Voters Who Abstain: Explaining Abstention and Ballot Roll-Off in the 2014 Toronto Municipal Election

This article explores the correlates of ballot roll-off in the 2014 Toronto municipal election. While turnout in the mayoral contest was comparatively high, roughly 4.3% of voters abstained from council races. Using data from the Toronto Election Study, a large- N survey of electors conducted around the time of the 2014 Toronto Election, this study identifies a series of factors related to roll-off from mayoral to council elections. These variables include a number of sociodemographic characteristics and attitudinal factors commonly associated with turnout, measures of attachment to the city, and a series of election-specific factors. Results reveal that many factors commonly associated with abstention similarly drive roll-off, but that the experiences of individual voters also have an impact upon roll-off rates.

The Research of Drive Roll’s Dynamics Characteristics

In order to research the dynamic characteristics of drive roll, finite element model of the drive roll was set up by ANSYS/Workbench. The drive roll’s natural frequency and vibration mode concerned in reality were acquired based on modal analysis, deformation trend and size of each mode shape were analysed, then deformation of the weak positions about each mode was cleared, and some measures about improving its dynamic characteristics were proposed, all of these offered a support to strengthen drive roll’s damping property.

Effect of Drive Roll Rotation Speed on Ring Rolling Process

Based on the platform ABAQUS, 3-D FEA model for ring rolling has been constructed to investigate the effect of drive roll rotation speed on the metal flow in the ring rolling process. It can be seen clearly that the axial metal flow in the outside diameter of the rolled ring increases with the increasing of drive roll rotation speed and with the decreasing of the feeding magnitude per revolution , which causes the increasing of fishtail coefficient FT and maximum spread coefficient and in turn makes the quality deterioration of end-plane in the rolled ring. The rolling force and rolling torque necessary to execute the rolling process are reduced when the drive roll rotation speed is elevated, which results in the lower requirement for the characteristic of force and energy in the rolling machine. Besides that, average equivalent plastic strain PEEQ also increases, which indicates the enhancement of plastic deformation and is beneficial to the improvement of the mechanical property of the formed ring. But one point that we should pay attention is that uneven deformation and possibility of the inner defects in the rolled ring might be increased with the increasing of the drive roll rotation speed.