Invalid Votes Research Articles

Compulsory voting, party stability and electoral advantage in Australia

Australia has the oldest and probably the most efficient system of compulsory voting among the established democracies. The main reason for its introduction in the 1920s was to increase turnout, a goal it has achieved without difficulty. Compulsory voting has also made a major contribution to the long-term stability of the party system. However, the compulsory voting system has had two disadvantages. As in other countries which have introduced compulsory voting, historically there has been a very high level of invalid votes, although the levels are now less than they were prior to 1984, as a result of various electoral reforms. Second, the system disadvantages rightwing parties and advantages leftwing and minor parties. Survey evidence from the 1996 federal election suggests compulsory voting reduced the Liberal–National coalition's first preference vote by some 5 per cent, compared to the coalition's expected vote under a voluntary system. If the system is ever removed, it is likely to be for this reason, rather than because of any difficulties in administering it, or because of any philosophical objection to compulsion among voters or politicians.

ビンピッキングのための環境情報を用いた物体検出と動作計画との連携

This proposed bin-picking method removes the inconsistency in the information transferred from object detection to path planning of manipulator by using environmental information. The inconsistency is that the object detection only provides the position and orientation of a few detected objects while the path planning needs the environmental information including all objects in the work field. To solve this problem, we propose to include possible objects representing undetected objects in the environmental information. A Hough transform, which records the model-to-image matches in a parameter space, is used to estimate the pose. Both detected and possible objects are extracted from the parameter space. To reduce the number of detection errors and the object-detection time, a pair of object features that reduces the number of invalid votes in the parameter space is used for the Hough transform. Simulated path planning and an experiment on casting objects using a range finder and a manipulator showed that the environmental information including the possible objects improves the ability to plan a safe path for the manipulator. Simulated object detection and an experiment showed that using a pair of features makes the process faster and reduces the number of invalid votes.

The new information infrastructure: Strategies for U.S. policies

Australia has one of the highest levels of invalid votes among the established liberal democracies. Three hypotheses have been put forward to account for variations in turnout—that it results from institutional factors, differing patterns of social structure, or reflects political protest by voters. These hypotheses are used to explain informal voting in Australia's compulsory voting system. The data are national polling booth results for the 1987 and 1990 federal elections, and polling booth results from New South Wales matched to the 1986 census. The results reject the institutional and protest hypotheses, but support the social structural hypothesis. In particular, immigrants who are recently arrived and have poor English skills are significantly more likely to spoil their votes. Australia's high level of invalid votes is therefore explained by the interaction between compulsory voting, the complexity of the electoral system, and by the presence of large numbers of immigrants within the electorate. The results have significant implications for the design of electoral systems in the newly-emerging democracies of Eastern Europe.

De gemeenteraadsverkiezingen van 9 oktober 1994 : Analyse van de resultaten

The institutional setting of the 1994 local elections was characterized by a by law introduced limitation of campaign expenditures and the increased share (at least 25%) of female candidates. In spite of compulsory voting rules, the turnout decreased with 1,2%. The proportion of blanc or invalid votes increased slightly with 0,3%. The results of the local elections followed the trends drawn by the 1991 general election. This means general losses for the traditional parties and large progress for the extreme right-wing parties. In the Flemish region, the winners were the extreme right-wing Vlaams Blok, the ecologist AGALEV and the VLD liberals. The others parties lost votes. This was particularly the case for the Flemish-nationalist VU, followed by the socialists (SP) and the christian-democrats (CVP).In the Walloons region, all the traditional parties were set back or stagnated. The socialists (PS) suffered the largest decline, but the liberals (PRL) and christian-democrats (PSC) lost voters too. The ecologist ECOLO only kept a modest status quo position. On the other hand, the extreme right-wing parties Front National and Agir realised a breakthrough. In Brussels, we notice the same tendencies, set-backs for the traditional parties and progress for the extreme rightwing parties (of both languages). The ecologists belonged there also to the winning side. Nevertheless, the fragmentation of the local political system should not be dramatized.In general terms, parties supporting the leaving political majorities in the municipalities were no langer electorally favoured. On the contrary, the liberals realized better results in these municipalities where they belonged to the opposition.

Compulsory Voting, Invalid Ballots, and Abstention in Brazil

This paper explores the determinants of invalid ballots and abstention in the world's largest electorate subject to compulsory voting. Previous analysts have seen blank and spoiled ballots either as an expression of po litical protest or as a product of the social structure. To these interpreta tions we add the hypothesis that invalid voting can be caused by institutional factors. In studying twelve legislative elections in Brazil be tween 1945 and 1990, we find that for each of three dependent variables considered (invalid votes for both houses of Congress, and noncompliant abstention), a model incorporating political, socioeconomic, and institu tional factors is more powerful than a model relying on any one of these alone. We also provide evidence that Brazil's unusual system of open-list proportional representation generates institutional features which serve as barriers impeding the effective incorporation of newly enfranchised voters. The extraordinarily high rates of invalid balloting in recent Brazilian elec tions point to the necessity of institutional reform in order to achieve democratic consolidation, with important implications for other new democracies.

De sociale verkiezingen : betekenis en knelpunten van een inspraakmechanisme

In this contribution, different elements which clarify the influence of the four yearly social elections on workers'participation are brought together. The author explains that representatives of only two advisory bodies on company level are elected. Nevertheless the social elections have an effect on a broader scale. The elections play a part in the protection of representatives in the trade union delegation, a third representative body on company level. Furthermore the elections can affect the relations which are situated above the company level (relations inside a trade union, between different trade unions and possibly hetween trade unions and the world of politics). Moreover a growing package of powers is granted to the workers' representatives. There is however an important difference between the social and the political elections. Political elections can cause a genuine change of power, social elections on the other hand can never change the postwar basic compromise: the employer preserves most of the decision power.The author outlines furthermore the battle necks of this participation mechanism. The most important bottleneck certainly is the low turn out of candidates for the social elections. For the first time this problem is analysed sectoraly over a longer period of time. It is concluded that there are great differences not only between the economic sectors and the non-economic sectors, but also between the economic sectors themselves. The author also indicates that the decline of active participation in the economic sector since 1975 is mainly situated in seven sectors, which deliver altogether 60% of the mandates in the profit sector. Finally the author touches upon two more bottlenecks, which are already discussed before but which remain nevertheless very important: the low presence of women as candidates and likewise in the distribution of seats, furthermore the relatively great amount of invalid votes in the electoral colleges of workers and young people.

Institutions, society or protest? Explaining invalid votes in Australian elections

Australia has one of the highest levels of invalid votes among the established liberal democracies. Three hypotheses have been put forward to account for variations in turnout—that it results from institutional factors, differing patterns of social structure, or reflects political protest by voters. These hypotheses are used to explain informal voting in Australia's compulsory voting system. The data are national polling booth results for the 1987 and 1990 federal elections, and polling booth results from New South Wales matched to the 1986 census. The results reject the institutional and protest hypotheses, but support the social structural hypothesis. In particular, immigrants who are recently arrived and have poor English skills are significantly more likely to spoil their votes. Australia's high level of invalid votes is therefore explained by the interaction between compulsory voting, the complexity of the electoral system, and by the presence of large numbers of immigrants within the electorate. The results have significant implications for the design of electoral systems in the newly-emerging democracies of Eastern Europe.

The Probability of Election Reversal

In a recent two-candidate Town Council election in Brunswick, Maine, the winner received 2,390 votes and the loser 2,383. After the vote had been announced, it was discovered that 16 voters had been allowed to vote at polling places where they were not officially registered, and those votes were declared invalid on the grounds that the voters had not been appropriately certified as being qualified to vote as required by state law. There was no evidence of fraud and no indication of how the invalid ballots were cast. The loser asked for a new election on the grounds that 12 or more of the 16 invalid votes could have been cast for the winner, enough to reverse the election results. In this situation, the ballot box can be viewed as an urn in which there are a few more white balls (votes cast for the winner) than black balls (votes cast for the loser). A certain number of balls (the invalid votes) are withdrawn at random from the urn. What is the probability of a reversal, i.e., that, after the withdrawal, the number of black balls in the urn will exceed the number of white balls? Of course the assumption that the balls are withdrawn at random is critical. The assumption that each ball has the same probability of being withdrawn is the assumption that each voter in the election has the same probability of casting an invalid ballot. If there is evidence of election irregularities or fraud, or if there is reason to assume that other factors, such as the time of day the invalid votes were cast or the location of the polling place, made it more likely that the invalid ballots were cast for one of the candidates, this assumption may not be tenable. The probability of reversal is simply the number of withdrawal combinations which cause a reversal divided by the total number of possible withdrawal combinations. In most close elections, there will be too many of these combinations to be readily countable, so it is desirable to be able to approximate the probability of reversal. Because the arguments about election results occur in public and legal arenas, not in mathematical journals, a simple approximation is preferable. An approximation due to Finkelstein and Robbins [2] is made as follows: suppose the urn contains w white balls and b black balls with w > b. Of the total t = w + b balls, m are withdrawn at random. Let x denote the number of these m balls which are white. There will be a reversal if, after the withdrawal, there are at least as many black balls as white balls remaining in the urn; i.e., if w-xsb-(m-x), or