Paul S. Herrnson

• University of Maryland, College Park

Super PACs are relative newcomers to American politics. Unlike most participants in federal elections, super PACs can make independent expenditures using funds raised in unlimited amounts from individuals as well as corporations, labor unions, and other organizations. Using a new dataset, we compare the financing of super PACs to the financing of t...

COVID-19 had a major impact on how some states administered the 2020 election and little effect on others. Using a new dataset, we identify the options states introduced to make voting safer, the measures they took to encourage voters to use these options, and the options’ effects on voter turnout. We show that most states introduced few, if any, s...

Election reform has allowed citizens in many states to choose among convenience voting methods. We report on a field experiment that tests messages derived from theories about government responsiveness, choice, information, and convenience on the methods that citizens use to vote, namely early voting, absentee voting by mail, and absentee voting us...

This note is a response to, and critique of, recent work by Acemyan, Kortum, Bryne, and Wallach regarding the usability of end-to-end verifiable voting systems, and in particular, to their analysis of the usability of the Scantegrity II voting system. Their work is given in a JETS paper [Ace14] and was presented at EVT/WOTE 2014; it was also descri...

The 2000 U.S. presidential election resulted in states introducing new voting systems and election administration procedures. The election also raised concerns that poor experiences at the polls would produce lower levels of confidence in the electoral process or lower turnout. Drawing on theories used in organizational psychology and marketing and...

Studies of ballots have traditionally focused on roll‐off, candidate order, and partisan advantage. This study is among the first to assess the impact of ballots on individual‐level voter errors. We develop new hypotheses by bringing together theoretical insights from usability research and political science about the effects of ballots with and wi...

Presidential influence is partly a function of the partisan, economic, and international context within which the president governs. Presidents are, however, more than bystanders relying on the political milieu for policy opportunities. Recent scholarship demonstrates that presidents consciously influence this milieu and build political capital by...

Theories involving coattails, surge and decline, presidential popularity, and the economy ascribe little importance to presidential efforts to influence congressional elections. Since such efforts do occur, we ask: What happens when a president campaigns for fellow partisans? We examined President George W. Bush's decisions to campaign for certain...

On November 3, 2009, voters in Takoma Park, Maryland, cast ballots for mayor and city council members using the ScantegrityII voting system—the first time any end-to-end (e2e) voting system with ballot privacy has been used in any binding governmental election. This case-study describes how we carried out this complex engineering feat involving imp...

Problems in the 2000 presidential election, especially in Florida, initiated a large-scale shift toward new voting technology. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal data, we report on the effects of changes in voting systems in Florida and Michigan. The variety of initial conditions and the numerous changes make these excellent case studies. We fi...

We report on our experiences and lessons learned using Scantegrity II in a mock election held April 11, 2009, in Takoma Park, Maryland (USA). Ninetyfive members of the community participated in our test of this voting system proposed for the November 2009 municipal election. Results helped improve the system for the November binding election.

The arrival of electronic voting has generated considerable controversy, mostly about its vulnerability to fraud. By comparison, virtually no attention has been given to its usability, i.e., voters’ ability to vote as they intend, which was central to the controversy surrounding the 2000 US presidential election. Yet it is hard to imagine a domain...

The 2000 presidential election brought intense scrutiny to the American election process, resulting in a number of significant reforms. Some changes involved overhauling rules for audits and other administrative procedures. Others involved the ways in which voters record their votes. The latter set of reforms raised questions about the type and qua...

Electronic voting systems were developed, in part, to make voting easier and to boost voters' confidence in the election process. Using three new approaches to studying electronic voting systems—focusing on a large-scale field study of the usability of a representative set of systems—we demonstrate that voters view these systems favorably but that...

The 2000 election called attention to the need for assessing the usability of voting systems and accelerated the introduction of electronic voting systems across the United States. An expert review, usability laboratory study, and field study were conducted to assess six electronic voting systems and four vote-verification/election audit systems. T...

Conventional wisdom suggests that political consultants encourage candidates to “go negative” and to accept the ethos of winning election at any cost. However, recent studies indicate that some campaign professionals draw ethical distinctions between different forms of negative campaigning. While there is a growing literature on campaign consultant...

Expert reviews, laboratory tests, and a large-scale field study of one paper/optical scan and five electronic voting systems suggested numerous possible improvements. Changes could be made in all aspects of the process-signing-on, navigating across the ballot, checking and changing votes, casting write-in votes, and reviewing and casting the ballot...

Women have made significant strides in politics, but differences persist in how female and male candidates conduct their campaigns, including their willingness to use negative campaign tactics. Theories of contextual politics suggest that negative campaigning violates traditional female stereotypes and that female candidates should be less likely t...

Objective. This study examines the backgrounds, political attitudes, issue preferences, and political participation of congressional donors who contribute $200 or more to congressional campaigns. Methods. We use a nationwide survey of more than 1,000 donors and analyze differences among these individuals using cluster analysis. Results. Although th...

The interdisciplinary project uses a variety of research designs, data collection methodologies, and analysis techniques and two ballot designs to assess five commercially available electronic voting systems and one prototype system developed specifically for the project. Each system is tested using an office bloc ballot and another standard ballot...

With the recent troubles in U.S. elections, there has been a nationwide push to update voting systems. States and localities are investing heavily in electronic voting systems, many of which use a touch screen. These systems offer the promise of faster and more accurate voting; however, the current reality is that they have some shortcomings in ter...

With the recent troubles in U.S. elections, there has been a nationwide push to update voting systems. Municipalities are investing heavily in electronic voting systems, many of which use a touch screen. These systems offer the promise of faster and more accurate voting, but the current reality is that they have some shortcomings in terms of voter...

This study assesses the impact of campaign effort and election reform on voter turnout in state legislative elections. It uses a nationwide survey of state legislative candidates to measure various campaign activities and combines this information with data on election laws, political conditions, and district-level demographics. The primary finding...

The interdisciplinary project uses a variety of research designs, data collection methodologies, and analysis techniques and two ballot designs to assess five commercially available electronic voting systems and one prototype system developed specifically for the project. Each system is tested using an office bloc ballot and another standard ballot...

Do issues matter? This article extends recent research on issue voting and campaign agenda-setting to voting decisions in congressional elections. We use a unique data set that includes information from a survey of candidates and campaign aides who competed in the 1998 House elections and a survey of individuals who voted in them. The study assesse...

We know that state legislative election campaigns have become increasingly expensive in recent years, but have they also become more professionally run? We assess the degree to which campaign professionals have proliferated in state legislative election campaigns and explain this development in terms of the institutional changes in state legislatur...

Campaign finance reform has become a hotly debated issue at both the federal and state levels. Maine and Arizona became the first states to implement a fully subsidized public finance system for legislative candidates during the 2000 election. Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Hawaii have provided partial public funding to legislative candidates for severa...

Curiosities and inconsistencies in the format of U.S. election ballots go far beyond the infamous ballot. Ballot instructions, candidate and party listings, party symbols, and, in general, variations that result from a complex and highly decentralized election system provide ample opportunity for all but the most sophisticated voters to misundersta...

With recent troubles in U.S. elections, there has been a nationwide push to update voting systems. Municipalities are investing heavily in electronic voting systems, many of which use a touch screen. These systems offer the promise of faster and more accurate voting, but the current reality is that they are fraught with usability and systemic probl...

Four counties in Maryland used new touch screen voting machines in the 2002 elections, replacing their mechanical lever and punch card voting systems with the AccuVote-TS touch screen voting machine manufactured by Diebold Election Systems. The Center for American Politics and Citizenship (CAPC) and the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) at the...

Objective. Labor unions have played an active role in congressional elections over the past two decades, providing candidates with cash contributions and campaign services in management and strategic decision making, mass media advertising, fund-raising, voter registration, and the recruitment of volunteer workers. This study examines how unions ta...

In 1981 House Democrats adopted a new set of mechanisms-the Committee on Party Effectiveness, task forces to draft issue manifestos, and the Message Board to perform public relations activities-intended to unite their membership around a core set of issues, put forward a national political agenda, and elect a Democrat to the White House. Although o...

The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.

Nowhere in the U.S. is federalism more evident than in the administration of elections, as the Constitution and historical practice leave this largely in the hands of the states (and even counties within states). Consequently, voters across jurisdictions are likely to have different experiences at the polls. We examine the impact of state party org...

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Summary In February of 2002 the American Bar Association (ABA) called upon states that elect their judges in contested elections to publicly finance their campaigns. This testimony examines judicial candidates' perspectives on some of the ABA's recommendations for campaign finance reform. Our survey data shows that most judicial candidates are diss...

Abstract will be provided by author.

Although most of the attention in the debate over the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) and its impact has focused on soft money and issue advocacy, the law also increases the limits on donations that individuals can give to candidates and to political parties. This provision was actively debated, and both sides shared an assumption tha...