Eligible Voters Research Articles

Elections and Parliamentary Oversight in Botswana

Botswana's Legislature plays a significant role in overseeing the electoral system and ensuring that it adheres to the minimum basic tenets of democracy such as free and fair, competitive elections and that the vast majority of eligible voters participate in the whole electoral processes. The main piece of legislation the National Assembly has enacted is the Electoral Act, which provides for the general administration of elections and electoral processes, electoral institutions, requirements for voting, electoral offences and sanctions. The Electoral Act has been supplemented and augmented by constitutional amendments, notably the establishment of the Independent Electoral Commission and the promulgation of regulations. The former, in particular, has, by and large, addressed the issue of free and fair elections. The paper concludes that these legislative initiatives have contributed to the consolidation of liberal democracy in the country and that Parliament has a still greater role to play in ensuring a free and fair electoral system.

Status on Trial: Social Characteristics and Influence in the Jury Room

The American jury is heralded as an institution that is simultaneously representative and egalitarian. However, jury studies conducted 50 years ago found that white, upper-class men dominate jury deliberations, presumably due to their higher status outside of the jury room. Logistic regression analysis of dyadic infl uence inside the jury room updates this research. Results indicate that today upper-class jurors alone - not men, not whites - are regarded as most infl uential in deliberations. Upper-class jurors' infl uence is not simply a product of status deference. Rather, upper-class jurors seem to infl uence deliberations due to generalized expectations of their competence or their possession of skill sets that enhance jury room performance. We conclude that increased statistical representation in the jury pool does not guarantee that diverse views will affect verdicts. Fifty years ago, research from the Chicago Jury Project demonstrated that upper-class men do most of the talking in mock jury deliberations (James 1959; Strodtbeck, James and Hawkins 1957; Strodtbeck and Mann 1956). This research indicated that recognizable, external status characteristics, such as gender and social class, can restructure otherwise undifferentiated small groups. However, women and minorities were severely underrepresented in juries and mock jury studies of the 1950s, and times have changed. The Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 1 mandated that jury pools include all eligible voters, and subsequent jury selection reforms have increased jury diversity. Are the more diverse juries of today actually able to achieve an inclusive and egalitarian interaction, or do jurors from historically privileged status groups still dominate deliberations? From outside its doors, the jury room appears to be one of the most representative and egalitarian spaces in American society. The historical development of the jury was guided by the assumption that diverse groups could set aside external differences to arrive at a shared verdict. In fact, the earliest English mixed juries of the 12th through the 15th centuries decided disputes between persons from two communities by bringing together a mix of jurors, such as foreigners and citizens, Jews and Christians, and local and foreign merchants (Constable 1994). And, in the past several decades, many discriminated groups have argued for and won representation in the jury pool on the grounds that jury composition is integral to the achievement of justice. 2

The Uneven Growth of Democratic Legitimacy in East Asia

The consolidation of a democracy requires ‘broad and deep legitimation, such that all significant political actors, at both the elite and mass levels, believe that the democratic regime is the most right and appropriate for their society, better than any other realistic alternative they can imagine’ (Diamond, 1999, p. 65). An assessment of the extent of normative commitment to democracy among the public at large can tell us much about how far the political system has really traveled toward democratic consolidation (Chu, Diamond, & Shin, 2001). A robust popular base of legitimation entails both widespread and strongly felt attachment to a democratic regime and dwindling support for non-democratic alternatives. These two dimensions of popular commitment to democratic legitimacy are conceptually different and empirically distinguishable (Rose, Mishler, & Haerpfer, 1998; Shin & Wells, 2005). To this end, we seek to answer three empirical questions: To what extent do citizens in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia, the Philippines, Thailand and Hong Kong support democracy as a system of government as measured by overtly favorable orientations toward democracy? How many people in these countries still consider authoritarian arrangements as desirable alternatives? Do attachment to democracy and detachment from authoritarianism reinforce each other, yielding a coherent attitudinal foundation for sustainable democracy? To answer these questions, this paper uses the first-wave East Asia Barometer (EAB) survey data, which consist of responses collected through face-to-face interviews of randomly selected eligible voters in these countries and territories. Before presenting the empirical findings, a succinct overview of the regional political trends in the context of the ‘third wave’ of democratization is called for.

The influence of information technology on recent U.S. presidential elections

Elections are not only political processes but also computational endeavors. For eligible voters to exercise their right to vote and for their votes to count and be counted, accurate and reliable data processing capabilities must be in place. So it is not surprising that in the last two U.S. presidential elections, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have played a key role in determining and announcing the outcome. An analysis of ICT in the last two presidential elections and the years in between, offers an invaluable opportunity to assess how technology penetrates the fabric of society and how it transforms its processes.

Of Mobs and Machines: Remembering the 2000 Florida Recount in 2004

Of Mobs and Machines:Remembering the 2000 Florida Recount in 2004 Vanessa B. Beasley (bio) Political analysts like to speculate about what presidential elections mean. The 1992 election was famously about "the economy, stupid," for example, with some observers arguing that the 1996 election was, too. The 2000 election was likewise thought to be the result of "Clinton fatigue," with 2004 cast as a culture war between "red states and blue states." In these discussions commentators play games of amateur semiotics, linking sign, thought, and reference in ways that are supposed to capture nothing less than the national zeitgeist. Yet we are typically less likely to talk about how presidential elections are represented in another sense—that is, how they are represented as behavioral enactments of democracy in the United States. To be sure, U.S. journalists commonly report on how democracy is performed in other countries. During the historic Iraqi elections of 2005, there was no shortage of visual and verbal imagery of individuals eagerly waiting in line to cast votes, with the triumphant blue-inked index finger quickly becoming an iconic representation of this event. Within coverage of U.S. elections, for some reason it seems more important for armchair commentators to talk about the election as a referendum on ideas than it is to discuss the actual behaviors that constitute democracy, voting chief among them. For any behavioralists troubled by such tendencies, there was hope in 2000. The Florida recount made both the act of voting and the process of vote tabulation interesting indeed. Consider the many images reported in print [End Page 679] and broadcast journalism: the exasperated election officials, the rows of bleary-eyed state employees carefully scrutinizing hanging chads, the candidates themselves trying to look preternaturally relaxed at all times, and, of course, the protestors in the streets. Most memorable, perhaps, were the Jewish senior citizens of Palm Beach County as well as the African American residents throughout Florida who took to the streets to tell outraged stories of confusion, intimidation, and dilution at the polls. What became of such images and, perhaps even more importantly, such deeply held feelings in 2004? Put differently, how was the Florida recount remembered during the next presidential election? Such questions are important because, as Barbie Zelizer has noted, "[r]emembering becomes implicated in a range of other activities having as much to do with identity formation, power and authority, cultural norms and social interaction as with the simple art of recall."1 Viewed in terms of both its sociological and symbolic potential for identity formation, for example, the Florida recount might have been a powerful rallying cry for Jewish and African American citizens in 2004. Likewise, the recount could have been recalled by any manner of citizens' advocacy groups in 2004 as a painful but motivating reminder of just how nakedly elite political power operated in 2000, from Tallahassee all the way to the Supreme Court. Although the Florida recount may have been remembered in these ways within some venues in 2004, my analysis of specific references to the 2000 recount within mainstream media coverage suggests that something else may have also been going on. Within coverage of at least one influential source for political news in the United States, the Washington Post, the focus was not on the mobs and the attendant confusion surrounding Election 2000, but instead on the machines that would be used in 2004 to resolve such problems. Thus, instead of invoking the 2000 recount as a reminder of the importance of the full enfranchisement of all eligible voters in 2004, writers for the Post repeatedly recalled the 2000 recount as primarily the result of bad technology, a wake-up call for the update of an obsolete system. In what follows, I offer a few textual examples to illustrate this emphasis and then discuss why it matters. Technology-oriented recollections of the Florida recount appeared frequently in the Post before the 2004 election. "[F]or all the obvious comparisons to the days of recounts and dimpled chads," staff writers noted on November 1, 2004, "the Florida of 2004 is a very different place from the Florida of 2000, even as polls show the...

Democratic Action Research (DARE) and Large Scale Simulations: Teaching Political Literacy and Civic Engagement at Pace University's Presidential Convention 2004

The last vote was counted in the 2004 presidential election and old debates began anew about the causes of low turnout of those between the ages of 18 and 24. Despite an unprecedented amount of time and effort spent on turning out the youth vote, the data suggest that only about half of the eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 24 cast a vote for president. The good news is that, indeed, this year's figures reverse a downward trend in voter turnout amongst the youth; the bad news is that every age bracket increased in voting and youth voting still lagged behind other age groups by significant margins. Scholars have once again cited evidence of political apathy and alienation among young people; they have referred to studies that reveal widespread ignorance of American politics and history in our nation's high schools and colleges. Dire predictions will continue about the bleak future of American democracy due to the ostensible lack of knowledge and interest in the American political system among our newest voters. Despite studies showing increases in volunteerism, service, and civic engagement, the low voter turnout will dominate the debate about civic education. The authors would like to thank David A. Caputo, president of Pace University, for funding PC2004.

The rise and fall (and rise?) of non-citizen voting: Immigration and the shifting scales of citizenship and suffrage in the United States

Using non-citizen voting (or ‘alien suffrage’) as a case study, this article traces the long role which immigration has played in reshaping the boundaries around the citizenry and the population of eligible voters in the US. The paper discusses the gradual ‘territorialisation’ of citizenship and suffrage from the late 1700s to the mid 1960s and then addresses the current ‘deterritorialisation’ of these institutions vis-à-vis the growing population of non-citizens. It concludes with a discussion of contemporary attempts to reinstate non-citizen voting at the local scale, as a means of addressing the widening gap between popular and territorial sovereignty.

Adding consent to choice in the abortion debate

The abortion debates are characterized by confrontation sides polarized one against the other as James Taranto notes in his essay on "The Roe Effect." What is more most agree including Taranto that Roe is a "study in unanticipated consequences." In Tarantos case he defines that study as the "nexus between the practice of abortion and the politics of abortion." Specifically he analyzes the practical consequences of abortion as one that reduces the number of eligible liberal voters which then has the unanticipated political consequence of reducing the number of voters who are likely to support abortion rights. This linking of the practice of abortion with the politics of abortion has generated concern among a number of prominent national analysts. At the forefront of these thinkers are not only those who look at the demographic consequences of the framing of abortion rights in Roe on the Due Process Clause guaranteeing individual privacy in relation to the state but also journalist William Saleten. In his perceptive book Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War he buttresses the view of those such as Taranto who see the advantage in the abortion debates tipping inexorably toward the pro-life side. (excerpt)

Is there any substance to the “Roe effect”?

S ince abortion was legalized in the early 1970s, roughly I to 1.5 million abortions are performed each year. Recently, some have conjectured that the magnitude of these numbers may be altering political outcomes. If those pregnancies that were aborted were more likely to have been democratic voters, the reasoning goes, then there are far fewer democratic voters now than there would have been had the Supreme Court ruled differently in Roe v. Wade. This effect has been labeled the "Roe Effect." To date, the Roe Effect remains pure conjecture. Yet over the past decade or so, a considerable amount of academic research has been conducted, and continues to be conducted, on the impact of abortion policy on a range of social outcomes. The knowledge gained from this research can be brought to bear on the merits of the argument. What was the impact of abortion legalization on fertility? Did the reduction in fertility represent a permanent one, or just a shift in the timing of childbearing? Did abortion legalization alter the attributes of those children who were born? All of these issues speak directly to the feasibility of the Roe Effect. Although it is impossible to determine credibly the validity of the hypothesis without a counterfactual, it is possible to address whether the argument is at all consistent with what we know about the effect of abortion legalization. That is the goal of this essay. The first point that should be made is that the Roe Effect is based upon a faulty premise. James Taranto, who first proposed the Roe Effect, states "it is a statemerit of fact, not a moral judgment, to observe that every pregnancy aborted today results in one fewer eligible voter 18 years from now." He then points out that 40 million abortions have been performed since 1973, when the Roe decision was handed down. Larry Eastland similarly expresses that "there were 12,274,368 in the Voting Age Population of 205,815,000 missing from the 2000 Presidential election, because of abortions from 1973-1982." These statements are simply incorrect. They are based upon a common, but faulty, assumption that women have no control over their likelihood of becoming pregnant. If people engage in sexual activity (or not), or choose to use birth control (or not), independent of outside influences, then their statistical statements would be valid, In other words, if pregnancies were independent of outside influences, then every additional abortion would reflect an additional birth (well, almost we still would need to ignore the fact that some of the aborted pregnancies would have resulted in miscarriage, and women who abort can get pregnant again sooner). One could plausibly argue the contrary. Couples make decisions about their sexual activity and/or contraceptive use, taking into consideration relevant factors in their environment. This is the fundamental premise of an economic model of fertility. In such a model, women/ couples make decisions regarding pregnancy and childbirth by weighing the relevant benefits and costs, monetary or otherwise, The legal status of abortion is clearly an important component of the cost of a pregnancy. Even if childbirth is not the goal, women would be more reluctant to get pregnant if they knew that ending that pregnancy would be very expensive, as it would be if that resolution was an illegal abortion. Therefore, there is no obvious relationship between the number of abortions performed and the number of children who would have been born in the absence of those abortions, An additional abortion may represent a child who would have been born otherwise, or a pregnancy that would not have occurred otherwise. Yet the credibility of the Roe Effect has little to do with the rhetorical nature of the claimed magnitude of missing democratic voters, All that is required is that abortion [egatization needs to have reduced the number of children born. In fact, the impact on the number of children born does not have to be large at all for the effect to work. Although it sounds good to claim that 12 million additional voters could have swayed the 2000 election, it turns out that only a few hundred would have done ~he 'Lrick. This leads us to the first question thai can be addressed by academic research: By how much did abor-

Women's Quest For Political Authority In Nigeria: The Barriers

Women's quest for access to political authority is the focus of this paper. Demographic surveys put women as constituting 50 percent of the nation's population; 60-80 percent of its work force and 54 percent of eligible voters. Inspite of this numerical advantage and women's historical involvement in politics, they have been marginalized in political office holding. Yet the post Beijing clamour is not for representation but for active contribution in every sector of the economy. To achieve this, women have to be in positions of political influence and authority. It is in this light that this work examines women's quest for political power in Nigeria. It analyses factors inhibiting their inclusion in positions of authority. It posits that although, Nigeria signed the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1985; as well as some constitutional guarantee of political equality for the sexes, a wide gap exists between policy and implementation by governments as regards women political authority and influence. It identifies chauvinism, a modern variant of male practices in a patriarchal society as a major factor inhibiting women's realisation of political power. It also discusses methods women have adopted to surmount this barrier while suggesting ways which the aforementioned barrier and others could be addressed. KEY WORDS: Women, Marginalisation, Political Authority, Decision making, Barrier. Global Journal of Humanities Vol.3(1&2) 2004: 75-83

Grassroots Mobilization and Voter Turnout in 2004

Voter turnout increased sharply in 2004. At the same time, 2004 marked a change in campaign strategy, as both presidential campaigns and allied organizations placed unprecedented emphasis on voter mobilization. This article attempts to assess the degree to which grassroots mobilization efforts contributed to the surge in voter turnout. We conclude that although grassroots efforts generated millions of addi- tional votes, they probably account for less than one-third of the observed increase in turnout. Increased turnout in 2004 primarily reflects the importance that voters accorded the presidential contest. The 2004 presidential election witnessed a dramatic increase in voter turnout. Of 202.7 million eligible voters (excluding noncitizens and adults ineligible to vote due to felony convictions), 122.3 million (60.3 percent) cast ballots for president (McDonald 2005). The 2004 figure represents a dramatic increase over the numbers in the 2000 election, in which 105.4 million votes were cast for president (54.2 percent of the voting-eligible population), and the second highest voter turnout rate of any election since the 1960s. This surge is all the more remarkable in an era when declining turnout has become an expected feature of Western democracies (Dalton and Wattenberg 2002). Why did turnout increase in 2004? This essay focuses primarily on the role of voter-mobilization campaigns. A sharp change in campaign strategy occurred in 2004, with both parties placing unusual emphasis on voter mobilization. By this account, the increase in voter turnout reflects the sheer volume of mobilization activities such as door-to-door canvassing and calls from volunteer phone banks.

Elections in Iraq

In late November 2004, the Interim Iraqi Government, with the encouragement of US President George W. Bush, made a firm commitment that Iraq will hold a nationwide election on 30 January, 2005. The hope in Baghdad, but also in Washington and London, is that a large majority of Iraq’s estimated 13.9 million eligible voters will indeed participate, and so give the Iraqi government the democratic legitimacy it urgently requires. But there are serious doubts that the political zeal of those demanding a nationwide ballot can be matched by the administrative and security capacities needed to deliver it.

Poland Divided: Spatial Differences in the June 2003 EU Accession Referendum

Results of the June 2003 referendum on Poland's accession to the European Union are assessed by a noted American electoral geographer and a Polish historian, in terms of voter turnout, percentage "yes" vote, and percentage of eligible voters casting yes ballots. They then proceed to test the association between voting patterns and four basic variables that, according to pre-referendum surveys, would influence the patterns regionally: general east-west location within Poland (and proximity to the pre-existing EU border), rural-urban residence, occupation (in agriculture vs. industry/services), and unemployment/income levels. In concluding, the authors note possible implications for subsequent elections in Poland. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O18, R10. 2 figures, 5 tables, 35 references.

“Targeted” Advertising and Voter Turnout: An Experimental Study of the 2000 Presidential Election

Scholars disagree whether negative advertising demobilizes or stimulates the electorate. We use an experiment with over 10,200 eligible voters to evaluate the two leading hypotheses of negative political advertising. We extend the analysis to examine whether advertising differentially impacts the turnout of voter subpopulations depending on the advertisement's message. In the short term, we find no evidence that exposure to negative advertisements decreases turnout and little that suggests it increases turnout. Any effect appears to depend upon the message of the advertisement and the characteristics of the viewer. In the long term, we find little evidence that the information contained in the treatment groups' advertisements is sufficient to systematically alter turnout.

Improved Anonymous Secure e-Voting over a Network

In a democratic country voting is one of the most important activities. However, many eligible voters do not exercise their right simply because they do not want to visit a public booth where they can vote. In 1981, David Chaum first introduced the concept of electronic voting and attempted to overcome the prob- lems associated with the traditional voting environment. Hereafter, Mu and Varadharajan proposed in 1998 an anonymous secure e-voting scheme over a net- work. They claimed that the proposed scheme is not only capable of preventing double voting but it can also protect the privacy of voters. However, many re- searchers afterwards have discovered that Mu and Varadharajan's scheme is not se- cure. Attackers can easily forge a valid ballot and can vote more than once. In this paper, an e-voting scheme based on Mu and Varadharajan's scheme is proposed that meets the following e-voting requirements: democracy, accuracy, anonymity, mobility and efficiency.

The Moscow workers' movement in 1921 and the role of non-partyism

THE THEME OF THIS ARTICLE is the upsurge of the workers' movement in Russia in 1921 following the end of the civil war, with specific reference to Moscow. There were two main aspects to this movement: first, the wave of protests triggered in February 1921 by supply shortages, and second, the resurgence of working-class political activity in March-April 1921, during the Moscow soviet elections that immediately followed the tenth Communist Party congress and the adoption of measures that formed the basis of the new economic policy (NEP). The article will argue, first, that the protests over supply were less political, and less united against the Bolshevik government, than has been presumed, and that, in terms of the resurgence of working-class politics, the soviet election campaign was more significant. Second, it will argue that the principal form this political resurgence took was not support for the Mensheviks and SRs but the development of a non-partyist tendency among workers that has received less attention than it deserves. This non-partyist tendency included elements close to SR and Menshevik ideas, but also egalitarian and workerist strands that in October 1917 had sided with the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks' refusal to co-operate with this tendency was an important blow against post-civil war hopes of reviving participatory democracy and reversing progress towards a one-party state.

The geography of Irish voter turnout: A case study of the 2002 general election

Abstract ‘Turnout’ is a key measure of participation in the democratic process. Specifically, it measures the proportion of eligible voters that turns out to vote on election day. Low (or declining) turnout rates are a cause of concern and are often taken as a measure of disaffection with the political decision‐making process. In Ireland, turnout in the 2002 general election confirmed a downward trend in voter participation and represented the lowest turnout since the foundation of the State. However, turnout rates vary markedly across the State. Until recently, it was not possible to examine turnout at a sufficiently detailed geographical scale to allow systematic analysis of the potential causes of such variations. This paper reports on a joint project, involving the Geary Institute, UCD and the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA), NUI Maynooth, that is undertaking a comprehensive analysis of turnout in the 2002 general election at the lowest possible level of aggregation. Here, a cartographic description and introductory analysis is presented that includes the first ever electoral‐district‐level map of turnout. The resulting geographical patterns are generally coherent and explicable and provide important pointers for future research. In an unanticipated finding, this map shows that the phenomenon of low turnout in urban areas occurs beyond the main cities and their suburbanised hinterlands and shows up as a characteristic of most provincial towns.

Determinants of Electoral Non-Registration and Sensitive Neighbourhoods in France

The abstention rate in French elections has been rising steadily for the past twenty years. While many commentators have inveighed against this self-disenfranchisement and the crisis it is causing in representative democracy, another group that has shunned civic commitment in a much more fundamental way - the non-registered voters - has not elicited such criticisms. One singular feature of the French electoral system is that citizens who wish to vote must actively register their eligibility on an electoral register. There is no penalty for failure to do so as there is in Belgium or Greece (Boy and Mayer, 1997a). The voting qualifications are: being I 8 years of age, a French national - nationals of other European Union countries can register on supplementary lists for local elections and elections to the European Parliament-, not being under a legal disability, and proving a firm connection with the municipality of registration (i.e. either having one's legal address or at least six months' continuous and effective residence there, or having paid the land tax. community charge, or business use tax there for at least five years previously). Since 2001, however, town halls have had a duty to automatically register young people who will be aged 18 at the time of an election. Registration must be carried out before the year of the election, and is then permanent but subject to revision. Registers are. at least in theory, updated annually. Electors who change address, including within the same municipality, must be removed from the register if they fail to re-register at their new address. The non-registered population thus consists of eligible voters who have not registered, as well as voters removed from the register for reasons other than legal disability and who have not re-registered. In all. non-registration results from the following circumstances: accidental or intentional failure to register, and. congruently. accidental or intentional failure to re-register. Non-registrants can, therefore, be presumed to form a heterogeneous group.Non-registrants are often classed with abstentionists because of their common failure to participate in elections, but they differ in several respects. The first part of this study reviews the differences between nonregistration and abstention. It then goes on to consider the explanatory factors of non-registration using data from the 2001 Neighbourhood Life Survey (Enquete Vie de Quartier). With this survey, individual characteristics, not usually available simultaneously, can be compared in a single model that evaluates the specific ceteris paribus effects of each on nonregistration. This ad hoc survey, included as part of the continuous surveys on household living conditions (EPCV) established by INSEE, set out to study individual disparities in the various socio-economic categories of neighbourhood(1). To facilitate comparison at the extremes, the residents of high-income and low-income neighbourhoods were over-represented in the sample. Data collection took place between April and June 2001 on a sample of 11,919 people.Beyond the influence of individual characteristics, it is legitimate to wonder whether the concentration of disadvantaged groups in one place creates an specific to the neighbourhood which would increase non-registration. The premise here is that a sense of being second-class citizens makes residents of poor neighbourhoods indifferent to political discussions they see as irrelevant to their problems, and leads them to disengage from electoral life. The existence of a potential socially disadvantaged neighbourhood effect on electoral registration will be tested for in the third section, using individual-level data from the Neighbourhood Life Survey.I. Non-registration is different to abstentionBoth abstention and non-registration concern groups who are younger and lower-income than the voting-age population as a whole (see in particular, Gaxie, 1978; Morin, 1983; Percheron et al. …

A simulation of a proposed three-phase method for proportional representation in South Africa

In October 1922 the President's Council of the Republic of South Africa approved a report on a proportional polling system for the country in a new constitutional dispensation. A three-phase method is proposed to ensure that there is not only proportionality with respect to the electoral regions of the country, but also on a party basis with respect to the votes cast in the election. A lower house of parliament with 400 seats is proposed. In the first phase 300 of the seats are made available to the various regions in proportion to the number of eligible voters in the respective regions. In the election the various parties compete for these 300 seats in the different regions. The second phase consists of allocating the seats to the parties on the basis of the actual votes cast for them in the regions. Because of factors such as variable percentage polls and support for the parties in the separate regions, it could happen that a particular party's portion of the 300 seats is not in accordance with the votes that it receives nationally. In the third phase the remaining 100 seats are used to rectify such situations. On the basis of the votes cast, these 100 seats are used for compensatory purposes, so that the final allocation of the 400 seats to the parties should be proportional to the support for the parties in the election. Fixed regional party lists of candidates for the election and the Jefferson allocation method are used in the applicable phases. We translate the pose of the President's Council report into formal mathematical descriptions of the proposed methods. Several hypothetical examples are used to illustrate the methods and to point out possible problems. A computer program which implements the methods is described briefly and is used to simulate various elections. These simulations show that 100 compensatory seats should be sufficient for the purpose for which they were introduced. We hope that our descriptions and analyses will contribute to the debate on an acceptable and practical electoral system in a new South Africa.

Carlos Lacerda: The Rise and Fall of a Middle-Class Populist in 1950s Brazil

Carlos Lacerda: The Rise and Fall of a Middle-Class Populist in 1950s Brazil