David B. Magleby

Participation in Mail Ballot Elections

LECTIONS are typically conducted on a single day during specified hours. With few exceptions, voters wishing to exercise their franchise must vote on that day at specified polling places. Although different cities or states use different ballot formats and voting systems (Rusk 1970; Walker 1966), the reliance on a single election day with voting at neighborhood locations has been a given in American politics. A major exception to neighborhood election day voting is absentee voting. Provisions for absentee voting have been liberalized in some states so that voters may now request and return their ballot through the mail (Walrath-Riley 1984). In the past few years, local governments of varying sizes have experimented with a new idea conducting an entire election by mail.2 Mail ballot elections differ from recent changes in absentee voting in that all registered voters are mailed a ballot and a return envelope. Mail ballot elections have the potential to increase voting, but do they? Are those who participate in mail ballot elections more representative than the kinds of people who vote in polling place elections? This article examines these questions in light of the elections conducted through the mails.

The Partisan Affinities of Independent ‘Leaners’

For almost a decade we have taken issue with the prevailing view of independent voters. We showed that Independents, as they were usually defined, had nothing in common, and in fact were more diverse than either Democrats or Republicans. Virtually no generalizations about Independents were correct, except by accident, because they comprise three very different kinds of people. Most Independents acknowledge that they are closer to one or the other party. The crux of our argument was that this ‘leaning’ should outweigh an initial claim of independence when deciding how to classify respondents. Our most striking finding was that leaners vote like outright partisans. We interpreted this as evidence that most professed Independents are not neutral between the parties, but are nearly as partisan as avowed Democrats and Republicans. This conclusion had major implications for both mainstream and revisionist views of American politics, all the more so because of the growing numbers of Independents, who accounted for 38 per cent of the adult population by 1978, thus matching the Democrats and leaving Republicans in a distant third place.

The money chase : congressional campaign finance reform

The amount of money needed to run a competitive congressional campaign is staggering, with special interests playing a central role in raising these funds. Also of concern is the declining competitiveness of House elections. And while recognition of the need to reform campaign financing is widespread, partisan and House/Senate differences over what these changes should be have complicated legislative efforts.Almost

Money, media, and the grass roots : state ballot issues and the electoral process

450 million was spent in both the 1986 and 1988 congressional campaigns, much of it coming from wealthy contributors and political action committees (PACs). Increasing criticism of the current system will undoubtedly force Congress to keep campaign finance reform on its legislative agenda.Using public opinion, election and campaign spending data, extensive interviews, and a knowledge of practical politics, Magleby and Nelson examine the central issues in the campaign financing debate: the cost of congressional campaigns, financial participation by the political parties and PACs, existing and proposed limits on contributions and expenditures, public financing, and the role of the Federal Election Commission. They propose a comprehensive package of reforms that will undoubtedly serve as a guide for future legislation.

Twenty Years of the Utah Colleges Exit Poll: Learning by Doing

Introduction An Historical and Political Profile of Four States An Overview of Fifteen Elections, 1976-80 Political Context and Issues Campaign Expenditures The Campaign I - Media Intensive Campaigns The Campaign II - Grass Roots Activity Voting Behavior Confusion and Rationality on Ballot Question The 1982 Elections High Spending, Old Issues Revisited, and the Nuclear Freeze Conclusion

Independent Leaners as Policy Partisans: An Examination of Party Identification and Policy Views

The primary purpose of this article is to describe how a Utah statewide exit poll is performed by undergraduate statistics and political science students at Brigham Young University (BYU) as an ambitious sampling class project. The article describes how BYU students are organized into a virtual polling firm and sample polling places throughout the state by training student pollsters from other Utah colleges and universities. Although the BYU students begin fall semester knowing very little about the polling process, student committees are assigned the tasks of modeling voter turnout, designing a complex sample, coordinating with county officials, creating the questionnaires, training pollsters, gathering data, computing sample estimates, and discussing on a live televised Election Day program why voters voted as they did. From a pedagogical perspective, exit polls have all the advantages of other sampling projects and one feature seldom found in statistical applications: Within 12 to 24 hours in most years, the vote tally is complete and the validity of statistical inference is demonstrated by comparing the sample projections and confidence intervals to the true parameter value! A second purpose of the article is to describe the Utah Colleges Exit Poll in

The Importance of the Record in McConnell v. FEC

Abstract Previous research has shown that Independents who lean towards the Democratic or Republican parties exhibit voting behavior similar to outright partisans. Less attention has been paid to the policy positions of Independent leaners. In this article we compare the policy positions of Independent leaners, Strong and not very strong Democrats and Republicans, and Pure Independents on five policy issues: the 2010 Affordable Care Act, the 2009 stimulus bill, the war in Iraq, abortion, and same sex marriage. On all five issues, Independent leaners are policy partisans; their positions are almost identical to the positions of outright partisans, and quite different from the views of Pure Independents. Analyses which consider Independents as one monolithic block are just as erroneous on policy issues as they are on political behavior.

Pi Sigma Alpha, the Political Science Honor Society: Seventy-five Years of Change and Growth

285 CAMPAIGN FINANCE REGULATION, as observed by the majority in McConnell v. FEC, has a long history.1 Passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), itself seven years in the making, reflected an incremental strategy tailored to political necessity and an assessment of what would pass judicial review. BCRA sponsors abandoned earlier reform ideas, such as public financing and vouchers for broadcast ads in hopes of securing a legislative majority. They also focused on the two areas of greatest abuse of the Buckley regulatory scheme as it had evolved over time—party soft money and interest group electioneering under the guise of “issue advocacy.” The two problems are interconnected, permitting widespread use of corporate and union treasury funds for electioneering advertising on broadcast or cable and making soft money contributions to political parties for candidate specific voter persuasion and mobilization efforts. The McConnell v. FEC decision makes substantial use of the legislative history, academic research and expert reports, as well as testimony from political practitioners. The importance of the record is the subject of this article. BCRA mandated an expedited discovery process resulting in a well-documented paper trial, incorporating the past academic and legislative debates on this topic and providing a rich data trove for future research.2 Large volumes of data were analyzed by experts from both sides. The total submissions, including reports, briefs and texts of depositions to the district court was 100,000 pages, not including video and audio submissions.3 As Thomas E. Mann has written, political scientists were heavily involved in the debates over campaign finance reform and, in contrast to the litigation surrounding the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) in the 1970s, much more involved in the BCRA litigation.4 Daniel Ortiz observes that “the record [in McConnell v. FEC] carried and framed the case.”5 The majority opinion reflects a thorough review of a record they describe as voluminous and ample.6 The major-

Referendum Voting: Social Status and Policy Preferences

Pi Sigma Alpha was founded in 1920 at the University of Texas with the purpose of bringing together students and faculty interested in the study of government and politics. Professor C. Perry Patterson was an early leader of the first chapter and served as president of the society from 1920 until 1932. The success of Pi Sigma Alpha at the University of Texas prompted other universities to adopt chapters. The University of Kansas and the University of Oklahoma established chapters in 1922. In March of that year the society held its first national convention at

The Myth of the Independent Voter

Tables Preface An Overview of the Referendum Process Theories of Electoral Behavior Correlates of Voting in Different Types of Elections Status and Voting in Non-Expenditure Referenda Status and Voting in Expenditure Referenda Conclusion Bibliography Index