Daniel A Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 3597204 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel A Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel A |
| FAMILY NAME | Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH D A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Florida |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0621-1098 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 74 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 873 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 73 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Leader-Motivated Behavior: Voting by Mail in the 2020 General Election
There is a large body of scholarship that probes the association of elite messaging and motivated reasoning with political behavior. Few studies, though, consider how these factors relate to validated mass behavior. Leveraging two national surveys, we assess voter alignment with President Trump and who voted by mail (VBM). Drawing on 2016 and 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES) data, we analyze the likelihood that Trump supporters: (1) voted by…
Validating Vote-by-Mail Ballots: The Subjective Nature of Signature Verification
Vote-by-mail (VBM) is an established electoral practice across the United States. Millions of voters cast VBM ballots every election, but roughly one percent of them are rejected by local election officials, according to data compiled by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission. Although scholars have examined a variety of issues associated with mail voting, including postal delays and signature deficiencies, few studies have probed the subjectiv…
Vote Method and Confidence in Elections
Might voters’ experience with how they cast ballots affect their confidence in votes being accurately counted? We analyze how vote modality shapes voters’ confidence in the accuracy of the vote count, particularly when one method of voting is called into question to challenge the legitimacy of an election. Drawing on a large panel survey of validated voters conducted before and after the 2020 General Election, we find that voters in Florida who v…
Assisting the vote? Disability as a cost of voting
Welcome to the Free State of Florida”: In-Migration and Rising Republicanism in the Sunshine State
What explains the Republican shift in Florida? Drawing on an original dataset—the result of processing and deciphering millions of registered voters' place of birth as recorded on their voter registration forms—we consider the party registration of migrants to the Sunshine State over each of the past dozen years. In addition to documenting that more recent voter election cycles reflect a growing trend in favor of GOP registration in Florida by th…
Not a Teammate and Not a Fan: Probing the Identities of Unaffiliated Registered Voters
For decades, in most states with a party registration option, the percentage of voters registering as unaffiliated with a major political party has steadily increased. But who are these registered voters in these polarized partisan times, and why might they register without a major party? We address these questions by drawing on parallel large-N original surveys of registered voters in two southeastern states experiencing a notable rise in regist…
Election administration harms and ballot design: A study of Florida's 2018 United States Senate race
We introduce a typology of election administration harms and apply it to empirically study the consequences of ballot design. Our typology distinguishes between individual, electoral, and systemic harms. Together, it clarifies why ballot design can be a particular vulnerability in election administration. Using both ballot‐level and precinct‐level data, we revisit Florida's 2018 United States Senate race, in which Broward County's ballot design f…
Campus Voting During the Covid-19 Pandemic
How did the pandemic impact turnout of young voters living in university communities? Leveraging the mandatory vacating of Florida college students living on campuses and drawing on administrative data from Florida’s voter file, we argue that on-campus registered young voters who had to leave their university housing in the days prior to Florida’s 2020 Presidential Preference Primary (PPP) were less likely to turn out compared to adjacent off-cam…
The changing South in presidential elections
We examine presidential elections in the American South. Our empirical starting point is the 2008 election of Democrat Barack Obama. We discuss political dynamics leading up to this historic contest but focus our analysis on the last four elections concluding with the defeat of President Trump in 2020. Tapping into recent southern politics scholarship emphasizing partisan patterns that differ based on population growth (or lack thereof), we show …
The fall of Trump: Mobilization and Vote Switching in the 2020 Presidential Election
Voters use salient issues to inform their vote choice. Using 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES) data, we analyze how short-, medium-, and long-term issues informed the vote for president in the 2020 election, which witnessed record-setting participation. To explain the dynamics of presidential vote choice, we employ a voter typology advanced by Key (1966). Specifically, compared to standpatters, who in 2020 registered the same major party vote…
Riot in the party? Voter registrations in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 capitol insurrection
Following the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, news outlets reported that registered Republicans were leaving the party in droves. Drawing on millions of individual-level voter registration records in Florida, we place post-riot party-switching in broader context. We investigate whether Republicans were more likely to experience greater out-migration after the riot, detail to which parties’ individuals switched their allegiances, …
Lying for Trump? Elite Cue-Taking and Expressive Responding on Vote Method
Might elite cues affect how we vote? Extant literature focuses on effects of elite cues on candidate evaluation or policy preference, but we know little about how they might affect vote method preferences. Drawing on a large survey of validated Florida voters, including those who regularly vote by mail, we find that retrospective and prospective misreporting of vote method prior to the 2020 General Election was driven primarily by support for Tru…
Weather to Vote: How Natural Disasters Shape Turnout Decisions
Natural disasters can uproot peoples’ lives in a matter of minutes, leaving behind immeasurable hardships on the people and places that they strike. We examine the impact on voter turnout of one such force majeure in the days leading up to a midterm election. Leveraging the randomness of a rapidly developing, unpredictable Category 5 hurricane, we assemble an original dataset to examine the effects of Hurricane Michael on voting in Florida in the…
Determinants of Rejected Mail Ballots in Georgia’s 2018 General Election
Because of the COVID-19 threat to in-person voting in the November 2020 election, state and local election officials have pivoted to mail-in voting as a potential solution. This method of voting—while safe from a public health standpoint—comes with its own set of problems, as increased use of mail voting risks amplifying existing discrepancies in rejected mail ballots. While some mail ballot rejections are to be expected, a lack of uniformity in …
Election Administration and Public Records Responsiveness
Is there an optimum method to elicit public records from election officials? Using a field experiment that randomly assigned the wording and email domains used to solicit public records, we test how county election offices respond to requests under given conditions. We find that the response rates of Florida’s 67 Supervisors of Elections (SOE) to a request for election administration data and election protocols after the 2018 General Election var…
Postal delivery disruptions and the fragility of voting by mail: Lessons from Maine
Since the onset in early 2020 of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, mail-in voting rates in states that have held elections have surged, presumably reflecting the fact that voting by mail is a relatively safe mode of ballot casting during a public health crisis. Matters of health notwithstanding, postal delivery disruptions can place mail-in ballots at risk of rejection on the grounds of lateness. With Maine as a case study, we show that…
Voting Lines, Equal Treatment, and Early Voting Check-In Times in Florida
Lines at the polls raise the cost of voting and can precipitate unequal treatment of voters. Research on voting lines is nonetheless hampered by a fundamental measurement problem: little is known about the distribution of time voters spend in line prior to casting ballots. We argue that early, in-person voter check-in times allow us identify individuals who waited in line to vote. Drawing on election administrative records from two General Electi…
Vote-by-mail Ballot Rejection and Experience with Mail-in Voting
Although most ballots in the United States have historically been cast in-person, Americans are increasingly voting by mail, a trend that accelerated in the 2020 General Election. Mail ballots can be rejected after being cast, and our analysis of the Florida general elections of 2016, 2018, and 2020 shows that voters inexperienced with mail voting disproportionately submit ballots that end up rejected due to (1) late arrival at elections offices …
Contemporary Views of Liberal Democracy and the 2016 Presidential Election
What are Americans’ views on liberal democracy? Have their attitudes changed since the 1950s? How do their attitudes about liberal democracy shape political behavior, such as vote choice? We replicated McClosky’s (1964) seminal study on a module to the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Our exploration of 26 survey questions reveals both continuity and change in Americans’ attitudes toward liberal democracy. Whereas Americans have bec…
A Failsafe for Voters? Cast and Rejected Provisional Ballots in North Carolina
Provisional ballots constitute a failsafe for voters who have their registration or voter identification questioned by poll workers. Scholars have yet to examine who is more likely to cast a provisional ballot, and more importantly, why some provisional ballots are rejected. We suggest that beyond individual-level factors, there are administrative reasons why some prospective voters are more likely to be required to cast provisional ballots than …
The Election of African American State Legislators in the Modern South
This study is the most comprehensive analysis of the election of black state legislators in the American South. We start with the election of Leroy Johnson to the Georgia Senate in 1962, the first African American to win a state legislative seat in the modern South. We also document the election of all subsequent African Americans who were the first to enter their southern state legislative chambers. Next, we assess the factors influencing the el…
Does threatening their franchise make registered voters more likely to participate? Evidence from an aborted voter purge
Prior research predicts that election administration changes that increase voting costs should decrease participation, but it fails to consider that some interpret those changes as attacking their franchise. Drawing on psychological reactance theory, this study tests whether such perceived attacks might instead activate those citizens. It leverages the State of Florida’s multi-stage effort in 2012 to purge suspected non-citizens from its voter ro…
Verifying Voter Registration Records: Part of Special Symposium on Election Sciences
This study investigates the reliability of Florida’s voter registration files through a phone survey, asking respondents to verify their records. We find 17.7% of registrants fail to verify at least one identifying piece of information. Applying the total survey error (TSE) framework, we classify these errors as due to coverage error, measurement error, or processing error. These inconsistencies create election administration and campaign ineffic…
Prayer in the Sayings Gospel Q
The earliest strands of the Jesus tradition, including the one attested by the Sayings Gospel Q, show a keen interest in prayer. In this volume, specialists in Hebrew Bible, early and rabbinic Judaism, and early Christianity contribute essays on a broad range of topics relevant to the Q materials on prayer. Several contributors situate Q in its historical and religious context by relating it to other early Jewish texts and traditions concerning p…
Early Voting Changes and Voter Turnout: North Carolina in the 2016 General Election
Enhancing Civic Engagement: The Effect of Direct Democracy on Political Participation and Knowledge
What is the impact of direct democracy on citizens' political participation and knowledge? Progressive Era reformers and normative theorists have argued that institutional procedures allowing citizens a more direct role in government decision-making will increase civic engagement, broadly defined. Using American National Election Studies data for 1996, 1998, and 2000, we test this hypothesis. Our multivariate analysis suggests that exposure to ba…
A Principle or a Strategy? Voter Identification Laws and Partisan Competition in the American States
We undertake a comprehensive examination of restrictive voter ID legislation in the American states from 2001 through 2012. With a dataset containing approximately one thousand introduced and nearly one hundred adopted voter ID laws, we evaluate the likelihood that a state legislature introduces a restrictive voter ID bill, as well as the likelihood that a state government adopts such a law. Voter ID laws have evolved from a valence issue into a …
The Educative Effects of Ballot Initiatives on Voter Turnout
Scholars have begun examining what Progressive reformers called the educative effects of direct democracy, especially the effect ballot initiatives have on voter turnout. Research based on aggregate-level voter age population (VAP) turnout data indicates that ballot measures increase turnout in low-information midterm elections but not in presidential elections. We analyze the impact of ballot initiative use on voter turnout from 1980 through 200…
The Effects of Ballot Initiatives on Voter Turnout in the American States
With few exceptions, voter turnout continues to decline in the United States. Although normative theorists, journalists, and defenders of participatory democracy frequently suggest that citizen-initiated ballot measures can increase voter turnout, previous research has not supported this claim. Yet, in the past 25 years, usage of direct democracy has exploded in the United States. Using pooled time series data for the 50 states over a 26-year per…
The Initiative to Party: Partisanship and Ballot Initiatives in California
Previous research on the initiative process tends to underestimate the involvement of political parties in ballot measure contests as well as the impact of partisanship on initiative voting. Focusing on recent ballot contests in California, we find that the two major party organizations in California are actively using ballot initiatives to bolster voter turnout for their candidates, divide the opposition with `wedge' issues and promote their own…
Race, Party, and the Consequences of Restricting Early Voting in Florida in the 2012 General Election
In mid-2011, the Florida legislature reduced the state’s early voting period from fourteen days to eight and eliminated the final Sunday of early voting. We compare observed voting patterns in 2012 with those in the 2008 General Election and find that racial/ethnic minorities, registered Democrats, and those without party affiliation had significant early voting participation drops and that voters who cast ballots on the final Sunday in 2008 were…
Political Engagement, Mobilization, and Direct Democracy
Journal Article Political Engagement, Mobilization, and Direct Democracy Get access Todd Donovan, Todd Donovan Address correspondence to Caroline J. Tolbert; e-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Caroline J. Tolbert, Caroline J. Tolbert Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Daniel A. Smith Daniel A. Smith Search for other works by this author…
Delegating Direct Democracy: Interparty Legislative Competition and the Adoption of the Initiative in the American States
Between 1898 and 1918, voters in 20 American states adopted constitutional amendments granting citizens the power of the initiative. The embrace of direct democracy by voters invites inquiry into why some state legislatures opted to delegate to citizens the power of the initiative, while others did not. Drawing on an original data set, this article uses Event History Analysis hazard models to explain the puzzle of why legislatures might devolve i…
Priming Presidential Votes by Direct Democracy
We demonstrate that direct democracy can affect the issues voters consider when evaluating presidential candidates. Priming theory assumes that some voters have latent attitudes or predispositions that can be primed to affect evaluations of political candidates. We demonstrate that: (1) state ballot measures on same sex marriage increased the salience of marriage as an issue that voters used when evaluating presidential candidates in 2004, partic…
The Instrumental and Educative Effects of Ballot Measures: Research on Direct Democracy in the American States
Political scientists are increasingly turning to direct democracy, as practiced in the American states, to investigate a broad range of questions dealing with median voter preferences and policy responsiveness, minority interests, theories of representation, policy implementation, political knowledge and behavior, citizen engagement, mobilization and turnout, voter competence, activities of interest groups and political parties, campaign finance,…
The Determinants of State Legislator Support for Restrictive Voter ID Laws
We examine state legislator behavior on restrictive voter identification (ID) bills from 2005 to 2013. Partisan polarization of state lawmakers on voter ID laws is well known, but we know very little with respect to other determinants driving this political division. A major shortcoming of extant research evaluating the passage of voter ID bills stems from using the state legislature as the unit of analysis. We depart from existing scholarship by…
Reprecincting and Voting Behavior
Electoral and structural losers and support for a national referendum in the U.S
Homeward Bound: Micro-Level Legislative Responsiveness to Ballot Initiatives
Recent macro-level studies examining the indirect effects of direct legislation on public policy in the American states are decidedly mixed. This study tests whether the macro-level logic of legislative behavior in response to ballot initiatives holds true at the micro-level for individual legislators. I examined the determinants of legislative votes on “counter-majoritarian” legislation—bills that directly challenge the outcomes of earlier state…
Strategic Voting and Legislative Redistricting Reform: District and Statewide Representational Winners and Losers
Political elites are generally reluctant to alter the status quo unless a change will benefit them. Scholars have found that institutions, and the rules governing them, tend to evolve in ways that maintain equilibrium, preserving the status of winners. Are voters—when presented the opportunity—more likely than elites to alter political institutions? Using survey data, the authors explore mass support in the American states for changing how legisl…
Timing the habit: Voter registration and turnout
Determinants of Rejected Mail Ballots in Georgia’s 2018 General Election
Because of the COVID-19 threat to in-person voting in the November 2020 election, state and local election officials have pivoted to mail-in voting as a potential solution. This method of voting—while safe from a public health standpoint—comes with its own set of problems, as increased use of mail voting risks amplifying existing discrepancies in rejected mail ballots. While some mail ballot rejections are to be expected, a lack of uniformity in …
The Effects of House Bill 1355 on Voter Registration in Florida
In mid-2011, the Florida state legislature passed House Bill 1355 (HB 1355) and in so doing placed new regulations on community organizations that historically have helped eligible Floridians register to vote. Among the legal changes promulgated by this bill were new regulations on the operations of groups like the League of Women Voters and a new oath, warning of prison time and fines, that voter registration agents were required to sign. Such c…
Direct Democracy, Public Opinion, and Candidate Choice
Journal Article Direct Democracy, Public Opinion, and Candidate Choice Get access Daniel A. Smith, Daniel A. Smith Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Caroline J. Tolbert Caroline J. Tolbert Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 74, Issue 1, Spring 2010, Pages 85–108, https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfp097 Published: 16 February 2010
Representation and Direct Democracy in the United States
Direct democracy is currently flourishing in the American states. The mechanisms of direct democracy, specifically the initiative, affect issues of representation in two fundamental ways. In reviewing the scholarly literature on direct democracy, we first highlight the instrumental outcomes of ballot propositions and how they directly or indirectly shape governance and public policy. We then examine the spillover or educative effects ballot measu…
Lying for Trump? Elite Cue-Taking and Expressive Responding on Vote Method
Might elite cues affect how we vote? Extant literature focuses on effects of elite cues on candidate evaluation or policy preference, but we know little about how they might affect vote method preferences. Drawing on a large survey of validated Florida voters, including those who regularly vote by mail, we find that retrospective and prospective misreporting of vote method prior to the 2020 General Election was driven primarily by support for Tru…
Revisiting Majority-Minority Districts and Black Representation
What is the minimum black population necessary to elect African-American state lawmakers? We offer the most comprehensive examination of the election of black state legislators in the post- Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) era. We begin by charting changes in the partisan affiliation of state legislators and the percentage of black legislators from 1971 to 2016. This descriptive assessment is undertaken according to important regional (Non-South and S…
Precinct resources and voter wait times
Voting Lines, Equal Treatment, and Early Voting Check-In Times in Florida
Lines at the polls raise the cost of voting and can precipitate unequal treatment of voters. Research on voting lines is nonetheless hampered by a fundamental measurement problem: little is known about the distribution of time voters spend in line prior to casting ballots. We argue that early, in-person voter check-in times allow us identify individuals who waited in line to vote. Drawing on election administrative records from two General Electi…
Early Voting Changes and Voter Turnout: North Carolina in the 2016 General Election
Notes and documents. The birth of 'concurrent endowment: George Cornewall Lewis, the London Review and the Irish-Church debate, 1835-6
Journal Article Notes and documents. The birth of 'concurrent endowment': George Cornewall Lewis, the London Review and the Irish-Church debate, 1835-6 Get access DA Smith DA Smith Grinnell College, Iowa, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 114, Issue 457, June 1999, Pages 658–663, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/114.457.658 Published: 01 June 1999
Howard Jarvis, Populist Entrepreneur: Reevaluating the Causes of Proposition 13
During the months immediately preceding California’s June 1978 primary election, Proposition 13, the fractious property tax ballot measure, received a dizzying amount of media attention. Newspaper columnists from California and around the country swapped partisan barbs, debating ad infinitum the initiative’s merits and faults. In public forums, political scientists and economists calculated and recalculated the measure’s possible effects and unin…
The process of direct democracy: Colorado’s 1996 parental rights amendment
Why are some statewide citizen initiatives in the American states successful at the polls and others not? Quantitative studies tend to emphasize the aggregate spending of the proponents and opponents of ballot measures when explaining ballot results. Substantial evidence, though, indicates that an array of nonmonetary variables also influence the outcomes of ballot measures. Through a critical case study of the failed 1996 Parental Rights Amendme…
The "assumption" of the righteous dead in the Wisdom of Solomon and the Sayings Gospel Q
The Wisdom of Solomon applies language from the Genesis reference to Enoch's assumption (Gen. 5:24 LXX) to the dead "righteous one" (Wis. 4:7-17). This unusual use of the motif of assumption, normally thought of as an escape from death, is facilitated by topoi drawn from Hellenistic consolation materials; however, the typical corollary of assumption in the Jewish tradition-heavenly or eschatological exaltation-is also applied to the righteous one…
Homeward Bound: Micro-Level Legislative Responsiveness to Ballot Initiatives
Recent macro-level studies examining the indirect effects of direct legislation on public policy in the American states are decidedly mixed. This study tests whether the macro-level logic of legislative behavior in response to ballot initiatives holds true at the micro-level for individual legislators. I examined the determinants of legislative votes on “counter-majoritarian” legislation—bills that directly challenge the outcomes of earlier state…
The Initiative to Party: Partisanship and Ballot Initiatives in California
Previous research on the initiative process tends to underestimate the involvement of political parties in ballot measure contests as well as the impact of partisanship on initiative voting. Focusing on recent ballot contests in California, we find that the two major party organizations in California are actively using ballot initiatives to bolster voter turnout for their candidates, divide the opposition with `wedge' issues and promote their own…
The Effects of Ballot Initiatives on Voter Turnout in the American States
With few exceptions, voter turnout continues to decline in the United States. Although normative theorists, journalists, and defenders of participatory democracy frequently suggest that citizen-initiated ballot measures can increase voter turnout, previous research has not supported this claim. Yet, in the past 25 years, usage of direct democracy has exploded in the United States. Using pooled time series data for the 50 states over a 26-year per…
Direct Democracy During the Progressive Era: A Crack in the Populist Veneer
Since its inaugural use in Oregon in 1904, direct democracy—as practiced in twenty-seven American states—has garnered its share of defenders and critics. While the debate over the merits and drawbacks of citizen lawmaking remains as contentious as ever, critics and proponents alike usually concur that two extra-legislative tools—the “citizen” initiative and the “popular” referendum—were most effectively used to counteract the legislative might of…
Media matters: Evaluating the role of the media in Ghana's 2000 Elections
The role of the media, both state‐owned and private, is an important and often overlooked component of any election, particularly those occurring in developing countries. Unfortunately, the existing academic literature on the subject is thin, especially concerning the recent flurry of democratic elections in Africa. This article briefly reviews the history of the media in Ghana's Fourth republic and then examines the crucial role the media played…
Ghana's 2000 elections: Consolidating Multi-Party Democracy
Consolidating democracy? The structural underpinnings of Ghana's 2000 elections
In 2000, Ghana's landmark elections ushered in a new era of democracy. Scholars, however, have yet to scrutinise the structural underpinnings of the country's electoral system. This article offers a detailed assessment of Ghana's bloated voters' register, patterns of voter turnout and the lingering accusation of electoral irregularities in the Volta and Ashanti Regions in the 2000 elections. Most significantly, it critically analyses the severe m…
Distorted by Outside Money: National Parties and the Race for Colorado's Seventh Congressional District
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Enhancing Civic Engagement: The Effect of Direct Democracy on Political Participation and Knowledge
What is the impact of direct democracy on citizens' political participation and knowledge? Progressive Era reformers and normative theorists have argued that institutional procedures allowing citizens a more direct role in government decision-making will increase civic engagement, broadly defined. Using American National Election Studies data for 1996, 1998, and 2000, we test this hypothesis. Our multivariate analysis suggests that exposure to ba…
Overturning Term Limits: The Legislature's Own Private Idaho
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Educated by Initiative: The Effects of Direct Democracy on Citizens and Political Organizations in the American States
"This body of research not only passes academic muster but is the best guidepost in existence for activists who are trying to use the ballot initiative process for larger policy and political objectives." --Kristina Wilfore, Executive Director, Ballot Initiative Strategy Center and Foundation Educated by Initiative moves beyond previous evaluations of public policy to emphasize the educational importance of the initiative process itself. Since a …
Voting the Agenda: Candidates, Elections, and Ballot Propositions
For the Many or the Few: The Initiative, Public Policy, and American Democracy
For the Many or the Few: The Initiative, Public Policy, and American Democracy. By John G. Matsusaka. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. 206p. $29.00.In the most recent wave of initiative use in the American states, citizens have passed an eclectic range of ballot measures. Voters have banned gay marriage, punished negligent doctors, prohibited the confinement of pregnant pigs, limited the taxation and spending powers of state govern…
The Educative Effects of Ballot Initiatives on Voter Turnout
Scholars have begun examining what Progressive reformers called the educative effects of direct democracy, especially the effect ballot initiatives have on voter turnout. Research based on aggregate-level voter age population (VAP) turnout data indicates that ballot measures increase turnout in low-information midterm elections but not in presidential elections. We analyze the impact of ballot initiative use on voter turnout from 1980 through 200…
Representation and Direct Democracy in the United States
Direct democracy is currently flourishing in the American states. The mechanisms of direct democracy, specifically the initiative, affect issues of representation in two fundamental ways. In reviewing the scholarly literature on direct democracy, we first highlight the instrumental outcomes of ballot propositions and how they directly or indirectly shape governance and public policy. We then examine the spillover or educative effects ballot measu…
Look Who's Coming to Dinner: Direct Versus Brokered Member Campaign Contributions to the NRCC
House congressional campaign committees (CCCs) have increasingly relied on incumbents for financial support during the past decade. To raise money for their party's CCC, incumbents can (a) contribute to the CCC through their own principal campaign committee and/or leadership PAC or (b) broker contributions from donors. The authors argue that direct incumbent contributions make available to the party campaign committee broader contribution network…
The Instrumental and Educative Effects of Ballot Measures: Research on Direct Democracy in the American States
Political scientists are increasingly turning to direct democracy, as practiced in the American states, to investigate a broad range of questions dealing with median voter preferences and policy responsiveness, minority interests, theories of representation, policy implementation, political knowledge and behavior, citizen engagement, mobilization and turnout, voter competence, activities of interest groups and political parties, campaign finance,…
The Rhetorical Role of Scripture in 1 Corinthians – By John Paul Heil
Lo, I Tell You a Mystery: Cross, Resurrection, and Paraenesis in the Rhetoric of 1 Corinthians – By David A. Ackerman
Priming Presidential Votes by Direct Democracy
We demonstrate that direct democracy can affect the issues voters consider when evaluating presidential candidates. Priming theory assumes that some voters have latent attitudes or predispositions that can be primed to affect evaluations of political candidates. We demonstrate that: (1) state ballot measures on same sex marriage increased the salience of marriage as an issue that voters used when evaluating presidential candidates in 2004, partic…
Delegating Direct Democracy: Interparty Legislative Competition and the Adoption of the Initiative in the American States
Between 1898 and 1918, voters in 20 American states adopted constitutional amendments granting citizens the power of the initiative. The embrace of direct democracy by voters invites inquiry into why some state legislatures opted to delegate to citizens the power of the initiative, while others did not. Drawing on an original data set, this article uses Event History Analysis hazard models to explain the puzzle of why legislatures might devolve i…
Political science (64 works) · Law (58 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (56 works) · Politics (56 works) · Law (45 works) · Voting (44 works) · Public Administration (40 works) · Public Administration (32 works) · Sociology (31 works) · Economics (29 works)