Daniel P. Franklin

Effects of Motor Voter Legislation: Voter Turnout, Registration, and Partisan Advantage in the 1992 Presidential Election

The 1992 presidential election featured nine states and the District of Columbia with effective motor voter laws on the books. In 1996 all states will be required to have similar motor voter procedures. We conduct a multivariate analysis to compare turnout differences, partisan behav ior, and registration levels in motor voter and non-motor voter states. We find that rates of voter registration and turnout are significantly higher in motor voter states than in other states. In addition, it appears that these newly registered voters are just as likely to vote as other registered voters. We find no significant partisan advantage for either party in motor voter states.

Predicting the Institutional Effects of Term Limits

In this paper we develop a model to predict the seniority turnover, and transition consequences of term limit reforms for any institution with a regularized procedure for rotating membership. With this model we can predict the number of members who will be serving in their last term at any given time once an institution reaches a stable state under term limit reforms. For example, our results show that for the U.S. Senate current term limit proposals will result in a substantial increase in the number of “lame duck” members and a significant reduction in average seniority. We make no claims as to the public policy effects of term limit proposals. However, our model can be used to design a proposal that will maximize any benefits or minimize any public policy effects found to be associated with term limit reforms.

Teaching Writing and Critical Thinking in Large Political Science Classes

In the interest of developing a combination of teaching techniques designed to maximize efficiency and quality of instruction, we have experimentally tested three separate and relatively common teaching techniques in three large introductory political science classes at a large urban public university. Our results indicate that the (short-answer) skeleton essay approach in large classes does not provide any significant benefit over full writing assignments or even a lack of writing assignments. Essay and multiple-choice testing techniques produce similar results, though both types of testing have their strengths and weaknesses. We conclude that using a blend of the two testing techniques may be the best approach.

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times: Polarization and Presidential Success in Congress

For better or for worse, presidents receive much of the credit and much of the blame for their legislative success in Congress. Indeed, much has been written about the correlates of presidential success in Congress. In this article, we test the proposition that presidential success in Congress is mainly a function of context and the context of presidential interactions with Congress has changed over the past 50 years. Specifically, it is both the best of times and worst of times for presidential relations with the legislative branch. It is increasingly the case that because of partisan polarization in Washington, presidents can be quite successful, if they command a majority. However, if they face a divided government gridlock is the result and overcoming that gridlock has gotten to be more difficult over time.

The Congressional Experience: Third Edition

The Congressional Experience: Third Edition. By David E. Price. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004. 336p.

Battlegrounds and Budgets State-level Evidence of Budget Manipulation in Competitive Presidential Election States

25.00 paper. Rarely do we have an opportunity to see the intimate workings of one of our major political institutions through the eyes of not just a participant but a participant who is a political scientist as well. And that is probably both the strength and weakness of the third edition of this excellent memoir by David Price. His account of running for and serving in Congress is often, at the same time, too in depth and too superficial to find the right audience.

A Review of “The George W. Bush Legacy”: Campbell, Colin; Rockman, Bert A.; and Rudalevige, Andrew. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007. 348 pages.

Based on prior research on political business cycles, we investigate the manipulation of state budgets in battleground states. The state-based winner-take-all Electoral College system in the United States makes certain states extremely politicized during presidential elections. We hypothesize that budgets will target specific groups of swing voters in these battleground states. We test the impact of competitive state status in presidential elections on state budgets from 1982 to 2005 by creating a cross-sectional time-series regression model of state budget priorities from Jacoby and Schneider. While controlling for known determinants of budgets, we find strong support for our hypothesis.

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revelations about the extent of federal wiretapping and other means of spying on citizens during the Bush years. Yet the author maintains that the Bush Administration “confronted a public (and a civil liberties community) that was deeply hostile to potential intrusions on privacy rights and routinely exaggerated the threats posed by federal initiatives” (page 25). Somehow then the problem in the Bush years was the vigilant attention of civil libertarians and other citizens to protect their own rights? At times the author bats down arguments about Bush and the “imperial presidency” by pointing out that the president lost public approval, or that he lost Congress (in 2006), or that he lost control of the policy agenda. The critical arguments about Bush’s exercise of executive powers do not center on whether he was popular in the polls or got Congress to pass a Social Security bill, but rather on his alleged breaches of constitutional-based powers. Yet Roberts says at one point we need “to look beyond individual battles over presidential prerogative—the fight over presidential signing statements or over the breadth of executive privilege, for example—and consider instead the overall outcome of the struggle over executive power” (page 168). How is it possible to evaluate this struggle generally without examining whether and how the president overreached his constitutional authority in those—and other—important areas? Roberts, however, makes a key point that is hard to dispute: Bush indeed tried to expand his prerogatives and thus ratcheted up the level of debate in the U.S. over presidential powers. Thus the irony is that in trying to build up the presidency, Bush perhaps “undercut the capacity of future presidents” (page 169) to expand prerogative powers by putting this issue under greater scrutiny.