Vote-by-mail Ballot Rejection and Experience with Mail-in Voting

Although most ballots in the United States have historically been cast in-person, Americans are increasingly voting by mail, a trend that accelerated in the 2020 General Election. Mail ballots can be rejected after being cast, and our analysis of the Florida general elections of 2016, 2018, and 2020 shows that voters inexperienced with mail voting disproportionately submit ballots that end up rejected due to (1) late arrival at elections offices or (2) signature defects on return envelopes. Inexperienced mail voters are up to three times more likely to have their ballots rejected compared to experienced mail voters, and this inexperience penalty varies by a voter’s party registration, race/ethnicity, and age. Our findings hold when controlling for additional voter characteristics and geographical fixed effects. The effect of inexperience on the likelihood of vote-by-mail ballot rejection risks exacerbating existing inequities in political representation already faced by younger and racial/ethnic minority voters.

The party system

It is contended in this chapter that Russia’s post-Soviet party system has gone through three phases – fragmentation (1993–c.2002), consolidation (2002–2009) and cartelisation (c.2009 onwards). The Yeltsin era witnessed the prevalence of many independent candidates and the proliferation of minor parties without any societal or institutional roots. One of Putin’s key aims on coming to power was to change that. Since the mid-2000s, the political system has been dominated by United Russia, the ‘party of power’ set up with Putin’s sponsorship. It has served as a partisan front for the executive, at the same time as acting as a ‘clearing house’ for the resolution of intra-elite conflict and resource distribution. Alongside it, three other parliamentary parties survived by acting alongside UR in a cartel-like arrangement. These four parties have continued to dominate the party system even after recent liberalisation of the rules on party registration. Many of the numerous new parties established before the 2016 election fizzled out and proved largely insignificant.

DEVELOPMENT OF LEGISLATION ON THE REGISTRATION OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN AUSTRALIA

Nowadays it is difficult to imagine a stable political environment without the functioning of political parties in modern democracies. In order to cover new or existing political views and stimulate the formation of new parties, the legislation regulating the activities of political parties is dynamically developing. The state also creates various restrictions on the way to continue the activities of existing parties or the formation of new ones, especially in multi-party democracies, where a multiplicity of parties creates confusion for voters, and can lead to instability in the activities of the government or parliament. For the stable functioning of a political party, there is a need for clearly defined legal requirements that it must follow, and for its registration it must comply with all formalities prescribed by law, including those related to the preparation of a set of documents. These reasons determine the relevance of the problems of legal regulation of registration of political parties. All these processes are observed in Australia, where over the past 30 years have been significant reforms that entailed the legal consolidation of political parties in the electoral process. The requirement for a relatively low membership for the party registration in Australia facilitates the formation of parties that seek to solve local or regional problems, and the possibility of creating representative offices and regional affiliates of political parties contributes to defending regional and local interests without violating the state’s national integrity and unity of the system of state power, as the basis of a federal system. To register the party at the federal level and the level of a number of states, it is also possible to use the rule of “parliamentary representation”. Achieving a balance between different regimes of party registration facilitates the organization of candidates in clearly structured groups, ensuring equal conditions for political competition.

Personal vote, spatial registration rules, and party system nationalization in Latin America

While many studies of party system nationalization examine the effects of various institutional factors, few take into account the impact of party formation cost. This paper aims to fill the empirical gap by focusing on the interactive effect of electoral systems and party registration rules. I argue that the effect of electoral systems on party system nationalization is conditional on spatial registration rules, a requirement that requires a party to collect signatures or organize local branches in a specified geographical manner to maintain the party’s legal status. Based on data for 97 legislative elections in 18 Latin American countries from 1978 to 2011, the empirical analysis demonstrates that a country with an electoral system that encourages a personal vote tends to have a much lower level of party system nationalization when that country does not have spatial registration requirements. The result is robust across different model specifications and estimation techniques.

The Accuracy of Microtargeted Policy Positions

ABSTRACTIdentifying voters who share policy positions with the candidates has become an important component of modern political campaigns as they rely on microtargeted estimates to guide targeting decisions. Using survey data and microtargeted estimates from the 2012 election, I conduct one of the first independent examinations of the accuracy of microtargeting. The estimates are the most accurate in Florida, a state that requests information on the race of voters when they register and has party registration. The estimates are less accurate in the other battleground states that do not collect as much information. The accuracy rates range from 36% to 82% depending on the issue and state.

After the Referendum

During the years 2011–2014, Latvia experienced a significant increase in the adoption and use of militant democracy measures—constitutional amendments, refusals of party registration, restrictions on referendums and popular initiatives. These events, triggered by a widely attended referendum on the introduction of Russian as the second state language, highlighted the problematic relations between democracy and nation-building in Latvia. Despite earlier expectations that the original militancy of Latvian democracy would decrease with the gradual integration of the Russophone minority, recent developments show that the defence of a particular type of nation-building has become an integral part of Latvian democracy. Contrary to earlier attempts to describe Latvia as an example of ethnic democracy, this article argues that the nation-building proceeds on the basis of a not fully consistent combination of elements of ethnic and liberal republican approaches.