David T. Canon

Electoral Systems and the Representation of Minority Interests in Legislatures

The rules and institutions used to translate preferences into electoral outcomes have a profound impact on the nature of representation provided in a political system. This is especially true when it comes to representing divergent racial and ethnic group interests. This essay examines the range of alternatives that nations have used to address this fundamental problem, with a focus on the representation of minority interests within U.S. legislatures. After a brief review of related issues, I examine the following questions: how should representation be provided to minorities within a majority rule system (the normative literature); how can representation be provided (the legal literature); and, how are minority interests represented (the partisan implications of racial redistricting and the broader empirical literature on representation).

Selection Method, Partisanship, and the Administration of Elections

The methods used to select public officials affect the preferences they bring to office, the incentives they face while in office, and, ultimately, the policy goals they pursue. We argue that the preferences and actions of local election officials (LEOs) differ depending on whether they are elected or appointed. We test these expectations with a data set that includes the survey responses of 1,200 Wisconsin LEOs, structured interviews, census data, and returns from the 2008 presidential election. Drawing upon a natural experiment in how officials are selected, we find that, compared to appointed officials, elected officials express greater support for voter access and expressless concern about ballot security and administrative costs. For appointed officials, we find that voter turnout in a municipality is lower when the LEO’s self-reported partisanship differs from the partisanship of the electorate but only in cases where the official is a Republican.

Vote Switching in the U.S. House

Previous work on voting behavior in Congress leads to an expectation of stability in roll-call voting. Yet, there remains a degree of unexplained variability in roll-call voting. Utilizing a unique set of data from the 103rd Congress of vote switching on revotes, we seek to account for the random component of congressional voting. We offer four categories of variables to explain this instability: leeway effects, error correction, reduction in uncertainty, and bandwagon effects. While these variables explain some of the variation in vote switching, our findings show that the individual random component of roll-call voting may be more significant than previous theory has indicated.

The Complicated Partisan Effects of State Election Laws

Conventional political wisdom holds that policies that make voting easier will increase turnout and ultimately benefit Democratic candidates. We challenge this assumption, questioning the ability of party strategists to predict which changes to election law will advantage them. Drawing on previous research, we theorize that voting laws affect who votes in diverse ways depending on the specific ways that they reduce the costs of participating. We assemble datasets of county-level vote returns in the 2004, 2008, and 2012 presidential elections and model these outcomes as a function of early voting and registration laws, using both cross-sectional regression and difference-in-difference models. Unlike Election Day registration, and contrary to conventional wisdom, the results show that early voting generally helps Republicans. We conclude with implications for partisan manipulation of election laws.

The Year of the Outsider: Political Amateurs in the U.S. Congress

The 2010 elections produced the largest number of political amateurs elected to Congress in more than sixty years. This article will examine both the popular fascination with amateur candidates and the scholarly interest in political careers. Specifically, I will discuss celebrity politicians, amateurs who become celebrities because of their unusual campaigns, the impact of the Tea Party, and the implications of the large class of amateurs for ambition theory and the strategic-politicians hypothesis.

A Review of “The Speaker of the House: A Study of Leadership”

put down this book with an acute sense of inadequacy about their knowledge of the U.S. Senate. Gold served as Majority Leader Bill Frist’s floor assistant during Frist’s first term as GOP floor leader, so he knows the procedures from the ground up. And being an attorney, he is very scrupulous in his treatment of the rules and precedents. Gold’s work also features a very helpful glossary of terms in the book and a complete set of the rules of the chamber. If I have any criticism of this carefully crafted and useful book, it is that it fails to capture the day-to-day terminology that one hears in the Senate and perhaps makes the book much more formal than it needs to be. A few examples: I have never heard a unanimous consent agreement referred to as a unanimous consent “order,” although that is its formal terminology. Familiar terms such as “hotlining” or “side-by-side amendment” don’t appear in the glossary, although Gold has a very nice and useful description of a “vote-a-rama.” He is also very good at explaining the dauntingly complex procedures laid down by the Budget and Impoundment Act and the budget reconciliation process, both in theory and in practice. If you are a Washington lawyer who has a Hill practice, a journalist who covers Congress, or an academic who needs a handy and readable reference book on Senate procedure, Martin B. Gold’s book deserves as conspicuous a place on your shelf as it has on mine.

Notes from the Book Review Editor

Biographical Directory of the American Congress. Washington, DC: CQ Staff Directories, 1997. Pp. xii, 2,108.

Recent Reference Works on the U.S. Congress and Presidency

295, hardbound. Metz, Allan, ed. National Service and AmeriCorps: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. Pp. xi, 269.

Race, redistricting, and representation : the unintended consequences of Black majority districts

69.50, hardbound. Sharp, Michael, ed. Directory of Congressional Voting Scores and Interest Croups Ratings, 2nd ed., 1996. Washington, DC: CO Press. 2-volume set, 1,542 pages.

Actors, Athletes, and Astronauts: Political Amateurs in the United States Congress

269, hardbound. Dodd, Lawrence C, and Bruce I. Oppenheimer. Congress Reconsidered, 6th ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1997. Pp. xix, 450.