Electoral Environment Research Articles

Preventing Electoral Fraud in Indonesia: Protecting the Social Security of Election Management Personnel

Indonesia’s Election Management Bodies (EMBs), constitutionally mandated to manage legislative and presidential elections, face substantial risks, including accidents and fatalities. However, their social security rights are often overshadowed by the focus on civil servants and private-sector workers. This study, employing normative legal research, urges the need for state protection of EMBs’ social security rights, drawing on secondary data sources. EMBs should receive comprehensive work-related accident benefits, death benefit programs, and old-age protection schemes from the Workers Social Security Agency (BPJS Ketenagakerjaan). The legal basis for these social security rights can be found in several legislative provisions, including the Indonesian 1945 Constitution, the National Social Security System Law, and other related regulations. Recognizing EMBs as state-serving workers is a crucial step in safeguarding their social security rights. This recognition is not merely a matter of legal interpretation; it is a necessity to ensure a fair and secure electoral environment. By ensuring that EMBs are accorded the same rights and protections as other workers, the state can create a more equitable electoral process and reinforce the integrity of its democratic institutions.

The best at the top? Candidate ranking strategies under closed list proportional representation

Abstract Under closed-list proportional representation, a party's electoral list determines the order in which legislative seats are allocated to candidates. When candidates differ in their ability, parties face a trade-off between competence and incentives. Ranking candidates in decreasing order of competence ensures that elected politicians are most competent. Yet, party lists create incentives for candidates that may lead parties not to place their best candidates at the top of the list. We examine this trade-off in a game-theoretical model in which parties rank their candidates on a list, candidates choose their campaign effort, and the election is a team contest for multiple prizes. We analyze how the candidates’ objectives, voters’ attention and media coverage, incumbency, the number of parties competing in the election, and the electoral environment influence how parties rank candidates.

THE PARTISAN PARTICIPATION IN THE JORDANIAN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

Purpose: The study explores parliamentary elections, election laws, and party attitudes, using content analysis to understand their impact on electoral outcomes. It suggests recommendations for enhancing trust and promoting democratic principles.
 
 Theoretical framework: The study's theoretical framework may incorporate political science and sociology concepts, focusing on electoral processes, political parties, and democratic governance. It may explore institutionalism, party systems theory, democratic theory, and content analysis methodology to understand the impact of election laws, party behavior, and democratic norms on political outcomes.
 
 Design/Methodology/Approach: The study's theoretical framework may incorporate political science and sociology concepts, focusing on electoral processes, political parties, and democratic governance. It may explore institutionalism, party systems theory, democratic theory, and content analysis methodology to understand the impact of election laws, party behavior, and democratic norms on political outcomes.
 
 Findings: The study may have revealed the dynamic nature of the electoral environment, the impact of election laws on party behavior, partisan positions on electoral processes, the effectiveness of political parties in elections, trust in political institutions, and recommendations for electoral reform. These findings could help strengthen democratic governance and electoral processes.
 
 Research, Practical & Social Implications: The study provides empirical insights into party behavior and election laws, highlighting the importance of qualitative research methods. It can inform policymakers, political parties, and civil society organizations in electoral reforms, enhancing fairness, transparency, and inclusivity. The findings can also promote trust, civic engagement, and protection of human rights, fostering a more inclusive democracy.
 
 Originality/Value: The study provides valuable insights into evolving electoral dynamics, partisan positions, and electoral outcomes. It offers recommendations for improving trust and promoting democratic principles. The content analysis method provides a rigorous framework for analyzing textual data, enhancing the robustness of the findings.

T Taking Into Account Imprecision in the Modeling Voter in a Multi-Agent Environment

An electoral system is a set of individuals considered as agents in a multi-agent system in which voters communicate with each other and with the environment. In such a system, it is often difficult to understand the behavior of an agent that we call a voter. This is why, in this paper, we use fuzzy set theory as an approach to model the behavior of an imprecise voter in an electoral environment. It will be just a question of presenting a model of a voter with fuzzy behavior using mathematical approaches in this environment considered as a multi-agent environment and to propose the algorithms as the tools of computer modeling.

Godfatherism and Electoral Security in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: A Human Security Approach

<p>This study delves into the intricate relationship between godfatherism and electoral politics in Nigeria's Fourth Republic, with a specific focus on the 2018 gubernatorial election in Osun State. Godfatherism has emerged as a prevalent phenomenon in Nigerian politics, where influential figures play significant roles in shaping political outcomes. Using a human security analytical approach, this study critically examines the link between godfatherism and electoral politics in Nigeria's fourth republic and its implication for human security, focusing on the micro-political analysis of the Osun state gubernatorial election in 2018. Employing a mixed-methods approach, this study draws on descriptive research methodology and the Elite theoretical framework to uncover the complexities of godfatherism and its implications for electoral politics. The findings indicate that godfatherism, despite its potential benefits for the democratic balance of power, has taken an unsettling turn in Nigeria's electoral environment, thus posing grave dangers to human security. It has evolved into a disruptive force, undermining the foundations of popular democratic governance and denying citizens the full dividends of democracy. The study highlights how godfatherism influences candidate selection, party loyalty, and electoral outcomes. Moreover, the study reveals that godfatherism perpetuates a system of political patronage, compromising the independence and accountability of elected officials. It also examines the consequences of godfatherism on the unity of political parties, electoral malpractices, and the quality of democratic representation in Osun State. In conclusion, this study underscores the need to reevaluate the role of godfatherism in Nigeria's electoral politics while advocating for reforms in the political system to promote transparency, accountability, and citizen participation.</p>

Campaigning in the dark: theorising campaign strategies from the 2022 Seanad by-election

ABSTRACT Parties and election candidates are often understood to be rational actors, adapting to conditions to remain electorally competitive. However, despite the rational pursuit of goals requiring enough information with which to update one’s strategies, to our knowledge, no study has sought to examine the precise role of information in influencing party or candidate updating during campaigns. To fill this gap, we use qualitative process tracing to examine the 2022 Irish Seanad by-election, which acts as an extreme case of a low-information electoral environment that can be used for theory-building. From this analysis, we expect that the information level is a function of knowledge about voters’ intentions and the terms of political debate, in the form of an interaction between the effective number of electoral parties and the range of issues discussed by parties. From this, we hypothesise that strategic updating is least likely when information about both voters and the terms of political debate are low. Indeed, the lower the information level, the more likely candidates are to prioritise their preferred issues and ignore their competitors, even when they could acquire some rudimentary knowledge of their competitors.

She works hard for the money: explaining racial and gender disparities in candidate success in primary elections

ABSTRACT In 2020, voters and party leaders came to the consensus that a white moderate man would be the most likely candidate to defeat Trump (Masket. 2020. Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020. Cambridge University Press). Yet, the logic behind the “viability consensus” lacks empirical support and has rendered numerous challenges for marginalized candidates. We focus on a couple of challenges in particular – the social and psychological mechanisms behind racial/gender disparities in candidate success in primary elections. Scholarship on campaign finance and congressional elections has shown gender, race, and partisanship interact to shape candidates' contribution totals and vote shares (Sorensen and Chen. 2021. “Identity in Campaign Finance and Elections: The Impact of Gender and Race on Money Raised in 2010-2018 U.S.” House Elections. Political Research Quarterly 75 (3): 738–753). It has yet to examine, however, how voters' social identities and attitudes about social groups contribute to disparities in candidate success and how the relationship between social identity and voter support, fundraising, and electability varies by electoral environment. In this paper, we assess the interaction of candidate and voter characteristics on campaign fundraising, voter support, and perceived candidate viability in primary elections. We uncover potential explanations for why candidates from marginalized groups find it more difficult to raise campaign funds and gain electoral support compared to other candidate demographic groups. The results of our conjoint experiment reveal that Black women in particular struggle to find support among white voters and donors.

Nothing to See Here: Republican Congressional Members’ Twitter Reactions to Donald Trump

How do co-partisans respond to the President on Twitter? This article examines whether and how Republican legislators reacted to President Trump in five instances when he broke with Republican Party policy positions or norms. We theorize that legislators’ electoral environment, constituency, and identity shape their response to the president, and we test our hypotheses using nearly 2,500 hand-coded tweets from Republican legislators between 2018-2020. The overwhelming reaction by Republican legislators to Trump’s actions was to ignore him. When members did react to the president, their response was primarily driven by their electoral environment and identity. Those from the most Trump supportive districts supported the president, and retiring members were most likely to oppose him. Male legislators were much more likely to support and oppose the president, while female legislators mostly ignored him. And, if they reacted, the most ideologically extreme Republicans were more likely to support than oppose the president. The implications of these findings are troubling. Even when President Trump violated traditional norms or deviated from long held party positions, his congressional co-partisans remained silent, occasionally offering support but rarely opposition.

A 2 million-person, campaign-wide field experiment shows how digital advertising affects voter turnout.

We present the results of a large, US$8.9 million campaign-wide field experiment, conducted among 2 million moderate- and low-information persuadable voters in five battleground states during the 2020 US presidential election. Treatment group participants were exposed to an 8-month-long advertising programme delivered via social media, designed to persuade people to vote against Donald Trump and for Joe Biden. We found no evidence that the programme increased or decreased turnout on average. We found evidence of differential turnout effects by modelled level of Trump support: the campaign increased voting among Biden leaners by 0.4 percentage points (s.e. = 0.2 pp) and decreased voting among Trump leaners by 0.3 percentage points (s.e. = 0.3 pp) for a difference in conditional average treatment effects of 0.7 points (t1,035,571 = -2.09; P = 0.036; [Formula: see text] points; 95% confidence interval = -0.014 to 0). An important but exploratory finding is that the strongest differential effects appear in early voting data, which may inform future work on early campaigning in a post-COVID electoral environment. Our results indicate that differential mobilization effects of even large digital advertising campaigns in presidential elections are likely to be modest.

The Importance of Social Networks in the Pre-election Period

Objective and fair elections is a fundament for the development of the country’s democracy. Such campaign is very important for Georgia, a country on the path to democracy. Following the growing influence of social networking users and platform, political parties, candidates and activists use social networking to spread their own ideas and programs. In order to receive and spread information, people mostly use “Facebook” among numerous social platforms. “Facebook” has also become one of the large-scale platforms for electoral activities, which significantly influences electoral environment and defines voters’ behavior. Observing pre-electoral campaign of the latest elections made it clear, that “Facebook” was used not only for spreading personal programs and ideas of the political actors, but for discreditation of the separate candidates by disinformation and dissemination of damaging information, which had an organizational and purposeful act. During the observing process, it has become clear that besides of discreditation of different electoral subjects, social media is successfully used for political finances and agitation related to ignoring of electoral legislation prohibitions. Keywords: Social network, Elections, Political parties, Voter.

The Risks of Using Cryptocurrency in Political Financing And The Methods for its Prevention

Regulating and monitoring political finances is an important factor in ensuring a fair and equitable electoral environment, but there are frequent cases of illegal finances, and in the modern world there is a tendency to use digital currencies, which are slowly entering political parties and making political finances monitoring impossible. The Relevant political finance regulations set standards for access to information, which make it possible to process the required information, to monitor it and achieve the transparency of information. Moreover, the Regulation and transparency of funding political processes are important to limit the means of gaining a power through anonymous and illegal sources. The appropriate measures of prevention and coercion serve this purpose in order to make political finances transparent through effective monitoring. Recently, a number of countries have faced the threat of receiving funding from the closed parties and the use of crypto currencies by political parties, and many have begun to think about introducing certain regulations to protect policies from digital currencies. Keywords: political party, political financing, political corruption, cryptocurrency, bitcoin.

A polygenic score for educational attainment partially predicts voter turnout

Twin and adoption studies have shown that individual differences in political participation can be explained, in part, by genetic variation. However, these research designs cannot identify which genes are related to voting or the pathways through which they exert influence, and their conclusions rely on possibly restrictive assumptions. In this study, we use three different US samples and a Swedish sample to test whether genes that have been identified as associated with educational attainment, one of the strongest correlates of political participation, predict self-reported and validated voter turnout. We find that a polygenic score capturing individuals' genetic propensity to acquire education is significantly related to turnout. The strongest associations we observe are in second-order midterm elections in the United States and European Parliament elections in Sweden, which tend to be viewed as less important by voters, parties, and the media and thus present a more information-poor electoral environment for citizens to navigate. A within-family analysis suggests that individuals' education-linked genes directly affect their voting behavior, but, for second-order elections, it also reveals evidence of genetic nurture. Finally, a mediation analysis suggests that educational attainment and cognitive ability combine to account for between 41% and 63% of the relationship between the genetic propensity to acquire education and voter turnout.

Governing Democracy Outside the Law: India's Election Commission and the Challenge of Accountability

AbstractComparative law and politics literature widely recognizes the role of election management bodies (EMBs) in securing the well-being of constitutional democracies. Scholars have noted the political desirability of both independence and accountability of these institutions. But striking balance between these two values is easier said than done. This Article highlights the dilemma of accountability by focusing on India's Election Commission (ECI) as a paradigmatic version of a powerful EMB. Scholars of Indian politics have long noted the institution's widening powers – often beyond the original constitutional intent or parliamentary legislation – over the last few decades. This, they argue, has impaired its institutional accountability. This Article adopts a fresh perspective on the ECI's expansive functions, and the attendant concerns these raise. It argues that the ECI regulates the electoral process not through what we may ordinarily identify as the law. The most compelling and consequential of its functions are through extra-legal modalities of regulation. Drawing from recent scholarship on regulation, the Article argues that the ECI shapes the electoral environment and behaviour through non-legal modalities of architecture, nudge and notice-based regulations. Much like the other fields where they are deployed, these extra-legal modalities exhibit unique, and in many ways, inherent limitations with respect to transparency. It is thus this character of the ECI's functions – rather than only their widening breadth – that poses the most significant challenge for democratic accountability. Based on this assessment, the Article notes that for powerful EMBs like the ECI, accountability in the form of on-going operational accountability is inherently limited in compelling ways. This increases the stakes for accountability of these institutions through other means, particularly by securing their constitution, composition and tenure.

OPPOSITION CANDIDACY AND ELECTORAL POLITICS IN TANZANIA: THE CASE OF ZITTO ZUBERI KABWE

In an electoral environment where the playing field is highly contested, it is pertinent to learn how opposition candidates win elections. This narrative case study draws from observation of parliamentary elections in Kigoma North and Kigoma Urban constituencies in Tanzania to demonstrate how the opposition candidate maneuvered to outcompete candidates of the ruling party. It reveals that winning elections involves preparations for real or perceived electoral fraud. The paper uncovers practical strategies that opposition candidates’ in Tanzania use to counter election fraud and the challenges they are likely to face. These findings reinforce existing research on electoral integrity.

Robust electoral violence prevention: An example from Ghana

Abstract Existing electoral violence prevention programming does not sufficiently account for the incentives that compel political actors to use violence. When Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo defeated Ghana’s incumbent President, John Dramani Mahama, in December 2016, the transition was lauded for its orderliness and credited with furthering Ghana’s democratization. Many attributed the peaceful transfer of power to significant reforms undertaken by the electoral commission and the democratic values internalized by the candidates. However, we find that the reforms and personal attributes of the political actors were inadequate for resolving impasses that could have worsened the electoral environment. Our analysis reveals that interventions to prevent electoral violence must mitigate political actors’ incentives to use or tolerate violence in furtherance of their objectives. In Ghana, we find that back channel negotiations—coupled with identifying potential hotspots, early monitoring and observation, and conflict resolution mechanisms—created a robust electoral violence prevention framework that reduced tensions and produced a relatively peaceful political transition. Our findings advance existing theories and practices for preventing electoral violence, which emphasize capacity building, institutional reforms, and other technical approaches to managing elections. We conclude that directly engaging political actors is a critical component of preventing electoral violence in Africa.

Polling stations - the main cornerstone of elections

In this article, we discuss the legislative proposal submitted by us, according to which we request an amendment to Article 61, Part 1, Paragraph 1 of the Election Code of Georgia, according to which a new function was added to the member of the flow regulation commission - if necessary, electronically check In the list. In addition, Article 58 (4) (b) of the law requires a change, according to which special places for election observers and party representatives will be allocated at the polling station on polling day, from where they will be able to freely observe the election process at the polling station. With these changes, the Election Code of Georgia will be able to better regulate the problems existing at the polling station on the polling day; It serves to create a safe, comfortable electoral environment for both the voter and the other persons involved in the election process in the line of duty. Keywords: Elections, Legislative Proposal, Election Code

مؤثرات البیئة الانتخابیة کمحدد للانتقال الدیمقراطی - دراسة حالة البرلمان المصری من 2011 : 2020

ملخص : الانتخابات هي واحدة من صور المشارکة في النظم السياسية ، وتتوقف المشارکة في تلک الانتخابات على عدد من العوامل يأتي على رأسها البيئة الانتخابية و التي تعد واحدة من عوامل التأثير في الحياه السياسية ، والبيئة الانتخابية لا تشمل اجراءات ما قبل الانتخابات فحسب بل تتعدى الى الاجراءات و القواعد المنظمة للانتخابات أثناء سريانها ، ويأتي المتغير الاهم في البيئة الانتخابية وهو أداء السلطات المنتخبة بعد اجراء الانتخابات و الذى يکون لهذا الاداء الدور الابرز في تحقيق الثقة في البيئة الانتخابية و النظام الانتخابي و الذى بدوره يسهم في انتقال ديمقراطي حقيقي في الاستحقاقات الانتخابية القادمة . الکلمات المفتاحية : البيئة الانتخابية – النظام الانتخابي - المشارکة السياسية – الانتقال الديمقراطي . Abstract : Elections are one of the forms of participation in political systems, and participation in these elections depends on a number of factors, on top of which is the electoral environment, which is one of the factors affecting political life, and the electoral environment does not include pre-election measures only, but goes beyond procedures and rules. The organization for elections during their implementation, and the most important variable in the electoral environment comes, which is the performance of the elected authorities after the elections, which have the most prominent role in achieving confidence in the electoral environment and the electoral system, which in turn contributes to a true democratic transition in the upcoming elections. Key words : the electoral environment - the electoral system - political participation - the democratic transition.

Coping with complexity: Ballot position effects in the Finnish open-list proportional representation system

Many studies show that the order of candidates’ names on the ballot has an effect on voting. Less informed and indifferent voters may simplify the voting process by using the ballot position of candidates as a voting cue. By studying six parliamentary elections in Finland, this study first demonstrates that the relationship between ballot position and preference votes follows a reversed J-shaped curve. Candidates listed early on the ballot win the most preference votes, while candidates listed near the end have an advantage over those listed in the middle. Furthermore, the ballot position effect grows stronger with the complexity of the electoral environment. The ballot position effect increases as the number of candidates on the party list increases, the candidates-to-seats ratio increases and the number of incumbents on the list decreases.

An Unconfident Public: Explaining Perceptions of the 2016 Presidential Nominations

AbstractUsing an AP‐NORC survey, I analyze the impact of the electoral rules, voter demographics, and perceptions of the 2016 nominations on confidence in the fairness of the presidential nominations. I reveal that perceptions of outsider candidates affect confidence in the parties' processes. Believing that superdelegates are a good idea is associated with feeling more confident. Also, when citizens experience an electoral environment that matches what they believe to be the fairer rule, higher levels of confidence in the fairness of the processes result. These findings matter not only in their own right, but also for the potential influence on participation, the legitimacy of democracy, and party decisions about nominating rules.

СУДЬБЫ НАРОДНЫХ ПРЕДСТАВИТЕЛЕЙ ПЕРВОЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЙ ДУМЫ

The purpose of the article is to consider the attitude of the official authorities and the masses to the deputy corps after the dissolution of the first State Duma. The authors analyze the facts of political repression, as well as the differentiated attitude of the population towards their chosen ones. It is emphasized that the active deputy activity caused a certain government reaction with the use of various administrative and political forces and means. In turn, unjustified high expectations from the people's institution were objectified in cruelty and aggression towards former people's representatives. On the other hand, the deputies who justified the confidence of the voters found protection in their electoral environment. The authors draw conclusions that the indicated political turbulence brought drama to the formation of both group socio-cultural and political identity and personal destinies.