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Studying the relationship between constituency preferences and legislators' votes has been fundamental for empirical inquiry about representation. The most common approach to this type of research is dyadic and focuses on how members of Congress represent their geographic constituents. These studies account for member voting behavior with rationales including representational style, ideology, partisanship, and constituent preferences (e.g., Fenno 1978; Levitt 1996; Cox and McCubbins 1993; Canes-Wrone, Brady, and Cogan 2004). By also taking voter heterogeneity into account, however, Bailey and Brady (1998) present a unique empirical analysis for explaining representational linkages. Their analysis provides evidence that studies of representation based on analysis of roll call voting which fail to account for voter heterogeneity will overestimate the impact of the party and undervalue constituency influence. Bailey and Brady, however, measure voter heterogeneity with demographic variables which do not reliably indicate voter heterogeneity on the policy issue they assess (as I explain further in this paper).In this study I provide evidence that the connection between constituency interests and representative voting behavior is clearer when one accounts for voter heterogeneity specific to the legislation. As a research validation, I conduct ordered probit analysis of Senate voting on renewable energy legislation in the 110th Congress. As a research extension, I measure voter heterogeneity by accounting for each state's percentage of industry that generates non-renewable and renewable energy. I have collected all the data for this project and carried out extensive empirical analyses that confirm my argument above. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voters are influenced by their own preferences as well as the electoral context in which they make decisions. This study will examine contextual reasons why some voters choose to support third party candidates in US Congressional elections, as well as why some districts allocate a larger share of their votes to these candidates than other districts.The district level models will include measures of the propensity of a constituency to allocate votes to third party candidates: whether the previous occupant of the office was a member of a third party, and if so, the margin of his/her victory in the previous election. Due to the rate of incumbent success in Congressional elections (Mayhew 1974), the type of election, open seat or incumbent-challenger, will be taken into account as well. The individual level models will also take these contextual factors into account to demonstrate their impact on the voter's decision, but will also examine the impact of other independent variables. The analysis that determines whether individuals vote for third party candidates will be heavily influenced by Rosenstone, Behr, and Lazarus (1996). With a few exceptions, the same independent variables will be included in my micro-level analyses that were included in their vote choice model (chapter 6). Attitudinal variables that are included in the micro level analysis measure the importance of issues to respondents as well as their assessments of major party candidates. The same cohort and demographic variables that were used by Rosenstone, Behr, and Lazarus are also included. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partisan theories of lawmaking (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 2005; Rohde 1991) assume that the leadership can influence a member's voting behavior with various "carrots and sticks." Although current House rules specifically prohibit the practice, one potential carrot the leadership has at its disposal to encourage party unity is to dole out earmarks, or line-item projects added to appropriations bills, on the basis of faithfulness to the party. Historically, it has been difficult to test if parties use earmarks in this fashion because the projects were not tied to a specific member. However, due to recent changes in the House rules that require members to attach their names to pet projects, we are now able to better understand how earmarks are distributed. In this paper, we will seek to determine if the leadership can effectively use earmarks as a way to increase party line voting amongst the rank-and-file. Alternatively, we will also test the hypothesis that the sub-committee chairs and ranking members control most of the earmark dollars and use the process to further other goals. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideal point estimates are one of the most commonly used measures in studies of the U.S. Congress. While much has been written about the overall accuracy of measures such as NOMINATE, relatively little has been said about when these measures yield incorrect predictions of member voting behavior. Ideal point estimates derived from legislative roll-calls suggest that most voting behavior in the U.S. Congress can be understood by a one or two dimensional space. Perhaps the most convincing evidence of this point is that one-dimension correctly predicts over 80% of all votes over the last 60 years and over 90% in the last decade (Poole and Rosenthal 2007). While the relatively small number of misclassified votes is central to arguments about the low dimensionality of roll call voting in Congress, much of the information contained in these errors remains untapped. In this paper we focus on member level misclassification rates measured by the failure of ideal point estimates to predict actual votes. Conventional wisdom would suggest that high misclassification rates are associated with "maverick" members of the House and Senate. We move beyond this conception and consider a number of potential explanations (e.g. constituency pressures, realignment, the changing agenda, and responsibility within the chamber) for member misclassifications among representatives and senators over time. By understanding what NOMINATE scaling procedures fail to predict, we can get a better idea of what the first two dimensions truly capture about members of Congress beyond a maverick tendency. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past forty years, the use of discriminatory voting devices such as poll-taxes and literacy tests have been completely eliminated, voter registration and participation among African-Americans and other ethnic minorities have dramatically increased, and the Black Caucus has risen to a position of marked prominence in the U.S. House, all of which is attributable, at least in part, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.Yet the Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives began hearings in October 2005 on the renewal of Sections four and five of the VRA which are not scheduled to expire until 2007. Why so early? The answer comes as another question: how can the VRA be altered to meet the voting rights challenges of the twenty-first century, and pass judicial scrutiny?This paper will attempt to address this question in three parts: Part I will briefly sketch the history of the VRA, with particular attention to the debate in Congress leading up to the 1982 renewal of the Act and subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decisions which have impacted the effectiveness of Sections four and five. Part II will then analyze the solution to the problem as offered by J. Gerald Hebert, Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center and former Section Chief of the Voting Rights Section of the Department of Justice. Part III will then discuss additional changes which the author believes would augment the effectiveness of the Mr. Hebert's proposal. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two competing claims have arisen which attempt to explain legislative committee behavior. The first, the distributional model, suggests that committees are one of the main mechanisms for logrolling votes. Committee members engage in trade with each other as well as other committees to ensure gains from trade. In essence, this theory posits that the committees are designed to gain distributional advantages that House members can translate into electoral gains. The informational model, however, posits that committees are designed to ensure better policy outcomes. In short, the committee system is designed in a manner that allows House members to gain informational advantages over other members not serving on the committee. The committee members can then serve as a signaling mechanism to other House members. Although this is a great oversimplification of the models, the general tenets apply. Do the above models relate to other groups in the House? Specifically, this research attempts to determine whether or not the Women's and Black Caucuses follow either model. Initial results suggest that they do. While some caucuses fall into the distributional model (the Coastal Caucus) others are not as easily categorized. The two caucuses studied in this research appear to fall into specific models a majority of the time with minor variations that are dependent upon particular situations. Both groups are geographically diverse yet allied closely along party lines. Additionally, neither group votes in a monolithic fashion making this research particularly interesting. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]