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In democratic societies there is a tension between maximizing ballot access and minimizing voter fraud. Since the 2000 presidential election, this tension has been central to discussions about election reform at the national, state, and local level. We examine this tension by focusing on the implementation of voter identification laws in one state that has experienced significant issues in recent elections, and that is currently implementing election reform: New Mexico. We hypothesize that Hispanic voters are more likely to show some form of identification than other types of voters. Using a voter data set from New Mexico's First Congressional District in the 2006 election, we find that Hispanic, male and Election Day voters are more likely to show some form of identification than non-Hispanic, female and early voters. In addition, using an overlapping study of Bernalillo County 2006 poll workers, which almost entirely overlaps with the First Congressional District, we find no evidence that differences in poll worker partisanship or ethnicity produce differences in voter identification procedures. Our findings suggest that broad voter identification laws, which may be applied unequally, may be perceived as discriminatory.

In this paper we examine the extent to which voters engage in strategic behavior. Our contribution is accounting for the context in which voters have the opportunity to behave in a strategic fashion. We also demonstrate that previous measures of strategic voting significantly underestimated the willingness of voters to engage in strategic behavior when presented with the opportunity to do so. We use as cases for our study of strategic voting behavior two recent elections in Britain, the 1987 and 1997 general elections. Our analysis produces estimates of strategic voting in these elections that are substantially greater than reported in previous research.

Most studies of parliamentary elections only examine specific parts of the electoral process—generally either voter behavior, or party behavior in the post-election, coalition-formation process. However, there are substantive gains to be made by considering the election process as a whole: considering voting behavior and coalition formation together allows us to determine not only how individual characteristics influence vote choice, but how the distribution of these characteristics influences the distribution of executive authority. Combining models of voting behavior and models of coalition formation in a single empirical study can yield a more complete understanding of the link between individual voter behavior and resulting governing coalitions. This approach is demonstrated with an application to the Dutch 1994 parliamentary election.

Since the passage of the “Help America Vote Act” in 2002, nearly half of the states have adopted a variety of new identification requirements for voter registration and participation by the 2006 general election. There has been little analysis of whether these requirements reduce voter participation, especially among certain classes of voters. In this paper we document the effect of voter identification requirements on registered voters as they were imposed in states in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, and in the 2002 and 2006 midterm elections. Looking first at trends in the aggregate data, we find no evidence that voter identification requirements reduce participation. Using individual-level data from the Current Population Survey across these elections, however, we find that the strictest forms of voter identification requirements—combination requirements of presenting an identification card and positively matching one’s signature with a signature either on file or on the identification card, as well as requirements to show picture identification—have a negative impact on the participation of registered voters relative to the weakest requirement, stating one’s name. We also find find evidence that the stricter voter identification requirements depress turnout to a greater extent for less educated and lower income populations, for both minorities and non-minorities.

This paper examines why Latinos, over the past thirty years, are consistently more trusting of the federal government than are Anglos and Blacks. We address this puzzle by turning to previous research on racial politics and political trust. Consistent with previous research, discrimination and generational status are important predictors of Latinos' levels of political trust, with first generation Latinos more trusting than later generation Latinos. Encounters with racial discrimination also make Latinos and Blacks less trusting of government. In contrast, Anglos' levels of political trust can be explained by their economic evaluations as well as their partisanship. While these findings are insightful, they do not directly address why inter-group differences arise when it comes to their trust in government. We argue that, combined with generational distinctions amongst Latinos in their levels of trust, the heavy flow of Latino immigration in the past thirty years has changed the Latino population in such a way that the views of the foreign-born are disproportionately represented in survey questions related to trust in government. This is producing a Latino population that is more inclined to trust government than Anglos or Blacks. We then examine the impact of political trust on individuals' opinions towards redistributive policies. Political trust has a strong and positive effect on Latinos' attitudes towards such policies. These findings have important implications for the future of public opinion and redistributive policy-making in the U.S.

This paper examines the relationship between attitudes on potential uses of the budget surplus and gender. Survey results show relatively weak support overall for using a projected surplus to reduce taxes, with respondents much likelier to prefer increased social spending on education or social security. There is a significant gender gap with men being far more likely than women to support tax cuts or paying down the national debt. Given a menu of particular types of tax cuts, women are marginally more likely to favor childcare relief or working poor tax credits whereas men are marginally more likely to favor capital gains reduction or tax rate cuts. When primed that the tax laws are biased against two-worker families, men significantly change their preferences, moving from support for general tax rate cuts to support for working poor tax relief, but not to child-care relief. One of the strongest results to emerge is that women are far more likely than men not to express an opinion or to confess ignorance about fiscal matters. Both genders increase their “no opinion" answer in the face of priming, but men more so than women. Further research will explore this no opinion/uncertainty aspect.

It is well known that there is a gender gap in American politics: that men and women in the aggregate vote differently for presidential candidates, for example. The precise determinants of the gap are less well known. Using existing data, mainly 1996 general election exit polls, this article explores the gender gap in relation to tax issues. It finds that while men and women have broadly similar attitudes or "primary preferences" about tax questions, the weighing of tax as an issue -- the "secondary preferences" -- differ, with men attaching more importance to tax as an issue than women. This result suggests, inter alia, that framing of political issues matter, and that a successful candidate may appeal differentially to each gender on the basis of different policy issues.