Single Ballot Research Articles

Satisfying complex top- k fairness constraints by preference substitutions

Given m users (voters), where each user casts her preference for a single item (candidate) over n items (candidates) as a ballot, the preference aggregation problem returns k items (candidates) that have the k highest number of preferences (votes). Our work studies this problem considering complex fairness constraints that have to be satisfied via proportionate representations of different values of the group protected attribute(s) in the top- k results. Precisely, we study the margin finding problem under single ballot substitutions , where a single substitution amounts to removing a vote from candidate i and assigning it to candidate j and the goal is to minimize the number of single ballot substitutions needed to guarantee that the top-k results satisfy the fairness constraints. We study several variants of this problem considering how top- k fairness constraints are defined, (i) MFBinaryS and MFMultiS are defined when the fairness (proportionate representation) is defined over a single, binary or multivalued, protected attribute, respectively; (ii) MF-Multi2 is studied when top- k fairness is defined over two different protected attributes; (iii) MFMulti3+ investigates the margin finding problem, considering 3 or more protected attributes. We study these problems theoretically, and present a suite of algorithms with provable guarantees. We conduct rigorous large scale experiments involving multiple real world datasets by appropriately adapting multiple state-of-the-art solutions to demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of our proposed methods.

The Legality of Ranked-Choice Voting

With the rise of extreme polarization, intense political divisiveness, and gridlocked government, many Americans are turning to reforms of the democratic processes that create incentives for candidates and officeholders to appeal to broader coalitions. A centerpiece of these efforts is ranked-choice voting (RCV). RCV allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference: first, second, third, and so on. To determine the winner, the candidate with the fewest “first choices” is eliminated and those ballots are then counted for the voter’s second-choice candidate. This process continues until a candidate either has a majority of the votes or until only two candidates remain. Voters in Maine and Alaska have endorsed RCV for federal and state elections in recent years, and RCV continues to gain traction in a variety of large cities throughout the country, including New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Oakland. Some reformers have also proposed that states move to RCV in presidential elections, as Maine recently did. Yet RCV now faces an existential legal threat. In 2017, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, the State’s highest tribunal, advised that RCV violates the state constitution. Were that interpretation correct, it would imperil RCV nationwide. Nearly 40 state constitutions include provisions similar to that in Maine’s constitution. These provisions declare that candidates are to be elected to office if they receive “a plurality of the votes” or the “highest,” “largest,” or “greatest” number of votes. Maine’s highest court concluded that RCV’s multi-round tabulation process violates this type of provision. Even in states without such a constitutional provision, state statutes often include the same requirement. In short, if the Maine decision is correct and adopted more broadly, it could prevent state and local governments throughout the country from adopting RCV. This Article is the first to examine the history, context, and meaning of these widespread plurality-vote provisions. After doing so, this Article concludes that RCV does not violate these provisions. The history of these provisions reveals that many states initially required winning candidates to receive a “majority of the votes” and that plurality provisions eventually came to replace these majority thresholds. The purpose of these plurality-vote provisions was to ensure that a winner could be identified through a single popular election, rather than requiring multiple separate elections to determine a winner or leaving the choice to the legislature. RCV offers precisely that: voters cast a single ballot in a single election and the candidate with the most votes, once the counting is complete, wins the election. Instead of plurality-vote provisions, a “majority of votes” is required to win in two state constitutions, some state statutes, and certain proposed reforms to the voting rules for presidential elections. These provisions pose a different challenge for RCV: whether the winner in an RCV election has received a “majority” of the relevant votes. The winner in RCV receives a majority in the final round of tabulation, but that might not be a majority of all the ballots (some voters might not have ranked either of the two candidates left in the final round of tabulation). This Article concludes that RCV is also best interpreted as consistent with most of these “majority-vote” provisions. Thus, if Americans choose to adopt RCV for presidential, national, state, or local elections, these plurality- and majority-provisions in state constitutions and state law should pose no legal obstacle to properly drafted RCV legislation.

Voting on Behalf of a Future Generation: A Laboratory Experiment

This paper investigates a new voting rule wherein some people are given extra votes to serve as proxies for future generations. We predict that this voting scheme affects the voting behavior of those who do not receive an extra vote (i.e., single-ballot voters) because they are less likely to become a pivot, while proxy voters are expected to behave in support of the future generation. To test this prediction, we compare three scenarios wherein single-ballot voters would cast a vote: (a) one-voter-one-vote scenario wherein all voters cast only a single ballot; (b) a standard proxy-voting scenario wherein other voters cast two ballots, and the second vote is to cast for the benefit of a future generation; and (c) a non-proxy-voting scenario wherein other voters cast two ballots with no explanation for the second vote. The result shows that single-ballot voters are less inclined to vote for the future-oriented option in (c) than in (a). This indicates the potential drawback of the new voting scheme. However, there is no difference in the single-ballot voters’ decision between (a) and (b), indicating that the explanation of the second ballot as the proxy is important for reducing the intergenerational inequality through this voting reform.

Assessing the Electoral Impact of the 2010 Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review

The Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) distinguishes itself by linking a small deliberative body to the larger electoral process. Since 2010, CIR citizen panels have been a legislatively authorized part of Oregon general elections to promote a more informed electorate. The CIR gathers a representative cross-section of two dozen voters for 5 days of deliberation on a single ballot measure. The process culminates in the citizen panelists writing a Citizens’ Statement that the secretary of state inserts into the official Voters’ Pamphlet sent to each registered voter. This study analyzes the effect of one such Citizens’ Statement from the 2010 general election. In Study 1, an online survey experiment found that reading this Statement influenced Oregon voters’ values trade-offs, issue knowledge, and vote intentions. In Study 2, regression analysis of a cross-sectional phone survey found a parallel association between the Statement’s use and voting choices but yielded some mixed findings.

Closed primaries versus top-two primaries

The top-two primaries recently approved in several US states eliminate closed party primaries and create instead a single ballot in which the first and second place winners pass to the general election. We conduct a theoretical analysis to compare the electoral consequences of top-two primaries with those of closed primaries. Each primary procedure induces a sequential game with three stages: candidate-entry stage, primary elections, and general election. We analyze the equilibria of these games and show that top-two primaries contribute to political moderation. In particular, when the median voter is extreme, closed primaries always generate extreme winners and, yet, top-two primaries can generate moderate winners. Furthermore, when the median voter is moderate but the partisan median voter of her party is extreme (and some additional mild conditions hold), closed primaries always generate extreme winners while top-two primaries always generate moderate winners. We also show that top-two primaries increase the number of swing states since, in certain cases, the party affiliation of the winner under top-two primaries may not coincide with the party affiliation of the median voter.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive? Automated Text Mining of Michigan Capital Facility Finance Bond Election Proposals to Identify Which Topics Are Associated with Bond Passage and Voter Turnout.

The purpose of this study is to bring together recent innovations in the research literature around school district capital facility finance, municipal bond elections, statistical models of conditional time-varying outcomes, and data mining algorithms for automated text mining of election ballot proposals to examine the factors that influence the probability of school districts in the state of Michigan passing or failing capital facility finance bond elections from 1998– 2014. Automated text mining is a data mining technique that identifies latent topics from a corpus of documents. We used an unsupervised correlated topic model to analyze the full text wording of all 1,210 school district capital facility bond election ballot proposals in Michigan over 16 years. The model identified 9 different latent topics across the bonds, including requests to purchase new buildings, renovations, and athletic facilities. Interestingly, equipment purchases appear to be a distinct category of bond proposal topics. We then examined the independent effect of the bond topics on the probability of passing the bond and voter turnout using modeling techniques and control variables from the recent literature. Bonds that focused exclusively on athletic facilities were 4.35 times less likely to pass than bonds that request new construction or omnibus ballot proposals. This work extends previous research to show that capital facility bond proposals that pass the most often include all facility needs in a single ballot proposal, are the first attempt at the polls, are at the top of the ballot, and request lower amounts of spending.

Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout

The paper investigates the effect of electoral rules on voter turnout. It focuses on Italian municipalities, where voting schemes are differentiated by the size of the city: a single ballot system applies to municipalities with less than 15,000 inhabitants, while a dual ballot system is in place above that threshold. By exploiting this discontinuity, the paper finds that the dual ballot increases participation at the local polls, with an estimated effect of about 1 percentage point. The increase in voter turnout is associated with wider political representation, politicians of higher quality, greater fiscal discipline, and more robust local development. Finally, we document that the higher political participation triggered by local electoral rules extends to nationwide voting contexts.

Electoral rules and voter turnout

The paper investigates the effect of electoral rules on voter turnout. It focuses on Italian municipalities, where a single ballot system applies to municipalities with less than 15,000 inhabitants, while a dual ballot system applies above that threshold. By exploiting this discontinuity, the paper finds that the dual ballot increases participation at the local polls by about 1 percentage point. The increase in voter turnout is associated with broader political representation, higher quality politicians, and greater fiscal discipline. Finally, we document that the higher political participation triggered by local electoral rules extends to nationwide voting contexts.

Stimulus sets can induce shifts in descriptor meanings in product evaluation tasks

The meaning of adjectives is often ambiguous and may be susceptible to contextual changes. Nonetheless, response scales with adjectives are often employed in product evaluation research. Because context-dependent changes in descriptor meanings may threaten the validity of research outcomes, the present study tried to demonstrate empirically whether such shifts may occur. The variation between stimuli in two stimulus sets (either 10 cups or 10 drinks) created two experimental contexts that were expected to activate different descriptor meanings in a product evaluation task. A single ballot with 7 descriptors was used in both conditions. In a subsequent property verification task, participants were presented with adjective–noun word pairs exemplifying the different descriptor meanings. Responses for adjective–noun pairs whose meanings had been primed were faster and more accurate than for non-primed pairs. These findings suggest that between-participants comparisons over conditions with different stimulus sets may not be valid, due to differences in interpretations of descriptor meanings.

Ballot Formats, Touchscreens, and Undervotes: A Study of the 2006 Midterm Elections in Florida

ABSTRACT The 2006 midterm elections in Florida focused renewed attention on undervotes, instances where no candidate is selected in a given race. This interest was sparked by the high undervote count—more than 21,000 out of approximately 240,000 ballots cast—in the race for Florida's 13th Congressional seat. This race was decided by a margin of only 369 votes, and the numerous undervotes cast in it were highly concentrated in Sarasota County, one of five counties that contribute to the 13th Congressional District. Using ballot- and precinct-level voting data we show that the exceptionally high Sarasota undervote rate in the 13th Congressional District race was almost certainly caused by the way that Sarasota County's electronic voting machines displayed on a single ballot screen the Congressional contest and the Florida gubernatorial race. We buttress this claim by showing that extraordinarily high undervote rates were also observed in the Florida attorney general race in Charlotte and Lee Counties, place...

Two in one: Party competition in the Italian single ballot mixed system

This paper examines the incentives that the combination of proportional representation (PR) and first-past-the-post realized in single ballot mixed systems provides to voters and parties. In single ballot mixed systems, voters only cast one ballot by which they select (1) a candidate running in a single-member district (SMD) and (2) a party competing for the distribution of PR seats. Through the analysis of district level data of the Italian Senate elections (1994–2001), I investigate the impact of ballot structure and the mechanism by which the interaction of the PR and SMD components of the election affects strategic voting and strategic entry. I find single ballot mixed systems work quite differently from both the SMD and the PR elections held under dual-ballot mixed system, where voters and parties make distinct strategic decisions for each tier.

Overvoting and representation: an examination of overvoted presidential ballots in Broward and Miami-Dade counties

The closeness of the 2000 presidential election, especially in the state of Florida, has drawn attention to the importance of voting anomalies caused by ballot design, voting technology, and voter errors. In this paper we focus on a particular type of voter error: casting multiple votes for president on a single ballot. Ballots cast in this way are said to contain presidential overvotes, and we examine overvoting patterns in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties, two large and prominent counties in Florida. Using a dataset which contains electronic images of all ballots cast in these counties for the 2000 election, we identify several definitive patterns among overvoted ballots. First, we show that ballots with overvotes on non-presidential races were more likely to contain presidential overvotes compared to ballots with no overvotes elsewhere. Second, we show that ballots with presidential overvotes appear to have been cast by Democratically-inclined individuals and that Al Gore, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2000, appears on a disproportionate number of these ballots. Third and finally, we show that Broward and Miami-Dade precincts with large numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and registered Democrats tended to have high presidential overvoting rates. Overall, the evidence we present implies that a disproportionate fraction of the presidential overvotes cast in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties in the 2000 election were produced by Democrats and this diminished the vote total of Al Gore.

Whither Opposition in Zimbabwe?

On 8 and 9 April 1995, Zimbabweans turned out for an election that mostly was not. As many as 55 of the 120 parliamentary seats open for contestation had already been decided for the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front), because the six opposition parties of the moment did not put up candidates for them. ZANU PF could also count on another 30 parliamentarians: 12 non-constituency members, to be appointed by the President of Zimbabwe, as well as the eight provincial governors; and ten chiefs elected by local chiefs, all beholden to the ruling party for carrying forward traditional powers to the post- independence era. In other words, ZANU PF was sure of obtaining 85 of the 150 seats in the House of Assembly before a single ballot was cast in the 1995 elections.

Explaining near‐universal turnout: The case of Malta

Abstract. Even though voting is not compulsory, Malta has the highest turnout of all democratic nations. This study examines characteristics of the Maltese electorate, the country's governmental institutions and electoral system, and the nature of its politics to identify the most powerful factors (or combination of factors) responsible for the high voter turnout. Among these are: (1) intense and pervasive partisanship; (2) concentration of political power in a single elective institution; (3) highly competitive elections resulting in one‐party governments despite PR.; (4) maximization of the impact of a single ballot because the number of votes a candidate needs to be elected is very low and because the voter's lower‐order preferences count under STV, and (5) unusually intense campaigning by individual candidates because they compete against other candidates of the same party, and by parties because the electorate is polarized, which leaves few uncommitted voters while rendering voter conversion unlikely, thus making mobilization of all existing supporters vital to electoral success.

Optimal sophisticated voting strategies in single ballot elections involving three candidates

A model of a rational, sophisticated voter is developed based on the assumption that a voter in a three-candidate election acts to maximize the weighted value of the available voting strategies. The model is used to analyze strategic voting behavior in various traditional and more modern single-ballot systems that employ plurality as a decision rule. In each case, the analysis proceeds by first determining the subset of admissable strategies which are undominated by other valid strategies under the assumption that a voter is not risk-averse. The analysis next involves determining isopreference contours that describe the conditions under which a voter is indifferent between a pair of admissable strategies. These contours are interpreted as decision thresholds which mark the boundaries where a voter shifts from one strategy to another and, hence, govern voting behavior in a particular system. Based on these analyses, an insincerity index, which calibrates the extent to which sophistication produces voting that is inconsistent with actual preferences, is computed. In addition, it is determined for each system whether there are conditions where a group of like-minded, independent voters will vote as a block even though no explicit coalition is formed. Finally, assuming that voting is sophisticated and not risk-averse, we analyze the properties of formal equivalence and symmetry between pairs of systems and, in addition, determine whether a system is formally a mixture of other systems.

Ticket-Splitting: Aggregate Measures Vs. Actual Ballots

F OR SOME DECADES now, political scientists have investigated the influence of various motivational, behavioral, and institutional variables on voting behavior. More recently, the phenomenon of ticket-splitting has captured the attention not only of political scientists but of political practitioners and journalists as well. Ticket-splitting refers to the behavior of individual voters; it generally is taken to mean the act of casting votes for candidates representing more than one political party on a single ballot. The study of split-ticket voting, however, has been confined to the use of indirect measures, primarily survey and aggregate data, because of the unavailability of actual ballots. This study, however, utilizes actual ballots.

The Number of Political Parties: A Reexamination of Duverger's Law

The purpose of this essay is to investigate theory that explains variation in number of candidates for office in single-member constituencies with plurality voting. In other words, I shall reexamine and amplify Maurice Duverger's law-the statement that the simple majority, single ballot system favors two-party system.'1 Many scholars have found this law attractive because it explains structure of institutions as logically derived from rational choice by individuals.2 Macrostructure is thus made to depend on easily explainable and intuitively plausible microbehavior, a neatness of fit common enough in economic theory, but seldom arrived at in political theory. The argument is that supporters of a third party desert to one of two larger parties because they recognize that continued support of their favorite results in wasting their votes, and may even contribute to victory of their most despised. For example, suppose a plurality election in a single-member district at time t1 has produced result: 10,000 votes for A, 9,000 votes for B, and 2,000 votes for C; and suppose that typically supporters of C prefer C to B and B to A. For them to continue at timet to support C appears, ceteris paribus, to guarantee success of A and to be a waste of their second choice. There is considerable indirect empirical support for this theory. The tendency toward two parties is especially strong in United States, where President is elected by a plurality of sorts in what is almost a single-member district. In Great Britain, most elections are by plurality in single-member districts; and, despite persistence of third parties, most constituencies usually have serious candidates from only two parties. Strong third parties in England have typically been one of two major parties in some geographic area, such as Irish

An analysis of simple two-stage voting systems

This paper examines two-stage voting procedures [x,k,y] at the level either of a local governmental organization or of a national governmental system in which x is the number of candidates a voter is to vote for on the first ballot, k is the number of candidates to be placed on the second ballot according to the greatest vote totals from the first ballot, and y is the number of the k candidates on the second ballot that a voter is to vote for on the second ballot. The winner is the candidate with the most votes on the second ballot. These systems are practical in many situations and correspond to many two-stage voting systems in current use. The main purpose of the paper is to assess the propensities of alternative two-stage systems to elect the candidate which would be elected by a theoretically more sophisticated but less practical norm procedure such as simple majority of the Borda sum-of-ranks method. Extensive computer simulation, restricted to three to ten candidates but allowing a variety of methods by which voter preferences are randomly generated, reveals that the best propensity maximizing two-stage system has the form [x,2,1] in which exactly two candidates appear on the second ballot. Under the restriction that a voter is to vote for only one candidate on each ballot, the best system is common double plurality [1,2,1]. Without this restriction the best system usually has x = 2, with x approximately equal to the optimal number of candidates to vote for on the single ballot in a one-stage election in which the winner is determined by the greatest number of votes from the single ballot.

Aspects of One-Stage Voting Rules

Under the assumption that voters have linear preference orders, this study investigates the propensity of simple weighted scoring rules to yield a winning alternative which is the same as the alternative (if any) which would win using a norm rule such as the simple-majority rule or the Borda rule. The scoring rules examined are of the types implemented by ballot instructions such as “vote for two of the following seven alternatives” and “indicate your first (1), second (2), and third (3) choices from the following list of ten candidates.” The results, which apply only to situations where one of a number of alternatives is to be chosen on the basis of a single ballot, may be useful in designing balloting and scoring procedures for these types of situations.

Simple voting systems and majority rule

This paper investigates the degree to which single ballot weighted voting procedures for multiple alternative elections select the simple majority alternative when it exists. Emphasis is placed on procedures which are easiest for voters to respond to, namely those which ask the voter to indicate, with or without ranking, his most preferred alternatives. A simulation based on randomly generated preference orders is used to estimate agreement between the weighted rules and majority rule. The results obtained may provide useful input to the design of voting systems in situations where majority rule is felt to be a desirable ideal but where practical considerations weigh against a system which attempts to determine whether there is a simple majority alternative and, if so, which alternative it is.