Ballot Form Research Articles

Usability of Ranked-Choice Voting Paper Ballots

Ranked choice voting (RCV) is a method of voting where individuals rank their choices for each race in an election, rather than selecting a single candidate. For paper ballot implementations, there are three basic formats: bubble grid, column, and handwritten. This study aimed to understand which format produces the best outcomes with the fewest errors. Using a between-subjects design, we measured voting time, errors, success rates, and overall subjective usability using the System Usability Scale (SUS). Results showed that the handwritten format took significantly longer to complete. However, the handwritten ballot errors were recoverable and generally did not invalidate the ballots. The column and bubble grid ballots had significant errors, with fewer errors on the bubble grid format. There was no significant difference in SUS scores, nor any contribution of demographics across ballot types. Ballot format directly dictates the time taken to vote, usability, and overall voter success.

California’s 2021 Gubernatorial Recall: Field Notes

In 2021, the second attempt in California history to recall a governor ended in a resounding victory for the Democratic incumbent. Unlike the recall of Governor Gray Davis in 2003, auspicious political conditions helped enable Gavin Newsom’s survival; these included a large Democratic advantage in voter registration and an all-mail-ballot election that reduced participation costs. Turning points in the process included an extension of the signature-gathering deadline and the emergence of a polemical candidate who helped energize Democratic voters. These developments re-exposed flaws in the state’s recall process and have prompted calls to reform the qualification procedures and the dual ballot format, which permits the election of a potentially anti-majoritarian replacement who receives a small fraction of the plurality vote.

Auditing the 2020 General Election in Georgia: Residual Vote Rates and a Confusing Ballot Format

The 2020 general election in the United States took place against the backdrop of a pandemic and countless claims about voter fraud. The presidential race in Georgia was extremely close, and in thi...

Digital technologies in the electoral process: theoretical aspects of compliance with democratic standards

The article is devoted to the study of the acceptability of the introduction of digital technologies in the electoral process and their compliance with democratic standards.It is indicated, that the Recommendation CM / Rec (2017) revised the problematic aspects of the legal regulation of electoral technologies in accordance with the current stage of development of science and information technology and today remains virtually the only agreed act, containing requirements for electronic voting. The most common digital technologies in the election process are highlighted: devices for direct recording of electronic voting without a paper ballot form; means of scanning the ballot; technical mechanisms for speeding up the counting of votes; online voting system via a computer or mobile device with Internet access; a device for voter identification online or at a polling station (including by recording fingerprints or the retina). The following essential principles of this method of election are summarized: clarity of procedure, reliability, stability of electoral legislation and broad public support.The authors highlight the following advantages of the electronic election system - the presence of a coordinated, verified, labile voter register; increases administrative efficiency; reduces long-term costs of financial and labor resources; eliminates the possibility of manipulation; speeds up the counting of votes; improves political transparency; overcomes the problems of ignorance of the electorate.The article proves that elections, referendums or other forms of democracy, conducted using digital technologies, must meet the requirements and general principles of suffrage. Legitimation of digital technologies is possible only in the absence of discriminatory advantages. Therefore, the possibility of using digital technologies is possible in the case of organizing the technical perfection of the electronic voting system and counting of votes, as well as their alternatives, along with the classic form of voting

Responding to Brexit through a Song

As a European citizen I have enjoyed great freedom working and travelling across the European Union since I was in my early 20s. During this time I have made strong, lasting friendships with many people but not least in France, Sweden, and Portugal. Following the ‘Brexit’ referendum, many of these friends asked, ‘Why leave?’ ‘What is happening to the UK?’ I had no answers and also found it difficult to convey in words the mixture of sadness, disappointment, disillusion, anger, and frustration that I felt. Qualitative researchers are often drawn to arts-based methodologies when words fail us. Here, I draw on a song to help communicate a complex and emotional landscape which includes how a refugee crisis, an influx of asylum seekers, and immigration conflicts in 2015 seemed to create a groundswell of fear and contribute to a ‘leave’ vote being registered by 51.9% of those who completed the ballot form.

Ballot Reform and the Decline of Third Parties in State Legislatures

While it has been suggested that the original Australian ballot reforms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may have had a detrimental effect on later third-party success in US elections, others have observed that many ballot laws ‘explain very little of the variance in either the number of minor party candidacies or the vote for them’. While there is much debate about the effects of these laws on electoral outcomes, a limitation of past research is an emphasis on statewide and federal elections, where many third-party candidacies are ‘agenda-setting’ rather than ‘office-seeking’ efforts. This research examines the effects of the original Australian ballot laws on state legislative elections, where office-seeking third-party candidates had a proven record of electoral success. The effects of initial reform adoption, straight ticket provisions, ballot form, prohibitions against ballot fusion, and the inclusion of write-in options on the ballot are tested in time-series Tobit models of the percentage of state house seats won by third-party candidates from 1870 to 1920. The results of the analysis suggest that the specific provisions included in these ballot laws had a statistically significant and substantial effect on later third-party success in state legislative elections.

Ballot Paper Design: Evidence from an Experimental Study at the 2009 Local Elections

The overriding principle of ballot design is that it should not confer any a priori advantage to one candidate over another. Ballot format should not determine or condition an election outcome. Yet, there is a sizeable body of evidence which demonstrates that in many circumstances the design of ballot papers and voting machines contravenes the normative assumption of electoral neutrality. In this article, we look at the impact of ballot paper design at local elections in the Republic of Ireland (hereafter Ireland). The article uses data from an experimental election study conducted at the local elections in Ireland in 2009. Overall the study finds some evidence of a primacy effect and it also demonstrates that candidates located in the middle of the ballot face a challenge as they receive the lowest vote shares of all candidates across the four replica ballots. This mid-table obscurity remains even when party affiliation is known. Thus, it can be argued that candidates placed in such positions incur a disadvantage. To neutralise this effect, the article concludes with a recommendation that a system of random ordering of ballot positions across ballot papers should be implemented so as to ensure that each candidate appears at each ballot position on an equal number of times.

Survey on End-to-End Verifiable Cryptographic Voting Systems

Electronic voting refers to the using of computers or computerized voting equipments to cast ballots in the election. The e-voting has been developed for more than 20 years. In the electronic voting, there are three stages: the registration stage, the voting stage, and the tally stage. Verifiable cryptographic voting systems use encryption technology to secure electorate’s votes and to avoid coerce them to vote for any particular candidate or to buy their votes, and any another threats. This research aims to obtain an electronic voting system could be used easily in the third world countries. In this research ten of existing cryptography verifiable voting systems have been studied, and especially focused on End-toEnd verifiable voting systems, which is considered as the newest class of voting systems. In addition this paper took a system from another type of verifiable voting systems for a comparison purpose. The comparison between these systems has done according to a set of public evaluation contexts that is followed in any voting system such as: properties, cryptographic building block, ballot format, and models. This paper discusses seven of E2E voting systems, which are closer to deal with in the developing communities in order to modify any one of those systems for using in third world countries. This study concludes that most of the modern voting systems currently in place are not usable in the third world countries (despite the many positive achievements in many aspects) but can be adjusted to fit with these countries. In the future, the most appropriate E2E voting system will be chosen among systems which are mentioned in this study to be adjusted in order to fit in the third world countries.

Party Identification and Vote Choice in Partisan and Nonpartisan Elections

For decades, scholars have been interested in the effect of party identification on vote choice. Indeed, candidate party affiliation is seen as the most meaningful cue to voters in terms of which candidate they should support. However, there is a large set of elections in the U.S. that are nonpartisan. Using both experimental data and the first national survey of voters in judicial elections, we probe the effectiveness of the nonpartisan ballot format in keeping partisan considerations out of citizens’ minds when voting in judicial elections. Results based on the experimental and observational data are consistent and show that voters’ decisions are influenced strongly by party identification in both partisan and nonpartisan elections. This suggests that in judicial elections voters are able to successfully bring partisan and/or ideological information to bear on their voting decisions in both partisan and nonpartisan ballot formats, rendering nonpartisan elections ineffective at removing the partisan element from elections.

Variations on Ballot Format in Low-Information Elections

A common problem with studying the impact of ballot formats is the inability to test them in real world circumstances, due to the inability to vary election methods within states each year. This study examines the effect of ballot format on low information judicial elections. The pool of subjects consisted of over 550 undergraduate students enrolled in introductory American Government classes. Each subject was given an information sheet to simulate the usually available information about each candidate, and then asked to complete one of three randomly distributed ballots. Each ballot contained a race for President, U.S. Senate, and two hypothetical judicial posts. The three ballot formats given to the subjects included a straight ticket format, partisan format without the straight ticket option, and a non-partisan format. The results help to better identify the impact of alternative ballot formats on voter decision.

Colombian Voters And Ballot Structure: Error, Confusion, And/Or “None Of The Above”

COLOMBIAN VOTERS AND BALLOT STRUCTURE: ERROR, CONFUSION, AND/OR “NONE OF THE ABOVE” Steven L. Taylor∗ Troy University Prepared for the 2012 Meeting of SECOLAS. The point of interaction between the voter and the vote is the ballot. Therefore, it stands to reason that the format of the ballot matters in this interchange. Indeed, studies have demonstrated the significance of the ballot format.1 And while intuitive and empirical evidence confirm the importance of the piece of paper (or computer screen) upon which candidates and parties appear and voters vote, this is an understudied area, especially in Latin America. The Colombian case presents an intriguing example of the importance of ballot format as it is an electoral democracy with a long history of voting that has seen significant ballot (and electoral) reform over the last several decades. Specifically, the Colombian electoral system had a system of privately produced paper ballots from the early Twentieth Century until 1990, when it shifted to state-produced ballots with a new format. From 1990–2011 the system saw a shift in electoral rules (2003) as well as ballot format changes in 2003 and 2011. These changes provide a vehicle for studying the ways in which ballot format influences electoral outcomes. The specific focus of this study is the degree to which ballot formats have contributed to voter confusion and error in the Colombian case. Further, examination of voting patterns suggests some significant level of voter dissatisfaction in Colombia given the number of votes being cast for en blanco (effectively, “none of the above”). Not only is en blanco a legitimate choice on Colombian ballots, but it is a potential winner: should en blanco win the most votes in a given contest, then a new election will be run. Another possible indicator of voter dissatisfaction or confusion are unmarked ballots. The fundamental argument herein is two-fold: first that the shifts in the Colombia ballot and the electoral rules has created substantial confusion within the Colombian electoral, which warrants ballot reform (something that was attempted in 2011, but appears to have failed to achieve its goals) and that the shift in ballot production from private to public production helped reveal a fairly high level of motivated, yet dissatisfied or confused ∗I would like to thank the staffs at the Library of Congress and the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá, Colombia (with a special thanks to Tracey North of the LOC’s Hispanic Reading Room). Additional thanks to the Misión de Observación Electoral for the chance to observe the March 2010 elections and to Jeff Daniel for data organizational help. Funding provided by the Faculty Development Committee of Troy University for research trips to Washington, DC in July of 2009 and Bogotá, Colombia in March 2010. C 2012 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 111 The Latin Americanist, December 2012 Table 1: Effective Number of Parliamentary Parties, Colombian Congress, 1974–2010 (Shaded to indicate changes to ballot) Chamber Senate 1974 2.28 2.17 1978 2.06 2.01 1982 1.98 2.04 1986 2.46 2.47 1990 2.20 2.24 1991 3.03 3.10 1994 2.82 2.90 1998 3.27 3.56 2002 7.39 9.19 2006 7.60 7.10 2010 5.15 5.57 voters (i.e., voters will to go to the polls and vote en blanco or deposit an unmarked ballot). The role of ballot design has practical saliency as the Colombian government is moving towards the adoption of electronic voting machines and so the lessons of recent ballot format changes would be useful as new choices are made. To accomplish the above the paper will provide basic background on the Colombia electoral and party systems, a review of the evolution of the Colombian ballot and then move to an analysis of error rates and “none of the above” voting. The main analytical focus of the paper, time-wise, is 1974–2011.2 Basic Background Some very basic information is needed about the Colombian electoral and party systems for the purpose of discussing the ballot. First, in terms of party system, from the mid-nineteenth century...

The Advent of Shareholder Activism in India

The recent spate of crises afflicting the corporate and financial sectors around the world has triggered a new wave of corporate governance reforms, which call for greater empowerment of institutional and retail shareholders. The need for such reforms cannot be greater than in India where controlling shareholders, or promoters, dominate the corporate landscape. Consistent with reforms in several countries that seek to confer greater power in the hands of shareholders, the recent regulatory developments in India signify a greater opportunity for shareholder participation in the form of postal ballot, e-voting and the like. The rapid proliferation of proxy advisory firms, a hitherto non-existent phenomenon in India, bestows shareholders with the advice necessary to exercise their corporate franchise in an informed manner. The presence of activist institutional shareholders such as private equity funds and hedge funds has already caused an upheaval in some corporate boardrooms in India. While these developments pave the way for a transformation in the tenor of the governance debate, shareholder activism encounters certain structural and institutional weaknesses embedded in the Indian markets. The dominance of controlling shareholders in most Indian companies operates to dampen the effects of shareholder activism. The legal system and institutions in India are not conducive to rendering timely and cost-effective remedies to shareholders who adopt a litigation strategy to counter managements that are perceived to act inimical to shareholder interests. This paper finds that although shareholder activism is becoming palpable in the Indian markets, its impact as a measure of corporate governance enhancement is far from clear.

Apportionment Matters: Fair Representation in the US House and Electoral College

The 2000 presidential election made various electoral institutions—from ballot format to voting mechanisms—suddenly prominent in public debate. One institution that garnered little attention, but nonetheless affected the outcome, was apportionment. A few commentators, looking ahead to 2004, noticed that Bush would have won more comfortably had the apportionment based on the 2000 census already been in place for the 2000 election. Little attention, however, was paid to the method by which 1990 census data were used to generate the 1992–2000 apportionment, even though there are many ways to perform that allocation, the United States has used different methods over its history, and the precise algorithm turned out, in this instance, to matter. More generally, previous discussions of apportionment methods have neglected the point that allocation to states of US House seats simultaneously determines Electoral College weights. Since the Electoral College has built-in biases favoring small states, an apportionment method that partially offsets this bias might be justifiable. We revisit some criteria by which one might prefer one apportionment rule to another, in light of this double duty.

Gender and Party Duopoly in a Small State: Ballot Position Effects under the Single Transferable Vote in Malta, 1947–2008

Research on preference voting systems seems to indicate that where voters are allowed to choose among a party's candidates, the order in which candidates are listed on the ballot has an effect on the number of nominative votes they receive. This study of the 16 Maltese elections of 1947–2008 shows that being listed first on the ballot is a distinct electoral advantage. The analysis implies that complex voting systems are particularly vulnerable to position effects, even when there is a high degree of intra-party competition in small-size electoral districts. It also suggests that policy makers should pay more attention to ballot format design in order to mitigate order effects, even in a small country like Malta.

An Opposing View of Scotland's Ballot Paper Problem: Arbuthnott and the Government had the Right Idea

The May 2007 Scottish Parliament election used a different ballot format from the one used in the previous elections, one that combined the regional and constituency votes onto one ballot paper (two separate papers were used before). Because there were many more invalid votes in 2007, the problem was blamed on the two‐vote ballot paper, which was recommended by the Arbuthnott Commission to prevent misunderstandings about what the two votes were for. Other places that use the mixed‐member proportional (MMP) electoral system tend to use a two‐vote ballot paper, with Germany and New Zealand seeing low levels of invalid votes. While the decision to revert to two separate papers in future Scottish Parliament elections might reduce the number of invalid votes, the price could be more confusion about the proportional nature of the electoral system unless public education improves significantly.

Ballot Formats, Touchscreens, and Undervotes: A Study of the 2006 Midterm Elections in Florida

ABSTRACT The 2006 midterm elections in Florida focused renewed attention on undervotes, instances where no candidate is selected in a given race. This interest was sparked by the high undervote count—more than 21,000 out of approximately 240,000 ballots cast—in the race for Florida's 13th Congressional seat. This race was decided by a margin of only 369 votes, and the numerous undervotes cast in it were highly concentrated in Sarasota County, one of five counties that contribute to the 13th Congressional District. Using ballot- and precinct-level voting data we show that the exceptionally high Sarasota undervote rate in the 13th Congressional District race was almost certainly caused by the way that Sarasota County's electronic voting machines displayed on a single ballot screen the Congressional contest and the Florida gubernatorial race. We buttress this claim by showing that extraordinarily high undervote rates were also observed in the Florida attorney general race in Charlotte and Lee Counties, place...

Randomization Inference With Natural Experiments

Since the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, social scientists have rediscovered a long tradition of research examining the effects of ballot format on voting. Using a new dataset collected by The New York Times, we investigate the causal effect of being listed on the first ballot page in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election. California law mandates a unique randomization procedure of ballot order that, when appropriately modeled, can be used to approximate a classical randomized experiment in a real world setting. We apply randomization inference based on Fisher's exact test, which directly incorporates the exact randomization procedure and yields accurate nonparametric confidence intervals. Our results suggest that being listed on the first ballot page causes a statistically significant increase in vote shares for more than 40% of the minor candidates, whereas there is no significant effect for the top two candidates. We also investigate how randomization inference differs from conventional estimators that do not fully incorporate California's complex treatment assignment mechanism. The results indicate appreciable differences between the two approaches.

A Reading Spectacle for the Nation: The CBC and "Canada Reads"

Radio One's Reads, which aims to select a work of Canadian literature all of Canada should read together, was first broadcast as a network special in 2002. This essay undertakes an ideological analysis of the cultural work that performs, focussing on the first three series and drawing upon original interviews with the show's producers, listeners, and cultural workers. authors conceptualize the show as both a mass reading event and a media spectacle that reinforces the blockbuster of contemporary Canadian literary publishing. They also contend that the model of nation imagined by the content of is problematically, if predictably, conservative (bilingual and uncritically multicultural); however, the authors position this ideological limitation against the potential for creative resistance produced by the show's multiple modes of delivery. L'emission de Radio One intitulee Canada Reads qui choisit une oeuvre litteraire canadienne « que tout le Canada devrait lire ensemble » a ete diffusee pour la premiere fois lors d'un special du Reseau en 2002. Le present article effectue une analyse ideologique des oeuvres culturelles choisies pour l'emission en mettant l'accent sur les trois premieres series et en se servant d'entrevues originales avec les realisateurs de l'emission, les auditeurs et les agents culturels. Les auteures conceptualisent l'emission comme un evenement de lecture de masse et un spectacle mediatique renforcant la « culture de superproduction » de la publication litteraire canadienne contemporaine. Les auteures avancent que le modele de nation qui est « imagine » par le contenu de l'emission est problematiquement, mais de facon previsible, conservateur (bilingue et aisement multiculturel). Toutefois, les auteures placent cette limite ideologique dans le contexte d'une resistance creatrice possible causee par les divers modes de delivrance de l'emission. CBC Radio is a great literary patron and sometimes has (quasi-) original ideas. (Richler 2002, RA4) Ungrateful listeners have criticized the CBC's Canada Reads campaign.... Isn't it somewhat totalitarian to urge everyone in the country to read the same book, even if the book is as good as Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion? (Gordon 2002, A18) The jury's choice of an essentially unreadable novel arose partly from the ambiguity of the job. They were not to pick the best book, but the book Canada should read-an opening that gave free rein to CanCult's ingrained nannyism. (Bethune 2003, 52) Like many One Book pseudo-communities, the also provided the requisite illusion of public participation in the form of a people's ballot... a patronizing top-down process leads us to supposedly morally edifying books that are already quite popular. (Niedzviecki 2002, 16) What cultural work does Radio One's perform-and for whom? Does it uphold the symbolic power of the and reinforce its explicit ideological imperatives as a public broadcaster to educate, inform, and represent Canadians? Or, does represent a reimagining of Radio's national community and the corporation's role within the field of Canadian culture? responses quoted above represent the complex, and often conflicting, attitudes articulated by media commentators and arts critics writing for national print publications. These writers alternately question or reinforce the CBC's cultural authority as an arbiter of literary quality, as a promoter of Canadian literature, and as a nation-building institution. Their comments underline the corporation's ideological and structural position within the ruling relations of power' and trouble the CBC's relationship to its audience, in particular to readers of literary fiction. is an annual program that first aired in April 2002, and that aims to get Canadians across the country to read the same book: it has been described as an attempt to create a huge trans-Canadian book club. …

Revolutionising the voting process through online strategies

PurposeTo provide practitioners of information management with an overview and framework to explore the various controversies associated with the methods of traditional methods of voting with electronically enhanced voting via the internet (I‐voting). The current paper is centered on the assumption that I‐voting is the next logical step in applying online information‐gathering and retrieval technologies to the field of e‐government.Design/methodology/approachA review of the applied literature on electronically enhanced voting methods with potentials associated with internet voting, as well as from practical experience, resulted in a basic model for discussion of the emergent nature of I‐voting.FindingsI‐voting would reduce the cost for staffing polling stations, and also the funds needed to pay for voting machines. I‐voting could also reduce the number of errors made by both the voters and the electoral administrators, and allow for easier adoption of uniform standards in the ballot format, since it could be transmitted via the internet from a central election agency to all local and regional polling places. Bridging the digital divide and internet security issues may be the most important barriers that must be overcome if I‐voting becomes a viable option in the USA.Research limitations/implicationsIt may be years, if ever, before a truly secure, relatively risk‐free internet service, such as I‐voting, is developed. However, despite the controversies associated with election fraud, the numerous current voting systems that are in place suffer from the same problems associated with online informational exchanges; but, for the most part, nations still conduct their businesses and the political systems are still relatively stable.Practical implicationsOwing to recent voting débâcles in the USA, the public is demanding a more reliable and secure method of voting. Currently, many nations are moving more toward electronically enhanced voting methods with the long‐term goal being internet voting. Unfortunately, there are heated debates about the pros and cons of handing over the right to vote, using a system that is prone to security risks from outside sources.Originality/valueIn the short term, there should be increased interest in establishing national and international standards for testing and certification of electronic and I‐voting systems and their IT‐infrastructure. It is a basic premise of the present study that voting online increases voter participation, which can only be viewed in a positive light.

Randomization Inference with Natural Experiments: An Analysis of Ballot Effects in the 2003 California Recall Election

Since the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, social scientists have rediscovered a long tradition of research that investigates the effects of ballot format on voting. Using a new dataset collected by the New York Times, we investigate the causal effect of being listed on the first ballot page in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election. California law mandates a complex randomization procedure of ballot order that approximates a classical randomized experiment in a real world setting. The recall election also poses particular statistical challenges with an unprecedented 135 candidates running for the office. We apply (nonparametric) randomization inference based on Fisher's exact test, which incorporates the complex randomization procedure and yields accurate confidence intervals. Conventional asymptotic model-based inferences are found to be highly sensitive to assumptions and model specification. Randomization inference suggests that roughly half of the candidates gained more votes when listed on the first page of the ballot.