participating in a civic activity. Voting alone may be worse than bowling alone.

Identifying the Barriers and Challenges to Voting by Residents in Nursing Homes and Assisted Living Settings

ABSTRACT To ascertain the need for and to inform development of guidelines for voting in long-term care settings, we conducted a telephone survey of Philadelphia nursing (n = 31) and assisted living (n = 20) settings following the 2003 election. Substantial variability existed in procedures used for registration and voting, in staff attitudes, and in the estimated proportion of residents who voted (29% ± 28, range 0–100%). Residents who wanted to vote were unable to do so at nearly one-third of sites, largely due to procedural problems. Nearly two-thirds of facilities indicated they assessed residents' voting capacity before the election. However, methods differed and may have disenfranchised residents who were actually competent to vote. Current procedures in many facilities fail to protect voting rights. These data suggest that rights might be better protected if election officials took charge of registration, filing absentee ballot requests, ballot completion, and trained LTC facility staff on voters' rights and reasonable accommodations.

Whose absentee votes are returned and counted: The variety and use of absentee ballots in California

Absentee voting is becoming more prevalent throughout the United States. Although there has been some research focused on who votes by absentee ballot, little research has considered another important question about absentee voting: which absentee ballots are counted and which are not? Research in the wake of the 2000 presidential election has studied the problem of uncounted ballots for precinct voters but not for absentee voters. Using data from Los Angeles County – nation's largest and most diverse voting jurisdiction – for the November 2002 general election, we test a series of hypotheses that certain types of voters have a higher likelihood that their ballots will be counted. We find that uniform service personnel, overseas civilians, voters who request non-English ballots and permanent absentee voters have a much lower likelihood of returning their ballot, and once returned, a lower likelihood that their ballots will be counted compared with the general absentee voting population. We also find that there is little partisan effect as to which voters are more likely to return their ballots or have their ballots counted. We conclude our paper with a discussion of the implications of our research for the current debates about absentee voting.

Digital Divide or Just Another Absentee Ballot?

The use of Internet voting in public elections has been challenged based on claims that it is biased against minorities and lower income voters. Although previous research has supported these claims, we find that race and other socioeconomic factors do not affect the choice of Internet voting when it is used as an absentee voting method. Using individual-level vote data from the 2004 Michigan Democratic Primary, we model the two-stage decision-making process that voters face where they must first decide to cast an absentee ballot and then decide what ballot to use (Internet or mail). Our findings show that Internet voting is not more biased than other absentee voting methods, although younger voters are much more likely to choose to vote online.

Voting behind bars: Explaining variation in international enfranchisement practices

Recent attention to the issue of extension of the vote to prisoners has been paramount in the form of significant court cases in South Africa, Canada and the European Court of Human Rights as well as proposed legislation in the United States to ban the practice of ex-prisoner disenfranchisement. Surprisingly, however, no systematic work in an international setting on the subject has been conducted to explore country-by-country practices or explain variation in these approaches. In this article we explore a range of probable determinants of the extension of the ballot to prisoners, including structural determinants (conditions on voter registration, availability of voting, and mandatory voting), political determinants (democratic and non-democratic countries, and levels of political freedom) and cultural determinants (race, colonial legacies, and conceptualization of crime and criminals). We find that countries that extend more political rights to their citizens (but not necessarily democracies) and those that have expanded provisions for absentee ballots are more likely to allow prisoners to vote, while countries in Latin America and Africa, as a result of colonial legacies and civil strife, are less willing to allow prisoners to vote.

Remote electronic voting systems: an exploration of voters' perceptions and intention to use

Coupling telephone and web interfaces with computers for balloting outside the polling place, remote electronic voting systems (REVS) give the voter a choice: polling booth, absentee ballot, or remote voting. Not only does this e-Government technology raises issues such as security, voter participation, and accessibility, REVS technologies themselves differ in features and enabling conditions. How users (voters) perceive REVS's availability, mobility, accuracy, privacy protection, and ease of use, is likely to affect their use intention. Intention to use or not to use a voting technology can translate into a decision to vote or not – and there are no ‘do-overs’. We develop a model and report on a survey of potential voters – people waiting to be impaneled on a jury – in regard to the impact of REVS characteristics on voting intentions and how the two most discussed REVS technologies of telephone- and web-based interfaces are perceived.

Do Absentee Voters Differ from Polling Place Voters?: New Evidence from California

In the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election 2,775,785 absentee ballots were cast, representing about 30 percent of all voters statewide. Given the number of absentee ballots and the increasing propensity for voters in California and elsewhere to choose this voting method, we some basic questions: Who are absentee voters, and are they different from polling place voters? To answer these ques- tions, we fielded a statewide survey of absentee voters in the days before the October 7 recall election, asking respondents why they voted absentee, their partisan and ideological preferences, demographic char- acteristics, and other relevant questions. We find that absentee voters do not differ significantly from the overall state electorate in terms of their vote preferences, despite being older and better educated. For example, 56 percent of absentee voters in our survey voted yes on the recall, compared with 55 percent for the entire state, according to official returns. Further, absentee voters favored Arnold Schwarzenegger over Cruz Bustamante by a considerable margin, similar to the overall election

Distance, Turnout, and the Convenience of Voting*

Objectives. This research examines how distance factors into the costs associated with political participation. We hypothesize that the political geography of a voter's residence affects not only the likelihood that he or she will vote, but whether the voter will choose between traditional Election Day voting or nontraditional means, such as casting an absentee ballot by mail, or going to an early‐voting site.Methods. Using a geographic information system (GIS), we calculate Manhattan‐block distances between voter residences and their respective precinct and nearest early‐voting sites in Clark County, NV for the 2002 mid‐term election. We then use these calculated distances to predict, with multinomial logistic regression, the likelihood of nonvoting, precinct voting, and nontraditional voting.Results. Our evidence suggests that the cost of traveling to reach a traditional voting site is associated with nonvoting to a point, but the relationship between distance and participation is nonlinear. Distance to traditional voting sites is also highly associated with choosing to vote by mail. Would‐be nonvoters are more inclined to use proximate election‐day sites than proximate early‐voting sites, probably because they decide to vote so late in the campaign.Conclusions. Our findings have important implications for democratic theory, ongoing efforts to reform the electoral process, and the practice of voter mobilization.

Careless with Our Democracy: Group Think and Voting Reform

The Representation of the People Act 2000 introduced what has come to be known as 'voting on demand'. In the process it paved the way for an absentee ballot system in Britain that would, in the words of the judge who heard two extraordinary electoral fraud cases in Birmingham in February and March 2005, disgrace a banana republic. Flaws in the policy making process that preceded the largely uncritical acceptance of universal access to postal votes were also exposed by failures to respond quickly to allegations of fraud and to detailed Electoral Commission recommendations aimed at improving ballot security. These failures raise serious questions about the prevalence of 'group think' in Whitehall and Westminster. The narrowness of Labour's General Election victory in votes, though not in seats, means that doubts about the integrity of Britain's voting arrangements threaten to reinforce a general loss of confidence in British politics.

Did Illegal Overseas Absentee Ballots Decide the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election?

Although not widely known until much later, Al Gore received 202 more votes than George W. Bush on election day in Florida. George W. Bush is president because he overcame his election day deficit with overseas absentee ballots that arrived and were counted after election day. In the final official tally, Bush received 537 more votes than Gore. These numbers are taken from the official results released by the Florida Secretary of State’s office and so do not reflect overvotes, undervotes, unsuccessful litigation, butterfly ballot problems, recounts that might have been allowed but were not, or any other hypothetical divergence between voter preferences and counted votes. After the election, the New York Times conducted a six-month investigation and found that 680 of the overseas absentee ballots were illegally counted, and almost no one has publicly disagreed with their assessment. In this article, we describe the statistical procedures we developed and implemented for the Times to ascertain whether disqualifying these 680 ballots would have changed the outcome of the election. These include adding formal Bayesian model averaging procedures to models of ecological inference. We present a variety of new empirical results that delineate the precise conditions under which Al Gore would have been elected president and offer new evidence of the striking effectiveness of the Republican effort to prevent local election officials from applying election law equally to all Florida citizens.

U.S. Elections—How the Rules You Choose and the Way You Count Determine the Winners You Get: Symposium Introduction

Every close election leads to speculation about what might have happened if events had gone another way, if the candidates had performed differently, or if the voters had been presented with other arguments and appeals. But the presidential election of November 2000 raised an entirely new set of counterfactual possibilities that had escaped notice in the past: suppose voting systems worked better, suppose felons were allowed to vote in more states, suppose registration were easier, suppose absentee ballots were counted differently? Before November 2000, these questions about the details of American electoral machinery were mostly ignored, but they mattered a great deal in 2000. The articles in this symposium explore the implications of the basic rules and the performance of the machinery of American politics.In “Equal Protection for Votes” (in The Longest Night: Polemics and Perspectives on Election 2000) Brady argued that the enduring legacy of Bush v. Gore would be a concern with the poor performance of voting systems. In “Postpoing the California Recall to Protect Voting Rights” (2004), Brady recounted his experience with a California lawsuit that argued for postponing a gubernatorial recall until better voting systems could be put in place. Thanks to the authors of these symposium articles for their patience and hard work.

Canvassing the Troops: The Federal Government and the Soldiers' Right to Vote

Absentee voting by Union soldiers during the Civil War was a new phenomenon in American history. When the war began, only one state allowed soldiers to vote outside their election districts, but by the presidential election of 1864, nineteen northern states had passed legislation permitting their soldiers in the field to vote.1 Nevertheless, historians have generally ignored this important political innovation. Only one monograph—written by a Union veteran—and a handful of articles has been published on the subject.2 This lack of interest may stem from the fact that absentee voting is such a common occurrence today. Every state allows for absentee ballots, [End Page 291] and in at least one state all voters are required to mail their ballots to local officials to be counted in the elections.3 Today, most Americans are unaware that absentee voting has not always been an accepted practice. When historians have addressed the question of the soldier vote in the Civil War, they have focused primarily on the partisan debates of the issue—the Republican support for permitting soldiers to vote and Democratic opposition to doing so—and that the army voted overwhelmingly Republican. Historians have overlooked the intricacies of this first large-scale instance of absentee voting. For example, scholars have very little idea of what polling in the field actually looked like. Moreover, historians have paid little attention to how the soldiers in the field were canvassed and how politicians at home took the ballot to them.4 Examining this last issue reveals the extent to which the parties went to win elections. As the battle over Lincoln's reelection loomed in late 1864, politicians from both parties were willing to alter traditional understandings of the role of the state and federal governments to win the election. During the presidential election of 1864, many state legislators and party leaders faced the unusual dilemma of determining how to take the ballot to voters beyond state lines. With soldiers from every state spread across the continent, this problem weighed heavily on the minds of politicians, and they found themselves unprepared for the task of canvassing the troops. They knew that the soldiers' votes were crucial to winning the election and that "hard work must be done" to secure them.5 This hard work was more than state and local politicians could accomplish on their own. Letters seeking aid flooded national party offices and federal departments in Washington. Under normal circumstances, local partisans oversaw all the happenings of election day, but with soldiers serving in every theater of the war, they had to look to national leaders for assistance. Consequently, Democrats from across the nation appealed to their party machinery in New York, while Republicans petitioned the federal government [End Page 292] for support in turning out the army vote. Democrats often asked for pamphlets and ballots to distribute among soldiers, while Republicans requested aid in locating the troops and collecting their ballots.6 As a result of these appeals, the federal government assumed unaccustomed responsibilities during the elections of 1864. When it came time for soldiers to vote, the Lincoln administration played a crucial role in ensuring that all of their ballots were counted, and when problems arose from the canvassing in the field, the federal government claimed jurisdiction over criminal proceedings that, under normal circumstances, would have been tried in state courts. New York offers a particularly useful vantage point for exploring these important changes in the right of suffrage. The law passed by the New York legislature required soldiers to vote by proxy—that is, to mail their ballots home rather than cast them at polls in the field. This procedure opened the door to a unique type of fraud in American electoral history and presented the federal government with a new opportunity to regulate elections. As charges arose concerning frauds, the central question was one of jurisdiction. Members of both...

Polling AAPI Voters

Exit polls are surveys of voters once they cast their ballot. However, they are often unreliable sources of information on Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters. Several community organizations like the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) in Los Angeles attempts to provide a more accurate exit polling results about AAPI. The methodologies used to conduct the exit poll are noted. To properly conduct polling, it requires tremendous amount of resources such as time, funding, and staff, and is also a very difficult activity to do for a long period of time. Problems outside of the pollsters such as low voter turn out negatively affects the effectiveness of polling. The absentee ballot also renders polling as not wholly accurate since many AAPI due to their voting this way. However polling has plenty of merits as it helps document AAPI voting behavior which can be used for program planning and voting right litigation. Exit poll results are useful in targeting voter education plans. Pollsters are helping depict the emerging AAPI electorate and will also help protect its right to vote.

Dictionary of world politics

A ready-reference encyclopedia that includes short definitions and brief explanations of modern political terms that are used in countries throughout the world. The more than 2,000 entries are concisely written and organized in an A-to-Z format allowing for quick search. This comprehensive reference has taken into account emerging nation-state identities, spreading democracy, instant communication and other forces that have created new relationships that require new definitions. Nearly every nation in the world is briefly described including important political events. The entries in the Dictionary of World Politics include familiar terminology such as McCarthyism or absentee ballot, but also dozens of less well-known terms that are associated with foreign events, countries for politics such as: cabal - in political terms, a group that conspires secretly to achieve some goal, such as the overthrow of a popular ruler; cadi - in Morocco and Algeria, official who heads local government in a rural commune; Islamic judge who presides over the religious court that uses the Qur'an as its law; and, dzong - in Bhutan, a monastic fortress that also serves as a center of local government. Dictionary of World Politics also contains an extensive bibliography. It is appropriate for academic and public libraries as well as high schools with Advanced Placement programs.