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This study replicates and extends the research of Soley and Reid (1982) and Siomkos and Ghosh (1986). The findings suggest that incumbency and promotional expenditures are important determinants of the votes received by congressional candidates. The study also found evidence of the "coat-tail" effect, but no evidence that spending and voter turnout are related. Finally, this research demonstrates that Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions have a significant and positive effect on the number of votes that candidates receive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the potential use of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) in corporate elections in the U.S. as of 2015, and it mentions the theory of shareholder primacy, as well as majority voting laws and corporate governance in America. A corporate shareholder empowerment movement is addressed, along with financial burdens and the history of IRV in political elections. Shareholder proxy access and short-slate elections are examined, as well as the costs associated with corporate elections.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including cost of campaign finance disclosure in non-candidate elections, the New York City Public Campaign Finance system, and the need to reform campaign finance system.

The article reviews social science literatures regarding costs and benefits of compelled disclosure of political finances in non-candidate elections, such as ballot measure elections, in order to evaluate which U.S. states' campaign finance laws abate corruption. It informs that there is little evidence from the literature that compelled disclosure lead to vital public benefits by increasing voters' knowledge.

We study a model of elections in non-majoritarian systems that captures the link between competition in policies and competition in campaign spending. We argue that the overall competitiveness of the political arena depends on both the endogenous number of parties contesting the election and the endogenous level of campaign spending. These two dimensions are linked together through their combined effect on the total equilibrium level of political rents. We illustrate the key insights of the model with an analysis of the competitive effects of campaign spending limits. We show that under some conditions spending caps can be pro-competitive, leading to an increase in the number of parties contesting the elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Chapter 28 of the California Election Code, which took effect on June 22, 2010 in California and allow the U.S. Senate District Fifteen counties to conduct separate vote through mail manual tallies in the 2010 elections. It says that the California Legislature enacted Chapter 28 in consideration of the cost that would be brought by the special election for county Registrars of Voters, regardless of the motive of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on calling for a special election to fill the seat of Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado. It provides an analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of Chapter 28 in terms of time and cost. It adds that the Chapter 28 allowed Senate District Fifteen counties to avoid sorting ballots by precinct in the three elections.

Changes during the last decade have significantly altered the nature of election administration and driven up its costs. Interviews with practitioner representatives from the elections community reveal a number of issues that continue to influence this field. Expense data from two counties illustrate how policy changes affect election costs. Scheduled ending of federal funding threatens a 'perfect storm' in election finance that may undermine hard-won advances from 2000 to 2010. Possible cost reduction measures as well as critical challenges facing election administration are forecast for 2010 and the years ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent is party loyalty a liability for incumbent legislators? Past research on legislative voting and elections suggests that voters punish members who are ideologically “out of step” with their districts. In seeking to move beyond the emphasis in the literature on the effects of ideological extremity on legislative vote share, we examine how partisan loyalty can adversely affect legislators' electoral fortunes. Specifically, we estimate the effects of each legislator's party unity—the tendency of a member to vote with his or her party on salient issues that divide the two major parties—on vote margin when running for reelection. Our results suggest that party loyalty on divisive votes can indeed be a liability for incumbent House members. In fact, we find that voters are not punishing elected representatives for being too ideological; they are punishing them for being too partisan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, federal guidelines established the need for more coordination between states and local election administrators. We examine the implementation of HAVA in rural election districts, where a lack of resources increases the district’s cost of becoming compliant with the federal law. Using case studies of Maryland, Virginia, and New York, we analyze how centralization of state election authority can affect the inequality of implementation costs between rural and urban districts. We find that the centralization of election administration is important, but it alone cannot account for the experience of rural districts implementing HAVA. These findings have implications for policymaking in the area of election reform; particularly that federal data collection should measure the cost of HAVA implementation, rather than just compliance, in the localities so that states could use the data to develop funding formulas that would reduce strain on rural election districts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Help America Vote Act that Congress passed in 2002 required election boards to update their punch card voting systems with new voting technologies by 2006. This change greatly increases the operational and logistical complexities of administering elections in many areas. Because of security concerns and the large physical size of some types of new voting machines, they must be delivered to each polling location during a specified day and time window. Therefore, to generate feasible, cost-effective delivery routes, election boards must solve a difficult vehicle-routing problem. Routes designed by our solution methods have been successfully implemented in Hamilton County, Ohio, to deliver voting machines to polling locations for multiple elections since May 2006. We describe our solution methods and analyze the sensitivity of route costs to time-window and delivery-day constraints. Our sensitivity analysis identified cost-savings strategies that the Hamilton County Board of Elections used to negotiate a new scheduling protocol with poll workers; this protocol reflects a compromise between accommodating poll workers' schedules and reducing the cost of delivering the voting machines. The Board of Elections successfully implemented this new method of specifying delivery time windows, which allowed greater routing flexibility, for the November 2006 midterm election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from 191 Australian state elections, we test how voters respond to economic conditions. We find that unemployment has a strong impact on election outcomes, with each additional percentage point of unemployment reducing the incumbent's re-election probability by 3–5 per cent. However, when we separate luck (unemployment in other states) from competence (unemployment in that state relative to the rest of Australia), we find that both luck and competence are equally important. This is consistent with a psychological theory of the ‘fundamental attribution error’, in which observers consistently underestimate the importance of situational constraints. We also find evidence that unemployment driven by a clearly exogenous source – the US economy – has a non-trivial impact on the re-election probability of Australian state governments. Our results suggest that Australian voters either retain too many state governments in economic booms, vote out too many state governments in recessions, or perhaps both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the important role played by television broadcasting in the aspirations of political candidates. It states that television has been the primary source of information in the U.S. It mentions that Americans consider the local news as the main source of political information. It puts the local news stations in the powerful position to inform the public about the significant and substantive political issues. However, local news media spend little interest in elections while candidates spend for the expensive television advertisements to gain name and publicity. Still, candidate advertising is deemed not effective for its expenditures continuously increases. It argues that election should be free and honest rather than to be expensive and impressive.

This paper investigates when a runoff election is desirable and when a plurality result is good enough. A runoff election increases the likelihood that the Condorcet winner will be elected but also entails additional costs. The metric for determining whether a runoff election is desirable will be the probability that the winner of the plurality election would win an ensuing runoff. Statistical models of voter behavior are developed that estimate this probability, which are verified with runoff-election data from United States elections. The models allow governments to make more informed choices in creating rules to decide when to hold runoff elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence from both sample surveys and the marked electoral registers is used to compare the participation of individual electors at the 2001 general election and the 2002 local elections in England. In those cases where conventional electoral procedures have been retained, there is a continuing gap between local and general election turnout. Those who vote at both types of election tend to have a sharper sense of civic duty and/or an incentive to vote based on the benefits perceived to be likely to accrue from the outcome of the local contest. However, in those places where the costs of participation are reduced through the introduction of all-postal voting, the turnout gap disappears as does the distinctive character of those who vote in local elections. In each case the findings support a rational choice model of participation with respondents weighing the benefits and costs of voting in the context of their own sense of duty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determines credibility factors in elections. Costs and benefits offered in the board elections; Importance of likelihood assessment based on information and attitudes towards risk; Lack of credibility of the challengers.

There are many instances in which even in a democracy, the political preferences held by a minority of the electorate are reflected in political outcomes. It is shown that for a simple two-alternative election environment characterized by costly voting and private information, when the expected population is very large the alternative preferred by more expected "zealous" voters, who have either large stakes in the outcome of the election or small costs of participating, wins with high probability in any equilibrium, even if the expected proportion of the entire electorate that shares that preference is arbitrarily small. This is an undesirable outcome under either of two natural but very different normative criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addresses questions concerning the impact of candidate spending in congressional elections in a new way. Development of a multiequation model of congressional vote choice; Estimation using the individual level survey data; Simultaneity bias present in the single-equation model; Evaluation of hypotheses grounded in persuasive communications theory.

Prior scholarly analysis of Israeli military spending has focused on national security questions. We present a mathematical model incorporating security threats as well as electoral cycles and corporate profits. The parameters are estimated empirically. The results support the idea that in Israel the military budget at the margins is also employed as a political-economic instrument to help manage the economy and to provide a favorable election climate for incumbents. It is suggested that the political-economic dynamic widely attributed to Western industrialized societies may be of increasing importance in other societies throughout the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been noted that the cost of running for a county parliamentary seat in nineteenth-century Britain was about twice the cost of running for a borough seat. Since there were no residency requirements and no difference in political power between the borough and county MPs, this persistent price discrepancy needs explanation. Higher informational costs in the counties may have led to fewer contested elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing costs of political campaigns and the resulting increase in the dependency of candidates on political donors has brought greater attention to the issue of campaign expenditures. This study examines the role of campaign expenditures in elections to the Florida House of Representatives between 1972 and 1980. Expenditures are found to influence electoral outcomes in most of the elections, although there appears to be a decline in effect across the study period. In practical terms campaign expenditures are generally found to be less important than incumbency, party, and party strength in determining the outcome of any particular election. The data also suggest that the placement of an election in the reapportionment cycle affects not only candidates' decisions concerning running but also the influence that various factors have on the election outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an empirical analysis on political campaign expenditures in the U.S. Senatorial elections from 1978 to 1984. Impact of incumbent expenditures on re-election campaigns; Comparison between challenger and incumbent spending; Empirical results for elections in the House of Representatives.

The article presents a reprint of the article "Rigged to Re-Elect," by James Huffman. The author discusses public disclosure of political contributions which he believes only benefit the incumbents and discourage challengers. He talks on his campaign for the U.S. Senate position in Oregon in 2010. He mentions the case Buckley v. Valeo wherein the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public disclosure requirements are lawful if they provide relevant data to voters to impose election restrictions.

Analyzes the paradox of voting. Effects of individual votes on the election outcomes; Cost of voting; Arguments on the indoctrination of individuals on voting.

To raise money for their campaigns, political candidates auction a part of government wealth (the jackpot) to contributors. The larger the jackpot, the more candidates spend. Data on the gubernatorial races of 1978 and 1986 indicate that (1) for every dollar increase in the per capita jackpot, campaign spending rises by 0.0004 cents per voter, (2) balanced budget laws hinder the candidate's ability to raise money, (3) in states that give the governor more power over the budget(measured by a "Schlesinger" index) candidates raise more. The paper emphasizes that candidates willingly limit their spending to avoid indebtedness to contributors. A slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many masters as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the vancement of his fortune. Jean de LaBruyere, Des Ouvrages de L'Esprit [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]