MANIPULATING VOTING PROCEDURES

A voting procedure can be manipulated if, by misrepresenting his preferences, some individual can secure an outcome which he prefers to the outcome he gets when he is honest.
This is an expository paper on the theory of voting manipulation. Section I is an historical sketch of the contributions of Condorcet, de Borda, Arrow, and others. Section II provides a set of examples of manipulation: of plurality voting, of majority voting, of exhaustive voting, of the single transferable vote procedure, and of approval voting. It also contains an example of a nonmanipulable random voting scheme. Section HI provides a simple proof of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite manipulation theorem.     

VOTING EXPRESSIVELY

We address a common criticism directed toward models of expressive voting that they are ad hoc in nature. To that end, we propose a foundation for expressive behavior that is based on a novel theory of social preferences under risk. Under our proposal, expressive considerations in behavior arise from the particular way in which risky social prospects are assessed by decision‐makers who want to interpret their choices as moral. To illustrate the scope of our framework, we use it to address some key questions in the literature on expressive voting: why, for expressive considerations, might voters vote against their self‐interest in large elections and why might such elections exhibit a moral bias. Specifically, we consider an electoral set‐up with two alternatives and explain why, when the size of the electorate is large, voters may want to vote for the alternative they deem morally superior even if this alternative happens to be strictly less preferred, in an all‐inclusive sense, than the other. (JEL D01, D03, D81, D72, A13)     

EFFECTS OF WELFARE REFORM ON WOMEN'S VOTING PARTICIPATION

This study investigates the effects of welfare reform in the United States in the 1990s on voting among low‐income women. Using the November Current Population Surveys with the added Voting and Registration Supplement for the years 1990 through 2004 and exploiting changes in welfare policy across states and over time, we estimate the causal effects of welfare reform on women's voting registration and voting participation during the period in which welfare reform unfolded. During this time period, voter turnout was decreasing in the United States. We find robust evidence that welfare reform led to smaller declines in voting (about 3 to 4 percentage points, which translates to about 10% relative to the baseline mean) for women who were exposed to welfare reform compared to several different comparison groups of similar women who were much less exposed. The robust findings suggest that welfare reform had prosocial effects on civic participation, as characterized by voting. The effects were largely confined to presidential elections, were stronger in Democratic than Republican states, were stronger in states with stronger work incentive policies, and appeared to operate through employment, education, and income. (JEL D72, H53, I38, J21)     

REGIONAL HOUSE PRICE DYNAMICS AND VOTING BEHAVIOR IN THE FOMC

This paper examines the impact of house price gaps in Federal Reserve districts on the voting behavior in the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) from 1978 to 2010. Applying a random effects ordered probit model, we find that a higher regional house price gap significantly increases (decreases) the probability that this district's representative in the FOMC casts interest rate votes in favor of tighter (easier) monetary policy. In addition, our results suggest that Bank presidents react more sensitively to regional house price developments than Board members do. (JEL E31, E58, R31)     

AN EXPRESSIVE VOTING THEORY OF STRIKES

Union members may vote for a strike even if they do not expect to thereby increase their wages. For under majority voting any one member's vote for a strike is unlikely to be decisive. A union member who obtains a non-infinitesimal emotional benefit from the act of voting for a strike may therefore vote in its favor. This hypothesis can explain the existence of strikes and the conditions which make strikes especially likely.     

VOTING, PUNISHMENT, AND PUBLIC GOODS

Researchers have found that voting can help increase voluntary contributions to a public good—provided enforcement through a third party. Not all collective agreements, however, guarantee third-party enforcement. We design an experiment to explore whether a voting rule with and without endogenous punishment increases contributions to a public good. Our results suggest that voting by itself does not increase cooperation, but if voters can punish violators, contributions increase significantly. While costly punishment increases contributions at the price of lower efficiency, overall efficiency for a voting-with-punishment rule still exceeds the level observed for a voting-without-punishment rule. ( JEL C92, D72, H41)     

CHANGE IN VOTING TURNOUT, 1952-1972

The relationship of age to voting turnout over a 20-year periodis analyzed in a multivariate model with controls for causalcovariates and "period" and "cohort" effects. The observed curvilinearpattern of turnout with age remains after holding rival factorsconstant, but the apparent curvilinearity of cohort membershipdisappears. Instead, a pattern of decreasing turnout among successivelyyounger birth cohorts is found, suggesting differences in thepolitical socialization of voting obligations between the nineteenthand twentieth centuries.     

THE INFLUENCE OF IDEOLOGY ON CONGRESSIONAL VOTING

This paper investigates the influence of ideology on congressional voting. The conceptual framework is based on the assumption that the congressman's objective is the maximization of the expected value of his office. A comparative analysis of voting on two proposed floor amendments to the U. S. House Administration Committee's 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act bill indicates that congressmen will ignore ideological considerations when the opportunity cost of not ignoring them is sufficiently high. Voting on one of these amendments is found to be consistent with shirking as broadly defined.     

VOTING IN FIRMS: THE ROLE OF AGENDA CONTROL, SIZE AND VOTER HOMOGENEITY

Voting is a common feature of most firms. Unrestricted voting, however, can lead to unstable decision making. We find that firms make tradeoffs among collective decision making, production scale, firm structure, and voter characteristics that are consistent with efforts to economize on the costs of voting. Firm responses include agenda control, restrictions to obtain a homogeneous voting population, and limits on firm size. We consider three long-surviving producer cooperatives, representing extreme cases of collective decision making, and find that their organization is sensitive to the costs of voting and to the employment of mechanisms to constrain those costs.     

VOTING, SPATIAL MONOPOLY, and SPATIAL PRICE REGULATION

Regulations often require that local public utilities engage in high rates of freight absorption. These regulations, often mandating uniform pricing, are shown to arise logically as a consequence of self-interested voting behavior. We specifically consider the case of a single-plant spatial monopoly which is regulated by consumers distributed around the plant. Consumers may change their delivered price by voting to require a rate of freight absorption which differs from the profit-maximizing rate. Voting outcomes under a median voter model predict the high rate of freight absorption often observed in practice.     

LITTLE WHITE LIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE MODELS CORRELATED RESPONSE ERRORS IN A PANEL STUDY OF VOTING

One interpretation for the common survey finding that the backgroundcharacteristics of vote overreporters resemble those of actualvoters is that misreporters usually vote. This hypothesis—thatmisreporters regularly voted in earlier elections—is testedwith data from the 1972–74–76 Michigan ElectionPanel. It receives no support: the 1972 and 1974 validated turnoutof the 1976 misreporters was very low. Moreover, misreportingwas a fairly stable respondent characteristic: misreportingabout an election in one interview was correlated with misreportingabout the remaining elections in each of the other two interviews.A comparison of regressions predicting turnout using the validatedreports versus the self-reports shows that the respondent errorscan distort conclusions about the correlates of voting. Forexample, controlling for three other variables, education wasrelated to self-reported voting but not to validated voting.Here, as well as in surveys of other socially desirable or undesirableissues, respondent self-reports may bias survey data in favorof commonsense models of the world.     

RESPONSE LATENCY VERSUS CERTAINTY AS INDEXES OF THE STRENGTH OF VOTING INTENTIONS IN A CATI SURVEY

This CATI study compares two measures of attitude strength,accessibility and certainty, for the purpose of predicting discrepanciesbetween voting intentions and voting behavior. Accessibilitywas indexed by response latency to a voting intention questionand certainty by a question about the finality of the votingintention. Logistic regression showed response latency to bea better predictor of discrepancies between voting intentionsand voting behavior than certainty. The theoretical implicationsof this finding as well as the practical implications of a methodfor measuring response latencies in CATI election studies arediscussed.     

DOMESTIC CONTENT LEGISLATION: HOUSE VOTING AND THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF REGULATION

House voting on domestic content legislation provides a rare opportunity to examine the political economy of protectionism with respect to a particular issue rather than by using the traditional interindustry approach. The results indicate that a representative's vote in favor of the content legislation and the intensity of the legislator's preferences are positively related to the importance of the auto and steel industries in the representative's district, an increasing unemployment rate, campaign contributions from labor groups, affiliation with Democratic Party, and a liberal ideology. Despite ideology's statistical significance, the results suggest this variable can be disregarded because neither the predictive accuracy nor the explanatory power of the model is improved by its inclusion. The estimates also provide insights concerning the impact of changes in the independent variables upon voting patterns.     

ATTRIBUTION ERROR IN ECONOMIC VOTING: EVIDENCE FROM TRADE SHOCKS

This article exploits the international transmission of business cycles to examine the prevalence of attribution error in economic voting in a large panel of countries from 1990 to 2009. We find that voters, on average, exhibit a strong tendency to oust the incumbent governments during an economic downturn, regardless of whether the recession is home‐grown or merely imported from trading partners. However, we find important heterogeneity in the extent of attribution error. A split sample analysis shows that countries with more experienced voters, more educated voters, and possibly more informed voters—all conditions that have been shown to mitigate other voter agency problems—do better in distinguishing imported from domestic growth. (JEL E3, E6)     

THE DEVELOPMENT AND DECLINE OF MEDIEVAL VOTING INSTITUTIONS: A COMPARISON OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE

This paper argues that in the middle ages voting institutions emerged as mechanisms that allowed rulers to cooperate with subjects on mutually profitable projects. In spite of their utility, many of these voting institutions eventually declined. We test the model on the English parliament and the French estates general. The historical evidence strongly supports our view that these institutions declined in France, but not in England, due to increases in the heterogeneity of voters' interests and the insecurity of French rulers, since these factors made cooperation between French rulers and their subjects more difficult.     

VOTING BEHAVIOR, DISCRIMINATION AND THE NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME

We investigate whether black, Latin, and white major league baseball players receive the same consideration by the Baseball Writers' Association of America in voting for membership into The National Baseball Hall of Fame. The first stage of Heckman's two-step procedure indicates that the probability a black player will ever receive at least one vote is significantly lower than that for his white counterpart. The second stage suggests that race or ethnicity sometimes matter in determining the number of votes a candidate receives for Hall of Fame membership. (JEL J7, D72)     

IDENTITY POLITICS, PARTISANSHIP, AND VOTING FOR WOMEN CANDIDATES

In 1992 a record 14 women sought statewide office by running"as women" and as representatives of women. In this articlewe examine whether their appeals led to widespread vot ing onthe basis of gender identity. We find evidence that the sexof the voter is significantly related to voting for female candidatesin eight of 13 states, and among partisans of both parties aswell as Independents. Further, we find that these effects areamplified by Democratic female candidates who are rated as mostfeminist, and that this is especially the case for those withno partisan attachments.     

Voting and the Scottish referendum: perspectives of people with intellectual disabilities and their family and paid carers

Voting is a human right for every citizen yet many people with intellectual disabilities do not vote or have little support to exercise their right to vote. This article explores views on the wider aspects of voting against the backdrop of the Scottish referendum using focus groups involving people with intellectual disabilities (n = 12), family carers (n = 7) and paid carers (n = 5). Findings revealed that people with intellectual disabilities had similar concerns to the general population about the referendum. Regarding voting, all groups identified the need to discuss issues and for practical support and accessible information to ensure informed choices were made when voting.     

VOTING AND IMITATIVE BEHAVIOR

Political behavior generates private benefits by helping people fit in with desired friends. A voter imitates other voters, but at the same time they imitate him. An equilibrium solution requires exogenous variables: the narrow self-interest of the participants. The reduced form makes one's vote a function of the narrow self-interest of others as well as one's own. In accord with the model, a person's party identification depends on his ethnic group's current income and its income in 1909 as well as his own income.     

Singlehood

This study reports some of the results of an inquiry into objective social isolation and feelings of loneliness in a stratified sample of 556 adults (unmarried, divorced, widowed, and married men and women). Given a recent marked increase in the number of singles in the Netherlands, special attention is paid to the single respondents. The results of this study give evidence that unmarried, divorced, and widowed people are, on the average, lonelier than married people. Within the subgroup of unmarried and divorced people living alone, some men and women were found who could be described as “creative singles.” The analysis shows that “creative singles” seem to be able to cope with their situation of living alone. For example, they report few feelings of loneliness, in contrast to the situation of the rest of the group of people living alone.