Photo identification laws and perceptions of electoral fraud

Photo identification (ID) laws are often passed on the premise that they will prevent voter fraud and/or reduce perceptions of electoral fraud. The impact of ID laws on perceptions of electoral fraud remains unsettled and is complicated by widespread confusion about current voting requirements. In the 2017 Virginia election, we fielded an experiment, with an advocacy organization, evaluating the effects of the organization’s outreach campaign. We randomized which registered voters were mailed one of three informational postcards. After the election, we surveyed subjects about electoral integrity and their knowledge about election laws. We find that providing registrants with information on the state’s photo ID requirements is associated with a reduction in perceptions of fraud and increased knowledge about voting requirements.

American Voter Turnout

This chapter provides a brief history of voter turnout in the U.S. It documents growth from a small electorate to one that mobilized some 80 percent of eligible voters by the middle of the nineteenth century, and a decline to lower turnout through much of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century despite repeated extensions of the franchise and less restrictive registration and voting requirements. Variation in contemporary turnout is examined in some detail in order to clarify the individual-level relationships that lead to the conventional wisdom concerning a partisan bias to turnout. Differences in turnout and party dynamics with otherwise comparable countries are also assessed.

Secured Aadhar Based E-Voting Application using RSA

The invasion of wireless, mobile phones and various internet technologies has resulted in the new implementation, making the e-voting method very quiet and effective. The E-voting ensures the option of a suitable, simple and secure manner of incarceration and the complete number of votes in an election. This study work offers the e-voting requirements and necessities using a platform based on Android or the internet. E-voting implies voting through electronic devices or websites in the election. An e-voting application is developed using the android or web platform. This request enables the user cast the ballot without going to the polling booth. To prevent fraud respondents using the scheme, the application utilizes adequate authentication steps. Once the polling process is completed in the electronic device, the outcomes can be obtained in a fraction of seconds instantly. All voting counts of applicants are encrypted using RSA and stored in the database to prevent third-party attack and disclosure of outcomes. Upon completion of the meeting, the admin can decrypt the count of votes and publish the outcome and finish the voting process.

Do States Circumvent Constitutional Supermajority Voting Requirements to Raise Taxes?

To constrain legislative taxing power, 16 U.S. state constitutions require a supermajority in both chambers to increase or impose taxes. Both supporters and opponents of the requirement argue that its effect fades away because states circumvent it in various ways, especially by raising fees that are not subject to the requirement. Existing literature, however, offers little and inconsistent evidence on whether the effect decays over time and whether the decay results from fee hikes. This article documents legal cases to show the ways in which states have responded to the requirement, estimates whether the effects of the requirement decay over time, and tests whether states raise fees instead of taxes after adopting such a requirement. Using state-level panel data, I find that the initial effectiveness of the requirement on tax burden does decay approximately a decade after enactment and that the decay is not the result of fee increases.

Two-Level Games in Foreign Policy Analysis

Whether in multilateral negotiations or bilateral meetings, government leaders regularly engage in “two-level games” played simultaneously at the domestic and the international level. From the two-level-games perspective, executives are “chief negotiators” involved in some form of international negotiations for which they ultimately need to gain domestic approval at the ratification stage. This ratification requirement provides the critical link between the international and domestic level, but it can be based on formal voting requirements or more informal ways of ratification, such as public approval ratings. With its focus on government leaders as “gatekeepers” and central actors in international negotiations, the two-level games perspective constitutes a distinct approach in foreign policy analysis and serves to reintegrate the subfields of comparative politics and international relations. While there are similarities to a liberal perspective, two-level games emphasize that executives hold a certain degree of autonomy in their decision making that cannot be purely derived from their constituencies. Unlike realism, however, the approach recognizes the importance of domestic veto players and institutional constraints. Since its inception in the late 1980s, a vast body of literature on two-level games has evolved, including refinements of its theoretical foundation and applications in various policy areas. Against this background, key controversies in two-level games and foreign policy analysis since the late 1980s are examined. The discussion is organized along six debates concerning the levels of analysis, domestic political institutions, the interaction between the domestic and international levels, relevant actors, their interests and preferences, and the relationship between comparative politics and international relations.

The Impact of Fiscal Limits on State Revenue Volatility

Recent headlines suggest that state revenue volatility has important consequences regarding public administration and the choices state governments make. This work explores the connection between fiscal limits—specifically, tax and expenditure limitations (TELs), balanced-budget rules (BBRs), and super-majority voting requirements (SMRs)—and state revenue volatility. While growth is the most common measure for judging the impact of fiscal constraints, there is a growing literature that argues that volatility, or risk, of state revenue streams is equally important. This work looks at 48 states (Alaska and Nebraska are dropped) over a 37-year period (1969-2005) to assess how fiscal constraints are associated with the volatility of state revenue streams. The evidence suggests that states with strict BBRs and SMRs tend to have lower levels of revenue volatility, while strict TELs tend to be associated with higher levels of revenue volatility. However, given that states often have adopted more than one of these limits, the evidence suggests that strong BBRs have a very strong moderating effect on the impact of TELs. States with super-majority rules tend to start at lower levels of volatility; however, they have little influence on the impact of the other limits.

A Synthesis of Vote Verification Methods in Electronic Voting Systems

A large amount of research has been conducted to improve public verifiability of e-voting systems. One of the challenges is ensuring that different and apparently contradicting requirements are met: anonymity and representation, vote secrecy and verifiability. System robustness from attacks adds further complexity. This chapter summarizes some of the known vote verification techniques and highlights the pros and cons of each technique. Also, it reviews how different verification technologies cover different phases of the voting process and evaluates how these techniques satisfy the e-voting requirements.