Summary of talk
• Election administration data
• Turnout differences
• Reasons for not registering and voting (Census Bureau
data)
• Voting administration and race (Pew/MIT Survey)
– Lines
– Voter identification
Previous empirical research and other related research from survey methodology holds that candidates listed first on an election ballot may gain some measure of advantage from this ballot placement. Using data from the 1998 general election in California, we test whether a candidate’s relative position on the ballot has any statistical effect on vote shares. We find little systematic evidence that candidate vote shares benefit from being listed first on the ballot.
The 2009 APSA Annual Meeting will convene in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, September 3-6, 2009. For the first time in its 104 years, the Annual Meeting will take place outside the United States. In its own small way this traveling across a border is symbolic of the multiplicity of ways in which politics is, and our discipline needs to be, in motion.
Professor Charles Stewart is this year's recipient of the Institute's Arthur C. Smith Award. The Arthur C. Smith Award was established in 1996 on the occasion of Dean Smith's retirement from the position of Dean for Undergraduate Education and Student Affairs. The award honors the service of Dean Smith and is presented to a member of the MIT faculty for meaningful contributions and devotion to undergraduate student life at MIT.
Established by Caltech President David Baltimore and MIT President Charles Vest in December 2000 to prevent a recurrence of the problems that threatened the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election. Since establishment, members of the VTP have studied all aspects of the election process, both in the United States and abroad. VTP faculty, research affiliates, and students have written many working papers, published scores of academic articles and books, and worked on a great array of specific projects.
Survey Background
• Gauging the quality of the voting experience
• Research design
– 200 respondents contacted in every state, or 10,000
total
– Survey in the field the week following Nov. 4
– Pilot surveys conducted on in Nov. ’07 and Super
Tuesday ’08
– Parallel nationwide survey
• Limited set of questions
• 32,800 total respondents
Several countries have conducted Internet voting trials in binding public elections over the past decade, including Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These trials have been conducted at the local and regional levels of government, targeting specific populations of voters. However, Estonia—a former Soviet republic and now a full member of the European Union—has advanced the farthest in deploying Internet voting. Since 2000, Estonia has conducted two national elections in which all voters could use Internet voting.
