Search

Although political parties are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the two-party electoral system is wellestablished in American elections and gerrymandering naturally occurs to benefit the party that controls both a state's legislative chambers and the governor's office. Tracing the evolution of partisan gerrymandering and examining the gerrymandering practices, this research finds that redistricting manipulation enabled by two-party electoral system, is a tale as old as time and it has continued for over two hundred years, rising or falling depending on the intensity of partisan politics. In 21st century, political polarization and gerrymandering have been feeding off each other. When the redistricting process is manipulated by entrenched partisan gerrymanders, it has become counterproductive to fair representation, competitive election, and translating public will into policies. As long as the foxes are allowed to guard the hen houses, partisan politicians will continue to abuse "one person, one vote" principle and pick voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 was one of the rare events that shocked almost every world government simultaneously, thus creating an unusual opportunity to understand how political institutions shape policy decisions. There have been many analyses of what governments did. We focus instead on what they could do, focusing on the institutional politics of agency – how institutions empower rather than how they constrain, and how they affect public policy decisions. We examine public health measures in the first wave (March-September 2020) in Brazil, India, and the U.S. to understand how the interplay of institutions in a complex federal context shaped COVID-19 policy-responses. We find similar patterns of concentrated federal executive agency with limited constraints. In each case, when federal leadership failed public health policy responses, federated, subnational states were left to compensate for these inefficiencies without necessary resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates over racial voting, and over policies to combat vote dilution, turn on the extent to which groups' voting preferences differ and vary across geography. We present the first study of racial voting patterns in every congressional district (CD) in the United States. Using large-sample surveys combined with aggregate demographic and election data, we find that national-level differences across racial groups explain 60% of the variation in district-level voting patterns, whereas geography explains 30%. Black voters consistently choose Democratic candidates across districts, whereas Hispanic and white voters' preferences vary considerably across geography. Districts with the highest racial polarization are concentrated in the parts of the South and Midwest. Importantly, multiracial coalitions have become the norm: in most CDs, the winning majority requires support from non-white voters. In arriving at these conclusions, we make methodological innovations that improve the precision and accuracy when modeling sparse survey data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attempt by former President Donald Trump to manipulate the United States' 2020 presidential elections is a salient example of how electoral manipulation has changed to adapt to the new political and societal context that marks present- day elections. This highlights the need for a novel approach to help us better understand electoral manipulation, which is becoming increasingly common all over the world. This article addresses this need by presenting a novel framework for examining electoral manipulation in the United States in the 2020s. A novel feature of the framework is a focus on the interplay between different manipulation tactics. It identifies nine electoral manipulation tactics that interact with and reinforce each other: breaking democratic norms, disinformation, gerrymandering, voter suppression, hacking and leaking, collusion with foreign states, intraparty pressure, intimidation and violence, and corrupting state and government institutions. Maria Lindén [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncertainty is ubiquitous in elections, and candidates and parties often intentionally create uncertainty to benefit themselves. However, there is no consensus in existing research on how parties balance the trade-off between distinction and broad appeal without alienating their supporters. This paper proposes a novel theory that a party's brand structures when strategies that blur or obfuscate a party or candidate's position are effective. In particular, I argue voters respond negatively to appeals that signal brand deviation from co-partisans on issues that are central to their party's brand. Outside of the brand, the trade-offs between clarity and ambivalence will be weaker. I test these expectations in two survey experiments on a quota sample of the United States population. I find that the efficacy of blurred electoral varies by the brand centrality of an issue, the blurring strategy deployed, and the co- or out-partisan status of the receiver. These findings have implications for our understanding of how parties can navigate the costs and benefits of clear brands and blurred appeals in contemporary party competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Court in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board approved presentment of a government-issued photo identification as a requirement to vote, Justice Stevens compared the requirement to what he characterized as "the usual burdens of voting." Since Crawford was decided, the concept of "the usual burdens of voting" has been invoked numerous times as lawsuits have been brought challenging state practices that are claimed to unduly burden the ability of voters to vote. In theory, "the usual burdens of voting" serve as a benchmark against which state conditions imposed on the ability to vote can be measured to determine if the right to vote has been infringed. Yet, despite numerous uses of the phrase, courts have generally left the phrase undefined. In essence, a benchmark exists, but the content, design, and dimensions of that benchmark are amorphous. This Article examines the development of the "usual burdens of voting" concept by Justice Stevens in Crawford and its use in subsequent decisions. This Article looks at the evolution of voting in the United States to provide some context as to how voting burdens should be understood. This Article concludes with some observations regarding the usefulness of the phrase as a means for determining whether a condition associated with voting, such as a prohibition on providing food or water to those waiting to vote, can be reliably evaluated using "the usual burdens of voting" concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of U.S. civil settlement and its principle of granting parties the right to adjudicate as they wish. Topics covered include the denial for the American people to learn the truth on the Dominion Voting Systems civil settlement and proposals for and against maintenance of the U.S. civil settlement framework. Also noted are solutions the judiciary can avail of to balance the rights of litigants and the public.

As teachers and teacher educators in the United States, we offer this editorial based on our lived experiences with the political, social, and environmental precarities where we live. Among these precarities are our looming U.S. presidential election after the last one included a plot by bad actors to abscond with our State’s electoral votes, our constant struggle for water in a desert state, and our weak overall internet connectivity. We call our wonderings about how we are living in and somehow surviving these times, radical uncertainties. In this editorial, we canvas radical uncertainties related to e-learning about digital literacies, generative text, datafication, and the camera gaze. Alongside these uncertainties, we offer alternative avenues for collective thinking based on Chicana Feminist epistemologies. We intend for readers to consider how local knowing can and should inform elearning planning and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of electoral accountability emphasize voters' ability to evaluate individual officeholders, which incentivises officials to demonstrate their quality. Before the Australian ballot was introduced in the US at the turn of the twentieth century, however, most ballot designs constrained voters' ability to distinguish individual candidates. Previous scholarship argues that ballot reform led to the rise of candidate-centred politics and the decline in party influence in the twentieth century. We reassess the evidence for this claim and implement the most comprehensive analysis to date on the secret ballot's effects on outcomes related to distributive politics, legislator effort, and party influence. Using an improved research design, we find scant evidence that ballot reform directly affected legislator behaviour, much less that it transformed political representation. While the Australian ballot may have been a necessary condition for the eventual rise of candidate-centred politics, ballot reform did not by itself reshape American politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]