We look ae the problem of devising an optimal gerrymander from the standpoint of the political party in control of the redistricting process in a singlemember district system involving two-party competition. In an electoral universe with uncertainty, we show that the optimal partisan gerrymander is different from the classic recipe for partisan gerrymandering if parties are concerned with the l...

The estimation of vote splitting in mixed-member electoral systems is a common problem in electoral studies, where the goal of researchers is to estimate individual voter transitions between parties on two different ballots cast simultaneously. Because the ballots are cast separately and secretly, however, voter choice on the two ballots must be recreated from separately tabulated aggregate dat...

Non–traditional parties have had newfound success across European democracies contributing to increasing electoral volatility. Drawing from the literature on social movements, voting for an unconventional party can be a form of contentious politics. Support for non– mainstream parties is the institutional manifestation of the factors that contribute to social movements. Perceptions of political...

In recent years, there has been a growing research interest in social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which have been shown to be influential in reporting news and events around the world [1]. Twitter is a communication platform allowing users to report and comment on a wide range of topics, including political events. Indeed, both citizens and politicians are increasingly embraci...

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN PYSCHOLOGICAL EVALUATIONS INELECTORAL RISK: FURTHERING THE EXPLANATION OF THEGENDER GAP IN CANDIDATE EMERGENCEbyJENNIE SWEET-CUSHMANMay 2014Advisor: Dr. Ewa GolebiowskaMajor: Political ScienceDegree: Doctor of PhilosophyDespite decades of movement towards gender parity in other aspects of American society(e.g. education, busi...

Models of elections typically indicate that all parties, in equilibrium, will adopt positions at the electoral center. This situation, however, is seldom observed. This chapter outlines how an integrated theory of party strategy may be constructed based on a theorem for existence of Local Nash Equilibrium (LNE) in a stochastic electoral model where political agents have differing valence, or el...

Electronic voting provides accuracy and efficiency to the electoral processes. World democracies would benefit from a secure e-voting system not only to improve voter participation and trust but also to prevent electoral fraud. However, current e-voting systems are complex and have security weaknesses. In this paper, we describe a secure e-voting system for national and local elections (S-Vote)...

Throughout the world, elections are being used in increasing numbers of nations. Conducting elections is seen as providing legitimacy to elected leaders, as long as they are conducted fairly and with integrity. But it also seems that along with the trends toward more elections around the world there are increasing concerns about electoral fraud and the potential manipulation of the electoral pr...

It has been a standard result of the stochastic, or probabilistic, spatial model of voting that vote maximizing candidates, or parties, will converge to the electoral mean (the origin). This conclusion has appeared to be contradicted by empirical studies. Here, a more general stochastic model, incorporating ‘exogeneous’ valence, is constructed. Contrary to the standard result, it is shown in Th...