Electoral Reform Research Articles

Reconciling Parliamentary Size with Personalised Proportional Representation? Frontiers of Electoral Reform for the German Bundestag

In the 2017 Bundestag election, the recently reformed mixed-member proportional system (MMP) produced an enlarged parliament with 111 additional seats. As could happen in the future, the Bundestag may even increase in size, so the parliamentary parties committed themselves to a renewed reform in order to curb seat enlargements. This was nonetheless to be done without major changes of the existing MMP. The article analyses the frontiers of such “minimally invasive” reform. Each modification of “personalised PR” that reliably maintains the Bundestag size would compromise one or other of its fundamental features: personalisation or proportionality. We illustrate this by exploring the effects of various single-member district (SMD) reforms that are widely considered the “least harmful” minimally invasive approach. Comprehensive simulations based on survey data demonstrate that the SMD share would have to decrease substantially for maintaining parliamentary size as reliably as two-member districts would do. Thus, any SMD reform would either substantially affect the MMP’s conventional personalisation or curb seat enlargement less effectively.

Election sophistication and the changing contours of vote buying in Nigeria’s 2019 general elections

ABSTRACT The phenomenon of vote buying at every round of elections in Nigeria since 1999 has attracted the attention of scholars. This has given rise to a plethora of insightful analyses. In these studies, vote buying was seen mostly as a pre-voting matter. However, the 2019 elections witnessed the entrenchment of a pattern of vote buying known as ‘see and buy’, in which voters display their votes before proceeding to money collection points, often discreetly located around the voting centres. This article sees the trend as a response of the political actors to the increasing sophistication of Nigeria’s electoral administration, which made old-style election malpractices such as ballot snatching, ballot stuffing and result falsification difficult. This article adopts a qualitative method that utilises data sourced from secondary sources such as reports of local and international election observers and newspapers. It concludes that vote buying is a crooked response of the political class to electoral reforms in Nigeria.

Electoral reforms in India: Needs, issues and challenges

Electoral reforms in India: Needs, issues and challenges

국회의원 선거법제 개혁 다시 보기: ‘한국형 민주공화체제’ 진화의 관점에서

국회의원 선거법제 개혁 다시 보기: ‘한국형 민주공화체제’ 진화의 관점에서

PILIHAN RAYA KECIL (PRK) PASCA PILIHAN RAYA UMUM (PRU) 2018 DI MALAYSIA

Post-General Election 2018 (GE) 2018 saw 10 by-elections held in the wake of incumbent death, resignation, and cancellation of the by-election by court order. The by-elections include the State constituencies of Sungai Kandis, Seri Setia, Balakong, Semenyih, Rantau, Parliamentary constituencies of Port Dickson, Cameron Highlands, Sandakan, Tanjong Piai and Kimanis. All of these by-elections have a particular impact on the country’s socio-economic and political. Therefore, it is the purpose of this study to analyze the by-election post-2018 General Election in Malaysia. Based on analysis of the by-election after general election 2018 data, field observation and the extraction of secondary sources such as journal articles and conference papers, the majority of these polls initially showed a declining drop in voting percentage of less than 50 percent and in the form of a political coalition between UMNO (BN) and PAS. This by-election also followed some electoral reforms set by the Election Commission (EC), and the fulfillment of election promises based on the manifesto of the 2018 GE and the by-elections and institutional reforms. All of these elections show the importance of the role of the authorities in fulfilling election promises, the importance of the voice, the hope of the people being heard, and solving their problems, especially economic and unity issues. This by-election also teaches in terms of effective and wise crisis management, political party preparedness to streamline their electoral machinery, while also motivating party leadership to work harder to win the electorate for the coming GE-15. Therefore, the analysis of the impact of this study is important in contributing to the electoral process, electoral law, guidelines, transparency, political party strategies, and their relevance to the global world.

Electoral reforms and the representativeness of turnout

AbstractVoters tend to be richer, more conservative, and more educated than non-voters. While many electoral reforms promise to increase political participation, these policy instruments may have multidimensional and differential effects that can increase or decrease the representativeness of turnout. We develop an approach that allows us to estimate these effects and assess the impact of postal voting on representational inequality in Swiss referendums using individual-level ($N = 79,\; 000$) and aggregate-level data from 1981 to 2009. We find that postal voting mobilizes equally across a wide range of political and sociodemographic groups but more strongly activates high earners, those with medium education levels, and less politically interested individuals. Yet, those who vote are not less politically knowledgeable and the effects on the composition of turnout remain limited. Our results inform research on the consequences of electoral reforms meant to increase political participation in large electorates.

Does Changing Electoral Systems Affect (Corrupt) Particularistic Exchanges? Evidence from the Italian Case

The literature on forms of particularism explores the impact of institutional variables on what is denoted, alternatively, as constituency service, pork-barrel politics, or corruption. Attention has mostly been given to electoral systems, but other institutional provisions and political factors, such as party strength, are also relevant. The present contribution investigates the likely effects of electoral reforms on corruption control and seeks confirmation of the hypothesis that single member plurality (even within mixed member) systems are conducive to a type of particularism that might help fight corruption, taking Italy as a case. We test the impact of two electoral reforms and three electoral systems enacted in Italy between 1996 and 2016, whose primary aim was bolstering enfeebled party leaderships and facilitating the formation of durable governments, and we compare the effort at corruption control of the Italian governments born under these different electoral systems with those of other European democracies.

Realignment and voter issue preferences in Quebec’s 2018 provincial election: a conjoint experiment

In an election, political parties present positions on multiple policy issues. These competing sets of propositions are then evaluated by citizens on election day. Parties present dozens of issues, while voters make one single choice. Hence, it is not straightforward to assess which issues affect the overall result most. Conjoint experiments allow to shed light on the underlying decision process. We identify various policy issues likely to have swayed the vote during the Quebec 2018 election and analyze which party positions citizens prefer, and how it could have benefit or played against parties. We also provide a contextual framework where we inscribe these results within the literature on political realignment and constitutional depolarization. Results indicate that Quebec’s political game is opening up with a mix of short-term discrete policy promises (i.e., electoral reform) and long-term ideological issues (i.e., the environment) having an impact on vote choice.

Framing Automatic Voter Registration: Partisanship and Public Understanding of Automatic Voter Registration

Automatic voter registration (AVR) is a recent innovation in voter registration in the United States, passed by 18 states plus DC in the last 4 years. AVR has generally escaped partisan polarization about election reform, having passed in Republican and Democratic controlled states. Using a survey experiment in the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we investigate effects of source cues about support of AVR from different party elites and from election administrators on the public’s expectations about AVR’s impact on turnout, voter fraud, fairness, and election problems. Our experimental results show an asymmetric partisan effect. When AVR is endorsed by Democratic leaders, Republicans (and independents) expect AVR to reduce the fairness and legitimacy of elections, while Democrats are generally resistant to partisan cues.

The Electoral System, the Party System and Accountability in Parliamentary Government

Electoral accountability requires that voters have the ability to constrain the incumbent government’s policy-making power. We express the necessary conditions for this claim as an accountability identity in which the electoral system and the party system interact to shape the accountability of parliamentary governments. Data from 400 parliamentary elections between 1948 and 2012 show that electoral accountability is contingent on the party system’s bipolarity, for example, with parties arrayed in two distinct blocs. Proportional electoral systems achieve accountability as well as majoritarian ones when bipolarity is strong but not when it is weak. This is because bipolarity decreases the number of connected coalitions that incumbent parties can join to preserve their policy-making power. Our results underscore the limitations that party systems place on electoral reform and the benefits that bipolarity offers for clarifying voters’ choices and intensifying electoral competition.

The polarization dynamics of electoral reforms

AbstractElectoral reforms affect legislative outcomes by influencing incumbent legislators’ behavior, new entrants’ behavior, and the probability that incumbents are replaced with new entrants. Empirical work on electoral reforms and polarization has focused on new entrants’ behavior. We employ a simple decision theoretic framework with partial incumbent policy persistence and spatial voting to examine the three channels jointly. We show that a reform designed to encourage ideological moderation produces larger effects on polarization when the reform is implemented than when it is removed. The key insight is that implementing a moderation-inducing reform generates a set of challengers who are more likely to defeat incumbents while the incumbents are more likely to win reelection when the reform is removed. We then empirically examine how elections and legislative polarization respond to unlimited PAC contributions in state legislatures. Examining incumbents’ decisions to stand for reelection, the electoral performance of incumbents who do run, and partisan polarization, we find empirical support for our predictions.

Election Law Originalism: The Supreme Court's Elitist Theory of Democracy

The standard topics of election law — such as campaign finance, electoral redistricting, and voter qualification laws — are facing a deeply uncertain future in large part due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions. To consider the larger conceptual issues at stake in these decisions, this Essay addresses two inter-related questions. First: How should we conceptualize the role of the Supreme Court as an institution in these decisions? Second: What is the underlying conception of democracy that best elucidates the Court’s major election law decisions in the last decade or so? This Essay argues that the Supreme Court’s role in recent election law decisions cannot be easily reduced to a single or consistent approach. Instead, I claim that the Court majority’s opinions, when viewed from an external perspective, display a particular vision of democracy that is fundamentally elitist in its outlook. This elitist vision of democracy stands in marked contrast to the egalitarian vision of democracy that is evident in the dissenting opinions of the four liberal justices. I suggest further that this elitist conception of democracy is a familiar one — it has certain continuities (and discontinuities) with theories of republicanism that existed at the time of the Founding. Given the echo of founding era themes, this Essay considers the role of originalism in current election law decisions. It concludes that neither the Court’s decisions, nor the emerging elitist conception of democracy, fall within originalism strictly understood. That being said, the Essay suggests that some of the Court majority’s arguments display an “originalist orientation” in which original meaning takes a preponderant weight in the analysis even if it does not compel the overall outcome. In practical terms, this originalist orientation has significant implications for future election law cases because it means that, at least for some issues, the founding era is serving as an implicit baseline for the conservative wing of the Court. The Essay identifies three ways in which the Court majority’s originalist orientation matters: first, non-originalist precedents would likely carry less precedential weight; second, election law federalism would likely be interpreted in a manner hostile to egalitarian ideals; and third, electoral reform efforts could be thwarted. In future cases, this originalist orientation will likely reinforce the elitist conception of democracy and further erode the egalitarian approach to democracy.

Quotas and ballots: The impact of positive action policies on women's representation in Indonesia

AbstractThis article examines the impact of the legal candidate quota for women in Indonesia following the 2019 general elections. It argues that the legal candidate quota is working to increase women's numerical representation, even if progress is gradual and hard won. Second, it has become clear that the position of candidates on party lists is critical for electoral success. Awareness of this issue empowers women candidates and activists to lobby political parties to improve women's positions on party lists as a demonstration of political parties' commitment to gender equality. A third observation is that the turnover of women parliamentarians remains high, which means women still struggle to build careers as legislators and to effect legislative change in the interests of women. The article also addresses the role of political parties in selecting and promoting a minimum of 30% women candidates and argues that party structures are an obstacle, especially party organisations that purport to promote women's issues. Findings from this study suggest that Indonesia does not need major electoral reform to strengthen women's numerical representation in parliament. However, women candidates will need more support from political parties if they are to win and retain more seats.

ELECTORAL SECURITY AND VOTER-TURNOUT IN THE 2019 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION IN ABIA STATE: INTERROGATING THE NARRATIVES

Electoral security has serious implications on the survival of democracies, because security is a significant part of an election management process as it influences the level of political participation among the electorates, either during campaign rallies, and coming out to vote on election days. Voter turnout is seen as an important indicator of the state of health of any democracy, old or new, consolidated or in transition. Apart from this, voting is the most important form of political participation especially on Election Day. In Nigeria, there have also been allegations of complicity by incumbents, politicians and security operatives in facilitating electoral fraud during elections as these have affected the level of political participation in terms of voter turnout. This paper examined the intertwining influence of electoral security and voters’ turnout in the 2019 gubernatorial election in Abia State of Nigeria. Anchoring our discourse on the theory of the postcolonial state which sees the Nigerian state as privatized and used only as an instrument for primitive accumulation, with data drawn from both primary and secondary sources, and a qualitative descriptive method of analysis, findings revealed that; voter were inaccurate as this was manipulated to favour the incumbent. Also, there was a low turnout of voters during the 2019 gubernatorial election in Abia state as a result of massive deployment of political thugs and coercive instrument of the state (security agents) with the clear intention of rigging the election. This move created fear among the voters who felt that the whole electoral process was flawed. The paper recommends amongst others that; there is need to carry out electoral reforms for effective guarantee of security of the electoral process as this will in turn encourage high voters’ turnout in subsequent elections in Abia State.

Electoral Reform or Not: Party Interests Defeated Principled Arguments in the Late Nineteenth Century and Have Characterised the UK’s Electoral System Since

Conti’s Parliament the Mirror of the Nation is an excellent, thorough exploration and explication of nineteenth-century debates over electoral reform as members of Britain’s intellectual elite wrestled with the issue of how to create a system that would ensure that all opinions were advanced in the country’s Parliament without an expansion of the franchise, meaning that the House of Commons was overwhelmed by the working class. A superb contribution to intellectual history, however, it makes little contact with the ‘real world’ of politics, where the short-term interests of the dominant political parties led to pragmatic rather than idealistic resolution to that issue. That resolution, negotiated by leading politicians from the two main parties, led to an electoral reform in 1885 based on single-member, territorially based constituencies that, with modifications only, remains in place today, generating general election results that are both disproportional and biased as a consequence of the system’s geographical construction

The transfers game: A comparative analysis of the mechanical effect of lower preference votes in STV systems

Debates about electoral reform revolve around giving voters more choice. Consequently, reformers often favor adopting the single transferable vote, a candidate-based system that allows voters to rank order candidates. Nonetheless, studies about whether lower preferences (transfers) influence STV election outcomes remain scant. To address this gap, our comparative multivariate approach tests transfers’ impact on election results in Ireland, Malta, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. We find that, on average, transfers are pivotal in the election of about one in 10 elected candidates. Hence, their impact is the exception rather than the norm. We show that when lower preferences are decisive at the candidate level, they benefit smaller and moderate parties and non-incumbents and, in Malta and Ireland, female candidates. Our results have implications for understanding the extent to which multiple preferences influence election outcomes and for debates on electoral reform.

The Impact of Electoral Rules and Reforms on Election Outcomes

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American elections underwent a series of reforms that weakened partisan control over elections. The variation in the electoral rules during this period offers scholars a unique opportunity to examine how electoral institutions and reforms structure election outcomes. In this article, I examine how electoral rules translated voter preferences into outcomes for the selection of two prominent positions, governors and U.S. senators. These two elected positions offer an interesting comparison because while they are chosen to represent the same geographic constituency, there is notable variation in the rules used to elect each office. Based on analysis of more than 350 senate-gubernatorial election pairs, I find that varying levels of partisan control over elections throughout time conditioned the likelihood that the partisan outcome of these elections mirrors one another.

Defection Politics in India :a Threat to the Stability of Democracy

Defection means the transfer of allegiance by a legislator from one political party to another. Traditionally, the idea of floor-crossing is synonymous to the term. The rapid rise in the effective number of parties, changes in the relative strength of the national and regional parties and the political equations between them, the inability of any one party to control the Parliament, and the presence of different parties and different patterns of party competition in states have impacted the course of India’s democratization and governance. The evil of political defections has been a matter of national concern. If it is not combated, it is likely to undermine the very foundations of our democracy and the principles which sustain it. It is imperative that political parties open their eyes to growing calls for electoral political reforms and take steps towards bringing in intra-party democracy which will reduce defection in candidates and in turn strengthens our national political system.

Youth Enfranchisement: A Case For A More Democratic Canada

Despite granting its citizens universal suffrage, Canada continues to experience declining numbers in voter turnout (Achen, 2019). As fewer Canadians choose to participate in the electoral process, the very foundations of liberal democracy come into question as the legitimacy of a government elected by a dwindling number of supporters becomes increasingly unclear. While the topic of electoral reform is dominated by the debate over proportional representation versus the first-past-the-post system, this paper instead focuses on the legal voting age. I contend that lowering the voting age from 18 to 16 in Canada will create a more equitable, fair, and inclusive electoral system, thus strengthening fundamental democratic values. In this essay, I will discuss how the current system is unfairly excluding youth from participating in decisions that affect their future, why the argument for maintaining the current age is flawed, and how a lower voting age would increase political interest and create a more engaged electorate.

Spiritual and Practical Factors of the Institution of Elections and Electoral Law Reforms in Uzbekistan

The article discusses the history of the development of the electoral process and the electoral legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The authors analyzed the ideas, teachings of thinkers and scientists about elections. Attention is also paid to foreign experience. It is emphasized that elections have a symbolic meaning, being the main means of legitimizing power in a democratic state. The purpose of the study is a socio-philosophical study of the essence of mass consciousness in a democratized modern society. New legislation on elections in the Republic of Uzbekistan is considered.