Overview
- Offers a comparative overview of elections research on the US, UK, Australia, Spain, Ireland, etc
- Translates the results of academic research on elections worldwide for non-specialist scholars
- Provides specific recommendations for electoral reform in response to the insights of electoral constructivism
Part of the book series: Elections, Voting, Technology (EVT)
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About this book
This book presents a new democratic theory of election reform, using the tradition of political realism to interrogate and synthesize findings from global elections research and voting theory. In a world of democratic deficits and uncivil societies, political researchers and reformers should prioritize creating smarter ballots before smarter voters. Many democracies’ electoral systems impose a dilemma of disempowerment which traps voters between the twin dangers of vote-splitting and “lesser evil” choices, restricting individual expression while degrading systemic accountability. The application of innovative conceptual tools to comparative empirical analysis and previous experimental results reveals that ballot structure is crucial, but often overlooked, in sustaining this dilemma. Multi-mark ballot structures can resolve the dilemma of disempowerment by allowing voters to rank or grade multiple parties or candidates per contest, thereby furnishing democratic citizens with a broader array of options, finer tools of expression, and stronger powers of accountability. Innovative proposals for ranking and grading ballots in both multi-winner and single-winner contests, including referendums, are offered to provoke further experimentation and reform—a process that may help the cause of democratic elections’ relevance and survival.
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Keywords
- Electoral Reform
- Multi-Mark Ballots
- Single-Mark Ballots
- Exclusive and Distributive Insput
- Ballot Experimentation
- Voting Methods
- Voting Systems
- Voting Disempowerment
- Multi-winner contests
- Single-winner contests
- Referendums
- Voting Theory
- Political Theory
- Election administration
- Comparative elections
- Ranked choice voting
- FPTP
- constructionism
- realism
- V.O. Key
Table of contents (7 chapters)
Reviews
“Election outcomes are not unmediated reflections of public opinion. The ballots that voters are able to cast, and the rules for counting the ballots, are just as important as voters’ preferences. Social choice theorists have pressed this point against populists who uncritically hold up election outcomes as if they were revelations of the ‘will of the people.’. But populists are not the only ones who, neglecting the importance of electoral structure, make unwarranted inferences from election outcomes. Maloy shows that democracy’s detractors would also do well to keep electoral structure in mind: bad electoral rules can make voters out to look more foolish than they actually are. Instead of wishing for smarter voters, we should try to design smarter ballots, which allow voters to express a greater range ofjudgments than simply which option they consider best. Anyone interested in the prospects of empowering voters through electoral reform will benefit from reading this book.” (Sean Ingham, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, USA)
“An impressive study of the democratic dilemmas that electoral systems impose, often restricting individual expression and reducing systemic accountability. Maloy provides a critical assessment of why giving voters the possibility of ranking parties or candidates may solve this dilemma. The reader is guided through possible reform options with a compelling conceptual framework and rigorous evaluation of observational evidence, as well as original election simulations. The lessons we learn by reading thisbook apply equally well to the conduct of referendums, with innovative proposals for designing multi-option referendums. Political researchers and reformers will want to add this book to their reading list.”(Carolina Plescia, Assistant Professor of Government, University of Vienna, Austria)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Smarter Ballots
Book Subtitle: Electoral Realism and Reform
Authors: J.S. Maloy
Series Title: Elections, Voting, Technology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13031-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-13030-5Published: 19 June 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-13033-6Published: 14 August 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-13031-2Published: 08 June 2019
Series ISSN: 2945-7610
Series E-ISSN: 2945-7629
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XX, 229
Number of Illustrations: 48 b/w illustrations
Topics: Electoral Politics, Democracy, Governance and Government