Electoral Votes Research Articles

The Election of 1801 and James A. Bayard's Disinterested Constitutionalism

Abstract: Distinguishing, on the one hand, between the 1800 state-based presidential election contests between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams that resulted in Jefferson's victory and, on the other, the voting in the House of Representatives in early 1801 to resolve the electoral vote tie between Jefferson and his vice-presidential running mate Aaron Burr, this article focuses exclusively on the latter contest, whose result made Jefferson president of the United States. In doing so, it rejects historian's conventional approach to the congressional deadlock as a mere pendant to what is conventionally known as the "Election of 1800." Second, it brings forth the Election of 1801 as the first major constitutional crisis in American history and thus makes it a major constitutional as well as political event. Third, it focuses on Delaware congressman James A. Bayard, the pivotal figure in resolving the voting deadlock in the House, which threatened to lead to civil violence and the failure of the Constitution. Fourth, taking Bayard to be a serious constitutional thinker as well as a shrewd political character, it argues that his act to resolve the deadlock, coupled with his explanation for doing so, constituted the first of only occasional major instances of disinterested constitutionalism in American history. The article thus contributes to the revival of attention to American constitutionalism, to the role that constitutional principles have played in American political history, and to the interplay between politics and the rule of law in the earliest years of American constitutional government

How and why aversive personality is expressed in political preferences.

Political orientation reflects beliefs, opinions, and values that are, at least in part, rooted in stable interindividual differences. Whereas evidence has accumulated with regard to the relevance of basic personality dimensions, especially concerning the sociocultural dimension of political ideology, less attention has been paid to the more specific dispositional tendency to assign a higher weight to one's own utility above others' (i.e., socially aversive personality), which is likely to play a pivotal role concerning the economic dimension of political ideology in particular. In three studies with over 66,000 participants from 38 countries, we show that individuals with elevated levels in aversive personality tend to endorse more right-wing political orientations in terms of a single left-right dimension, hold relevant ideological beliefs tied to both sociocultural and economic conservatism, and report corresponding electoral voting behavior. We further provide support for the idea that this overlap between a dispositional tendency toward aversive behavior and a right-wing political orientation can be attributed to shared belief systems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Rhetoric of Repairs: Pathos Analysis of Joe Biden’s Victory Speech

This paper aims to explore pathos, the prominent emotional appeal, in Joe Biden’s presidential victory speech delivered on 7 November 2020 at Wilmington in the United States of America. The speech was delivered upon the conclusion of the presidential race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, wherein Biden led the election with 306 electoral votes against Trump’s 232. The paper is informed by three objectives: how Biden’s speech seeks to arouse certain emotions in the audience, what emotions in the audience are triggered, and how those emotions assist Biden in successfully delivering his intent of repair and reconciliation by persuading his audience, the American people. To fulfill these objectives, employing the method of a rhetorical analysis, the paper explicates the speech investigating how the lexical choices in the victory speech appeal to specific feelings and emotions of the audience. The analysis concludes that Biden, the orator, warrants reconstruction and reconciliation by appealing to seven dominant emotions: confidence, trust, optimism, (in)gratitude, empathy, camaraderie, and American pride. Hence, the paper demonstrates the fundamentals of doing a rhetorical analysis and further motivates some aspirants seeking a career in script writing and oratory.

Supporting and rejecting the populist radical right: Evidence from contemporary Chile

AbstractAlthough the populist radical right (PRR) has become a global phenomenon, most studies of it focus on Europe. Moreover, extant research has centred on analysing those who support rather than reject the PRR. To address this twofold research gap, we rely on novel public opinion data to examine those who both ‘love’ and ‘hate’ the PRR in contemporary Chile. We demonstrate not only that those in favour of the Chilean PRR are a homogeneous constituency with similar characteristics to their European brethren (e.g., xenophobic attitudes) but also that those at odds with the Chilean PRR make up a relatively large and heterogeneous constituency. In summary, this contribution seeks to broaden comparative studies on the PRR and to show the relevance of studying support as well as rejection of the PRR, particularly in countries with runoff elections; since then, large segments of the electorate vote for the lesser evil.

A Comparative Analysis of Advertising in the 2020 Presidential Elections & Phoenix Mayoral Elections using Natural Language Processing

This language model examines advertisements used for political campaigns, specifically the 2023 Phoenix mayoral election. Political microtargeting looks at the tone of content throughout Instagram and Facebook ads during the 8 months leading up to the election. Through various processing techniques, both written and spoken language within ads was collected and used Facebook ad API, associated with a target demographic or group within the platform. This allows campaigns to send targeted messages to voters based on factors like location, media preference, associated political beliefs, age, and other critical variables. This data was then compared to a peer-reviewed study by the University of Amsterdam, that studied Facebook and Instagram ads 8 months before the 2020 US Presidential election. Media companies often offer paid advertisements to a targeted audience, and during highly polarized world events such as an election, uncivil negative ads can be pushed to groups to which the shown ideology appeals. (Votta, F.) The question posed by Votta in the comparative study was: “TO WHAT EXTENT IS POLITICAL MICROTARGETING USED BY POLITICAL ADVERTISERS TO DELIVER TOXIC CAMPAIGN MESSAGES?” To study whether this optimization was occurring, the advertisements were run through a multilevel ordinal regression(Votta [https://www.aup-online.com/content/journals/10.5117/CCR2023.1.001.VOTT] et al., 2023). They took ads from official political campaigns and compared them to third-party groups. They then analyzed the size of the desired audience and compared the size of the audience to the verbal tone of the listed advertisement. Our results indicate that while traditional media remains an important part of electoral voting, show out, and postage signs and campaign events serve a purpose in reaching a wide, unrestricted audience, social media advertising presents a valuable resource in targeting specific groups of individuals who will be most susceptible to guided advertisement. Last, we analyze the implications of our findings in the 2020 Phoenix mayoral election, how city elections differ from a presidential election, and how micro-targeted advertisements might affect voter behavior.

Winners, Losers, and Voter Confidence in Response to Partisan Electoral Reform

Abstract In this article, we examine individual- and state-level voter confidence in Georgia from 2020 to 2022—an extremely contentious moment in Georgia politics. For the first time in 28 years, Georgia's electoral votes went to a Democrat, Joe Biden, in 2020. Then, in early January 2021, Democrats won both of Georgia's two U.S. Senate runoffs, giving their party majority control. In the wake of these surprising, historic, and consequential losses, Georgia Republicans’ voter confidence plummeted, and their party responded by passing comprehensive electoral reform in Senate Bill (SB) 202. Using survey data, we tracked voter confidence in Georgia before and after 2020, after passage of SB 202 in 2021, and after the 2022 midterm. Partisans’ voter confidence is greatly affected by the winner/loser effect in election outcomes. Also, SB 202 did boost Republicans’ confidence in Georgia's election system, which, in turn, increased their individual- and state-level voter confidence in the 2022 midterm. In contrast, Georgia Democrats overwhelmingly opposed SB 202; therefore, the bill did not have the same salutary effect on their voter confidence in the 2022 elections.

E-learning in Times of Radical Uncertainty

As teachers and teacher educators in the United States, we offer this editorial based on our lived experiences with the political, social, and environmental precarities where we live. Among these precarities are our looming U.S. presidential election after the last one included a plot by bad actors to abscond with our State’s electoral votes, our constant struggle for water in a desert state, and our weak overall internet connectivity. We call our wonderings about how we are living in and somehow surviving these times, <i>radical uncertainties</i>. In this editorial, we canvas radical uncertainties related to e-learning about digital literacies, generative text, datafication, and the camera gaze. Alongside these uncertainties, we offer alternative avenues for collective thinking based on Chicana Feminist epistemologies. We intend for readers to consider how local knowing can and should inform e-learning planning and practice.

Too Much Hegemony: A Novel Theory of the Unintended Consequences of Dominant Narratives

This article builds on Gramscian conceptualisations of power. It does so by introducing `Hegemonic Excess Theory’ as a tool for understanding political crises. For Antonio Gramsci and his adherents, the political and economic establishment fosters consent and allegiance amongst subordinate classes through the dissemination, inculcation and appropriation of seductive and pacifying ideologies. In this article, I argue that subordinate groups may adopt such ideals too well and to such an extent that it undermines key objectives of the establishment. As such, Hegemonic Excess Theory encapsulates the idea that the leading class’s very success in imparting certain ideals among the population can magnify, become unwieldly, backfire and cause crisis for the political elite. I illustrate this through the 2016 Brexit vote, with a particular focus on how xenophobia and anti-migrant narratives and policy, including from the Remain campaign, played a pivotal role in sections of the electorate voting against the interests of the domestic and transnational establishment’s commitment to the neoliberal enterprise of the EU. While not necessarily insurmountable, this has caused a significant crisis for the ruling class. In the conclusion, I contend that Hegemonic Excess Theory has considerable analytical value in understanding political crises far beyond Brexit. Un excès d’hégémonie : Vers une nouvelle conceptualisation des effets indésirables des discours dominants à travers l’étude de cas du Brexit

Reading against Reform: The Bristol Library Society and the Intellectual Culture of Bristol's Elections in 1812*

AbstractThis article pioneers a new methodological approach to the study of electoral politics by combining an analysis of the politics of reading, library association and the reading habits of electors in an English urban constituency in the early 19th century. By integrating an examination of reading practices and intellectual context into our analysis of electoral contests, political history scholars can go further in their examination of the unreformed electoral system and attempt to gauge the motivations behind voting habits and partisan identification in this period. Using electoral voting data and the records of an urban subscription library, this article explores the interrelation between the Bristol Library Society and Bristol's electoral politics, as well as conducting an analysis of which books were being borrowed and read by electors in a politically tumultuous year. Although few in number compared with the total size of Bristol's electorate, Bristol Library members were among some of the most politically and culturally influential individuals in Bristol society and were active participants in electoral contests in the city, either as candidates, campaigners, civic officials or voters. An analysis of their voting habits reveals that the library's membership reflected the Tory political hegemony that became pronounced in the city's civic politics. Moreover, an analysis of their reading habits in 1812 reveals an interest in political texts that were conservative and anti‐Gallic in tone, that were representative of the political climate in Bristol in 1812, and which contributed to the defeat of candidates for reform in its electoral contests.

Does the Reform of the Parliamentary and Presidential Threshold Strengthen the Presidential System in Indonesia?

The attempt to purify Indonesia's multiparty presidential system was only reflected after the Third Amendment to the 1945 Constitution. However, it took work to implement it. In practice. Various measures have been taken, including party alliances and introducing voting barriers in parliamentary elections. Therefore, analysing the relationship between electoral thresholds and their ideal proportions in the form of legal-political reforms to strengthen the Indonesian presidential system is interesting. This is in line with the purpose of this study, which is to uncover and analyse the legal politics of electoral thresholds in an attempt to strengthen the presidential system of government in Indonesia. The approach adopted in this study is a theoretical approach with legal, conceptual, comparative and historical approaches. This study concludes that the legitimate political renewal of the electoral vote threshold is not closely related to efforts to strengthen Indonesia's system of multiparty presidential government. The ideal way to reform the legal, political threshold for electoral votes would be to set the parliamentary threshold at 2.5%, but at the same time tighten controls over the parties participating in the election, and the 2.5% threshold serves as President to maintain a balance between the parliamentary and presidential thresholds. In addition, it is also important to strengthen consensus (consensus democracy) among coalition political parties. There is still a desire to abolish the presidential threshold through the People's Representative Council (DPR) instead of the Constitutional Court (MK).

Drawing the lines: Studying the Common Man caricatures by R.K. Laxman to understand dominant political discourse around legitimate political contestations in postcolonial India

ABSTRACT The paper studies the Common Man political caricatures by R.K. Laxman, a staff cartoonist at the Times of India, to understand dominant political discourses in postcolonial India. It argues that constructs like the ‘common man’ and ‘vote bank’ through popular cultural discourse like caricatures have a critical impact on the political landscape of the country. While the former is associated with an urban English-educated middle class, the latter is used to denote the socially marginalised sections of the electorate voting en masse as a form of political assertion. The latter is perceived as an aberration in the modern secular democracy and its political voice is often delegitimised. Further, the former is associated with economic liberalisation, development and anti-corruption. The paper demonstrates how Laxman’s Common Man is a proponent and mascot of these in the popular imagination. Thereby indicating that the popular cultural archive has indeed had a visible impact on the political, economic and sociological cartography of the nation.

How Do Electoral Votes, Presidential Approval, and Consumer Sentiment Respond to Economic Indicators?

How Do Electoral Votes, Presidential Approval, and Consumer Sentiment Respond to Economic Indicators?

Zur Messung der Schwierigkeiten bei der Regierungs- und Mehrheitsbildung in Parlamenten

Electoral thresholds in the context of parliamentary elections are an instrument to prevent a fragmentation of parliaments and facilitate the formation of a coalition government . However, the thresholds also introduce distortions and modify the equality of electoral votes in an election . In order to decide to what extent these negative effects can be accept- ed, it is necessary to measure the difficulties in forming a coalition government and to quantify the effect of electoral thresholds on these difficulties . For this issue, the author introduces a concept based on cooperative game theory that he developed in 2023 . This article applies this concept to German federal elections between 1994 and 2021 . It is shown that plausible results are obtained, suggesting further application .

Сравнительные итоги предварительного голосования по кандидатурам для последующего выдвижения от партии «Единая Россия» кандидатами в народные депутаты Государственного Собрания (Ил Тумэн) Республики Саха (Якутия) седьмого созыва и выборов в народные депутаты Государственного Собрания (Ил Тумэн) Республики Саха (Якутия) 10 сентября 2023 года

In the struggle for electoral votes, political technologies are coming to the forefront. Thus, the All-Russian party “United Russia” at the beginning of the XXI century began to use preliminary voting for the subsequent nomina-tion of candidates for elections. And if the use of this political technology for the party is justified, then its ulti-mate goals are not quite clear to the ordinary man in the street. The relevance of the topic of the article boils down to the fact that the political technology – the preliminary vote used by the Yakut regional branch of the United Russia Party – took place in May 2023, and the elections for which the preliminary vote was held took place in September of the same year. In this regard, there is a large amount of materials, analyzing which, it is possible to assess the effectiveness of the applied political technology, to determine its weaknesses and strengths. The article considers a comparative analysis of the results of the preliminary voting on candidates for subsequent nomination from the United Russia party as candidates for People’s Deputies of the State Assem-bly (Il Tumen) The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) of the seventh convocation and elections to the People’s Depu-ties of the State Assembly (Il Tumen) The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

Volební reforma 2021 v ČR: Větší šance na úspěch pro menší strany?

The last electoral reform in the Czech Republic opened up space for new quantitative and qualitative analysis. The main objective of this case study is to determine whether the constitutional reform of the mechanism for converting electoral votes into parliamentary seats, which came into effect on 1 June 2021, met the requirements of the ruling of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic which requires, among other things, the provision of more proportional allocation of parliamentary seats among political entities. For this purpose were quantified and compared the effects of the old (original) and new (current) electoral systems in the two parliamentary elections held in 2017 and 2021. The core quantifier is a group of standardized indices to determine the degree of disproportionality of the election results. Results of the research suggested ambivalent behavior of the new voting mechanism. On the one hand, it strengthens the proportionality of the allocation of redistributed seats in the Chamber of Deputies and tends to increase mandate gains in favor of small parties. On the other hand, this phenomenon occurs only when a number of conditions, universality of which cannot be guaranteed in advance, is met. These conditions are then highly volatile, so in comparison to the older electoral mechanism, the new electoral system lacks the ability to generate lower values of disproportionality. This finding reinforces the controversy about the appropriateness of the configuration of the new electoral system and opens a discussion about the motives of the various actors involved in the process of electoral reform. The limits of the study can be seen primarily in the low number of analyzed parliamentary elections, but this fact does not reduce the relevance of the research conclusions.

National identities, European identity and cosmopolitanism: The case of female golf fans at the 2019 Solheim Cup

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to consider the relationship between sport and identity formation by examining testimonies of 24 British women who attended the Solheim Cup golf tournament in 2019 to support a transnational team made up of professional European women players. Relatively little is known about the effects of transnational sports teams on identity formation, not least because such teams are themselves rare. The Solheim Cup, contested by teams of female professional golfers representing the United States and Europe, is one such example. The data set consists of interviews with women who attended the competition that took place in a period of political uncertainty between the UK electorate voting to leave the European Union and Brexit actually taking place. The paper analyses the women's views in relation to national identity, European identity and cosmopolitanism. Although it emerges that most of the women felt more European in the context of a competition involving a team representing Europe and were opposed to the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, they could also be described as cosmopolitan as a result of their educational level, social class and experience of living in or regularly visiting foreign countries.

Performance Evaluation Of Cloud Based Elliptic Curve Cryptographic Digital Signature E-Voting System For The Conduct Of Election In Nigeria

ABSTRACT Elections in Nigeria are characterized with poor voters’ turnout. One of the reasons attributed to this is the insecurity of the votes of the electorates. To resolve this, scholars have adopted various mechanisms and technologies, for example, the use of Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA), Advanced Encryption StandardAES) and Elliptic Curves Cryptography (ECC). While these have added value to the body of knowledge in the conduct of elections in Nigeria, However, literature reveals that issue of insecurity of votes of electorate is still a current debate. The reason attributed to this, is due to the poor performance in terms of their key size, key strength and encryption time. This is addressed by using a Cloud based Elliptic Curve Cryptographic Digital signature (ECCDS) E-Voting system. The concept of the proposed system is to automatically encrypts, signs, decrypts votes and verifies the signed votes. The system is built on a hybridized security algorithms, these are; The ECC and Digital Signature Algorithm. This has a smart contractor that protect electorate votes against integrity modification in the cloud environment. The prototype demonstration is conducted during the students’ union election in Adekunle Ajasin University where the University ICT department is used as the cloud based network Infrastructure center. Three evaluation metrics are used. These are the key size, key strength and encryption time. The evaluation metrics shows a better performance of RSA, AES and ECC systems over the ECCD when considering the encryption time. The ECC and AES also perform better using the key size. For example, we recorded 167 bits for ECCDS, while RSA, AES and ECC algorithms recorded 163, 1024 and 64 bits respectively from one of the experiments under the key size. However, the beauty and the strength of good security system is the decryption time which is the key strength. From the experiment conducted using Key strength as the metric, we observed that ECCDS key strength is higher than that of AES, ECC and RSA. It means that it will take longer time for any intruder to decrypt the system when using the ECCDS model. This satisfy both the electorates and Electoral commission request and is very reliable and produces effective results. Keywords: E-voting, Integrity, Elliptic Curve, Cryptography, Digital Signature. CISDI Journal Reference Format Akingbesote. A.O., Babatobi, F.J. & Akinwumi, D. A. (2023): Performance Evaluation Of Cloud Based Elliptic Curve Cryptographic Digital Signature E-Voting System For The Conduct Of Election In Nigeria. Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics &Allied Research Journal. Vol 13No 2, Pp 1-.14. Availableonlineathttps://www.isteams.net/cisdijournal. dx.doi.org/10.22624/AIMS/CISDI/V14N3P1

Does Money Triumph over Identity? a Survey Findings from the Local Levels

In this article, we try to analyze which factors emerged as the strongest determinants of voters’ behavior in a new democratic country dominated by the web of patronage and clientelistic exchanges. We examine two main variables in this study, vote buying and identity politics. Previous studies on electoral clientelism in Indonesia are mostly centered on its causes and mechanisms as an electoral strategy to garner electoral votes during an election. The socio-political contexts that follow the electoral dynamics are less explained. Initially, we assume that the intensive mobilization of identity politics that made the 2019 Indonesia election more explosive would decrease since voters would also solidify their voting preference into identity lines. However, through a post-election survey at the local level by selecting four districts (N=503), we find that vote buying emerges as a more robust variable in driving voters’ behavior rather than identity politics. Moreover, regional differentiation – land and coastal areas – also matter in this study where voters in the coastal regions are more likely to accept material inducements from candidates. Finally, our findings add many tasks for Indonesian democracy since clientelistic exchanges work as a more effective instrument for affecting voters' decision-making in elections rather than programmatic politics.

House Republicans were rewarded for supporting Donald Trump’s ‘stop the steal’ efforts

In early 2021, members of Congress cast a series of high-profile roll call votes forcing them to choose between condoning or opposing Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Substantial majorities of House Republicans supported Trump, first by opposing the certification of electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania on January 6th, then by opposing the president's impeachment for inciting the attack on the US Capitol, and then by opposing a bill that would have created a national commission to investigate the events of January 6th. We examine whether the House Republicans who voted to support Trump in 2021 were rewarded or punished in the 2022 congressional midterm elections. We find no evidence that members who supported Trump did better or worse in contested general election races. However, Trump supporters were less likely to lose primary elections, more likely to run unopposed in the general election, more likely to run for higher office, and less likely to retire from politics. Overall, there seem to have been no significant political costs and some significant rewards in 2022 for House Republicans who supported Trump's undemocratic behavior.

SYSTEMIC-CYBERNETIC AND SYNERGISTIC APPROACHES IN THE STUDY OF MODERN ELECTORAL ENGINEERING

This paper considers the electoral engineering within the framework of systemic-cybernetic and synergetic scientific approaches. As a result of the study, it is concluded that the basis for consideration of the electoral engineering is the systemic-cybernetic approach, since the electoral sphere in its essence is a computational mechanism that, according to certain mathematical algorithms (electoral formula), translates the votes of electors (input data) into representative mandates (output data). Main components of the electoral engineering (the subject, the object and the process of the electoral engineering) can be fully considered within the framework of the systemic-cybernetic approach as a cybernetic system with the controlling and controlled components, where the management and feedback processes are running. The controlling component here is the subject of the electoral engineering (planning and carrying out of the electoral engineering activities), whereas the controlled component is the object of the electoral engineering (parameters of the electoral system and organization of the electoral process); management is the process of the electoral engineering itself. However, the electoral sphere is a constituent part of the political system, and it is possible to apply both the systemic-cybernetic approach and synergetic approach to its study. Therefore, application of the synergetic approach to the electoral engineering is possible only in an indirect way, i.e. through consideration of the political system in the context of synergetics (the electoral engineering in this case is considered as an activity within the political system). The bases for applying the synergetic approach to the electoral engineering carried out in practice are the following: 1) objectivist basis – the electoral engineering is carried out within the framework of a political system being a part of the social reality, and therefore cannot be fully modeled and predicted with the use of the systemic-cybernetic approach; 2) subjectivist basis – subjects engaged in the electoral engineering activities are political actors pursuing their own subjective goals and interests.