Robert Stein

Rice University · Department of Political Science

We revisit the effect of ballot access laws on voter confidence in the outcome of elections. Previous research found weak or no relationship between voter confidence and election laws regulating ballot access. We argue this non-finding is conditioned by partisanship. Democrats and Republicans view election laws through a partisan lens, which is esp...

Early voting laws intended to increase voter turnout seem to have had little to no effect on turnout. Why? We argue that the effects of early voting on turnout are contingent on campaigns providing citizens with information about the election, their choices, and how to vote early. When campaigns do so, turnout increases because citizens are more li...

We identify in-person early voting and no-excuse mail voting as antidotes for the depressing effect inclement weather has on voter turnout and the Republican dividend that accompanies rain and snow on Election Day. We offer and test an explanation for how voters utilize early voting to anticipate and avoid the costs of voting in bad weather. Replic...

This chapter reports the findings from a nationwide study of polling places attributes and practices in the 2016 presidential election. We compare these 2016 broad data to the prior research in limited jurisdictions. For 2016, research teams were recruited from colleges and universities located in 26 counties across 17 states. Student teams observe...

Nearly two-thirds of persons who receive an unsolicited ballot in the mail before Election Day choose to return their ballot in person, rather than through the less costly and more convenient U.S. Postal Service. Why? How and when voters choose to return their mail ballot is consequential to the administration of elections and the confidence voters...

This paper is the result of a nationwide study of polling place dynamics in the 2016 presidential election. Research teams, recruited from local colleges and universities and located in twenty-eight election jurisdictions across the United States, observed and timed voters as they entered the queue at their respective polling places and then voted....

Good education requires student experiences that deliver lessons about practice as well as theory and that encourage students to work for the public good—especially in the operation of democratic institutions (Dewey 1923; Dewy 1938). We report on an evaluation of the pedagogical value of a research project involving 23 colleges and universities acr...

We did not intend to hurt anyone. our goal had been to help our neighbors in the Houston area get out of danger. Yet in 2015 the phone started ringing, and Internet messages started piling up, saying we were making safety worse. “You are doing a disservice,” said one public official from a district on Houston’s northern edge. A meteorologist chasti...

We study how ballot completion levels in Colorado responded to the adoption of universal vote by mail elections (VBM). VBM systems are among the most widespread and significant election reforms that states have adopted in modern elections. VBM elections provide voters more time to become informed about ballot choices and opportunities to research t...

The proliferation of election reforms poses a challenge for local election officials (LEOs) charged with conducting elections. To meet this challenge, LEOs attempt to communicate, inform, and persuade voters how to cast their ballots in a manner that is efficient and effective for both the voter and the administrator. This article examines the effe...

In this article, we evaluate the usefulness of Google Consumer Surveys (GCS) as a low-cost tool for doing rigorous social scientific work. We find that its relative strengths and weaknesses make it most useful to researchers who attempt to identify causality through randomization to treatment groups rather than selection on observables. This findin...

What steps can and do local election officials take to prepare for and respond to natural disasters and emergencies that impede and disrupt the operation of scheduled elections? How efficacious are these actions and practices, and to what extent, if any, can these practices be generalized to the 3,000 + jurisdictions charged with conducting electio...

In this paper we inquire about the consequences of preparing for hurricanes for individuals and the larger community. Are there collective action benefits from individual-level preparation activities; do the actions individuals take to prepare themselves for a pending hurricane have social benefits for the entire community? We identify shadow evacu...

Americans are changing in terms of when and where they vote. We endeavor to find out whether these changes have affected the voting experience. Americans offer myriad reasons for not voting (Current Population Survey [CPS] 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010). Most of these excuses are beyond immediate remedy. There may be one exception: the way we conduct and...

Accurate estimation of risk to residential structures from hurricane winds is critical for emergency planning and post-event recovery. Fragility curves are widely used for assessing wind damage risk at the county and census tract levels in models such as HAZUS-MH. Large-scale evaluation of the predictive accuracy of these models has been hampered b...

This paper uses a case study of wetland regulation in the United States to develop elements of a theory about institutional stability and change in policy processes involving large public organizations. This theoretical approach draws on the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to understand events that are not well explained by other p...

The proportion of votes cast before election day has risen steadily over the last two decades. Previous research asked how early voting has impacted voter participation. In this article, we ask how early voting has affected the flow of information to voters through the mass media. By increasing the number of days voters are able to vote, are we als...

Accurate estimation of risk to structures due to hurricane wind hazards is critical for emergency planning and post-event recovery. A widely used model for assessing risks due to hurricane winds at the county or zip code level is the HAZUS-MH4 suite of programs developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Very few studies have attem...

Objectives In this article, we explore the different ways Americans exercise their right to vote on Election Day and how these alternatives shape the voter's experience. Methods Our study draws on data collected from exit polls with Election Day voters in the 2008 Colorado presidential election. Colorado is unique among the 50 states in that it aff...

Shadow evacuees have negative effects on hurricane-induced evacuation operations. The goal of this study is to understand and explain shadow evacuation by comparing perceived risks with engineering risk estimates at the household level-particularly in nonevacuation zones where undesirable evacuation decisions are made-rather than by comparing perce...

The reliability assessment of infrastructure systems providing power, natural gas, and potable water is an integral part of societal preparedness to unforeseen hazards. The topological properties of interface networks connecting electric substations to water pumping stations and natural gas compressors have received little attention, despite the ke...

In this paper, we examine whether early voting influences campaigns’ advertising strategies, specifically focusing on how early voting influences the volume, timing and content of paid political campaign ads. Understanding how election laws shape campaign advertising strategy is penultimate to asking how the effects of election laws on campaigns an...

Americans are enamored with term limits for elected officials at all levels of government. Explanations of public support for term limits focus on partisanship, group underrepresentation, voter dissatisfaction with specific political institutions, political cynicism, and ideology. We qualify the conventional wisdom that term limits are mostly a Rep...

Objective. This article offers an expanded perspective on evacuation decision making during severe weather. In particular, this work focuses on uncovering determinants of individual evacuation decisions. Methods. We draw on a survey conducted in 2005 of residents in the eight-county Houston metropolitan area after Hurricane Rita made landfall on Se...

Large tropical cyclones cause severe damage to major cities along the United States Gulf Coast annually. A diverse collection of engineering and statistical models are currently used to estimate the geographical distribution of power outage probabilities stemming from these hurricanes to aid in storm preparedness and recovery efforts. Graph theoret...

This article describes what is known and what is not known about voting early. It specifically refers to absentee voting, mail-in voting, and in-person early voting generally as 'early voting'. Moreover, it determines what is believed to be a fruitful research agenda on early voting, as well as the methodological challenges that scholars will likel...

The incidence of regional and metropolitan area intergovernmental relations is often explained in terms of efficiency gains for the participating jurisdictions (Stein 1990; Rusk 1993; Waste 1998; Katz 2000; Drier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom 2001). It is generally believed that local governments seeking to cut costs or provide a higher quality of ser...

In this paper we study the experience of individual voters on Election Day, November 2006, with two widely used voting technologies, optically scanned paper ballots and electronic vot-ing machines. The focus of our empirical analysis is the relationship between voting tech-nology and several dependent conditions, including voter satisfaction with t...

Previous election reforms designed to increase turnout have often made voting more convenient for frequent voters without significantly increasing turnout among infrequent voters. A recent innovation—Election Day vote centers—provides an alternative means of motivating electoral participation among infrequent voters. Election Day vote centers are n...

In this article, we seek to shed light on the micro-foundations of the Tiebout model. We use a survey of respondents in four of the largest United States metropolitan areas to analyze factors that contribute to households' exiting behavior. In this analysis, we explore the types of reasons likely movers offer to explain a potential move. The analys...

When do voters hold politicians accountable for events outside their control? In this article, we take advantage of a rare situation in which a prominent election in a large city followed a devastating flood. We find that voters are willing to punish the incumbent mayor for the flood if they believed the city was responsible for flood preparation....

Abstract Election Day vote centers are non-precinct based locations for voting on Election Day. The sites are fewer in number than precinct-voting stations, centrally located to major population centers (rather than distributed among many residential locations), and rely on county-wide voter registration databases accessed by electronic voting mach...

This report is an overview of a year-long study of Katrina evacuees living in Houston. Respondents were interviewed at three different times. The questionnaire was self-administrated (although respondents who could not read had the questionnaire read to them). The findings reported here constitute a brief overview of a large project involving 1,081...

Recent research suggests that over time the performance of minority officeholders rivals race-based attitudes and group membership as the primary determinant of citizen evaluations of minority officeholders. Here, we examine the determinants of electoral support for an African-American mayor in a multiracial/multiethnic venue. We test alternative e...

Much of the research on the distribution of federal assistance focuses on the activities of members of Congress. Yet it has been long understood that seeking and receiving federal aid programs by state and local governments is a costly activity. What is not understood nor carefully studied is how local jurisdictions attempt to “work” the federal ai...

Objective. Students of political behavior have often found that the primary use of languages other than English impedes many forms of political participation in the United States. We develop expectations about how language choice operates with social context to influence an individual's decision to vote. Although choosing to speak a language other...

In this article, we ask what the pattern of distributive spending has been during the 104th Congress, in which Republicans have been in the majority, compared to the preceding Congress when Democrats were the majority party. We seek to understand the patterns of change in light of four alternative explanations of distributive spending. The changes...

Studies of contextual processes have always involved the possibility that if individuals' aggregation into geographic units is not exogenous to their values on the dependent variable, then what appear to be ‘contextual processes’ may be solely due to selection effects. We propose a method to test whether observed contextual effects are real or phan...

In this article, we ask what the pattern of distributive spending has been during the 104(th) Congress, in which Republicans have been in the majority, compared to the preceding Congress when Democrats were the majority party. We seek to understand the patterns of change in light of four alternative explanations of distributive spending. The change...

Previous research finds that central-city and suburban indicators of economic development are strongly related. Missing from previous research, however, is an empirical test of the expected relationship between urban-suburban economic dependence and the structure of metropoli- tan-area governance. In addition, the impact of the state economy on thi...

The inter-group contact hypothesis states that intera ctions between individuals belonging to different groups will influence the attitudes and behavior between members of these different groups. The two dominant measures of inter-group contact are context (i.e., size of a minority group within a specified geographic area) and individual behavior (...

The inter-group contact hypothesis states that interactions between individuals belonging to different groups will influence the attitudes and behavior between members of these different groups. The two dominant measures of inter-group contact are context (i.e., size of a minority group within a specified geographic area) and individual behavior (i...

The authors extend the argument of the marginal consumer to show an important way in which the microlevel requirements of the Tiebout model can be met. They critique the existing literature on the microlevel requirements and argue that the way research has been conducted on the information about public goods possessed by citizens has been flawed in...

Objective. This article examines the correlates of early voting and its effect on voter turnout and electoral support for candidates. Methods. Aggregate data for early and election day balloting in Texas counties (N = 254) are analyzed for the 1992 presidential election. Additional data on the implementation of early voting in Texas counties were c...

This paper poses a deceptively simple question. It asks, how can a program or group of programs that provides distributive benefits to recipients in a minority of legislative districts be passed by a majority of a legislative body? The answer in the existing body of work on distributive policymaking would suggest that supporters of narrowly focused...

This paper articulates a model of distributive policy activity that links decreases in the flow of distributive policy benefits to House districts to an increased likelihood that quality challengers will oppose incumbents in primary and/or general elections. Do electorally vulnerable legislators seek to increase the flow of new awards early in the...

This book details the policy subsystems - links among members of Congress, interest groups, program beneficiaries, federal and subnational government agencies - that blanket the American political landscape. Robert Stein and Kenneth Bickers have constructed a database detailing federal outlays to Congressional districts for each federal program, an...

During the Reagan period4 the resilience and adaptability of domestic policy subsystems were subjected to the most severe test in recent history. Our explanation for the resilience and durability of these subsystems is based on the argument that the key actors in the subsystem adopt strategies that are mutually supportive of each other's needs and...

A recurring theme in the academic literature on distributive policy is the tendency for legislators to form oversized coalitions to bestow benefits on virtually every district represented in the legislature. In this paper we offer two tests of the universalism hypothesis. First, we examine the distributional expectation of the universalism thesis u...

It is an enduring belief in American politics that legislators who “bring home the bacon” are rewarded for their efforts at the ballot box. Most researchers, however, have been unsuccessful in corroborating empirically a relationship between allocations to member districts and reelection margins. Previous research may have failed to detect a relati...

Contemporary research on service delivery has been preoccupied with the issue of privatization. Specifically, the concern has been with whether a governmental or a nongovernmental entity is more effective and efficient in delivering publicly provided goods and services. This paper offers an alternative perspective on service delivery and examines t...

span style="font-size: 100%; font-family: Arial; color: #000000;" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"This paper suggests that individual voting behavior in municipal elections is most closely associated with voter concern with municipal economic development and basic city services. Redistributive issues and race are, as such, irrelevant in local electi...

span style="font-size: 100%; font-family: Arial; color: #000000;" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Rodney Hero\u2019s discussion of \u201cA Federalist Explanation of Municipal Elections\u201d is filled with thoughtful comments and criticisms. Many of his assertions directly support our own pronouncements while others prompt us -- and, hopefully, our...

This study examines the spending and employment practices associated with service contracting. Specific attention is paid to the aggregate spending and employment levels of different contracting practices. A principal-agent model is offered and tested in which the decision to contract is mediated by the preferences of different actors in the policy...

Economic voting is examined in gubernatorial and senatorial elections. The findings of this study show that the assignment of functional responsibilities in a federal system determines the subject of voters' retrospective and prospective candidate and party evaluations and thus differentiates the content of vote decisions at each level of governmen...

The assignment of functional responsibility in the American federal system is examined from the perspective of the municipal government. Tiebout's model of market maximization of individual preferences is contrasted with the more recent theories of Buchanan, Peterson, and Miller. The explanation that the historical origins of the city and the perme...

The sorting of residential populations among metropolitan area communities and its impact on municipal service bundles is studied across 216 metropolitan areas. There is strong empiricial support for the policy implications of Tiebout's model. The service bundles of metropolitan communities are significantly differentiated. Support for the homogene...

The fiscal impact of U.S. Military grants-in-aid for the years 1967-1976 is studied in light of the domestic grants-in-aid literature. Expectations of substitution behavior by the recipient countries are confirmed. Recipient countries during periods of non-conflict use U.S. assistance to maintain defense, and thus divert own-source military expendi...

The correlates of citizen-initiated municipal tax limitation referenda are examined for the period 1975–1977. Local level conditons are found to be only a partial explanation for the initiation andoutcome of tax referenda. State fiscal support (i.e., aids and direct spending) and constraints on local fiscal and programmatic activities are found to...

The correlates of citizen-initiated municipal tax limitation referenda are examined for the period 1975–1977. Local level conditons are found to be only a partial explanation for the initiation andoutcome of tax referenda. State fiscal support (i.e., aids and direct spending) and constraints on local fiscal and programmatic activities are found to...

This article reviews trends in the national total of the expenditures of state and local governments for the period of 1929–1982. The principle conclusions are that growth of federal grants has played a significant role in the growth of these expenditures, and that even after allowing for the effects of relative price, income, and federal grants, a...

Describes a study which examined changes in functions provided by city governments between 1967 and 1977. Changes in the financial and structural relationships between 845 municipalities with populations over 25,000 and their state and federal governments are examined. (AM)

Previous research on the distribution of federal aid monies has been dominated by the donor's perspective. Different distribution formulas, political influence of congressional representatives, bureaucrats, and individual aid recipients have been studied as the sole determinants of aid allocations. Each explanation, however, fails to examine the qu...

Past research on the allocation of federal grant-in-aid monies has centered on the government's effort to achieve "equalization" of monies across governmental units. This research has sought to determine whether those communities with the greatest need and the smallest fiscal capacity receive the greatest federal dollar support. Researchers, howeve...

Women have always held fewer political offices than men. Although comprising 53 percent of the total voting population, they hold only about 4 percent of all elective political positions. Moreover, the figures vary depending upon the type of political office. (More women hold state and local than national office.) These aggregate level data raise s...

Since all engineering devices discussed in this book (as well as many other devices of electrical engineering) are essentially based on the law of electromagnetic induction, it is appropriate to begin their study with a brief glance at the discovery of this fundamental law of nature.

As the reader knows, the terms synchronous motor and synchronous generator refer not to two different types of machines but rather to two different modes of operation of the same machine. They are discussed in two separate chapters because many of their problems of operation are different. Nevertheless, much of what was learned in the previous chap...

The transformer described in Chapter 5 accomplishes not only the transfer of power between power system components operating at different voltages, but also the electrical isolation of these components from one another. There are many cases when this latter feature is quite important. For instance, considerations of safety in case of accidental fai...

The operation of all generators and motors discussed in this book is based on Faraday’s law. Voltages are induced in a system of conductors moving relative to a magnetic field. In the case of a motor, this magnetić field may be produced by a current drawn from the same source as the main motor current. But where is a generator to draw its field exc...

The purpose of a power transformer, as explained in Section 1–3, is to enable different parts of a power system to operate at different voltages. Such a transformer may be interposed between a generator and a transmission line, between a distribution network and a load, etc. It should neither consume nor store any energy.

In many of the engineering devices to be studied in this book, there are time-varying or moving magnetic fluxes. For continuous operation, a time variation must be periodic, and this means usually sinusoidal. Any departure from this ideal waveshape can be, if necessary, taken into account by the principle of the Fourier series. That is, periodic wa...

The study of engineering devices begins almost invariably with simplifying assumptions. After this method has led to results, the effects of the assumptions upon the results can be investigated, both in theory and empirically. In some cases, such investigations reveal no significant difference between the simplified model and the actual device. In...

If a synchronous machine is to operate as a motor, it must receive electric power at its armature terminals. Since this study concentrates on three-phase machines, we shall visualize three armature terminals connected to a three-phase power system. This system, in turn, is energized by one or more generators whose function it is to supply the entir...

Among the various types of electromagnetic energy-converters to be studied in this book, the synchronous machine is the one that embodies the idea of relative motion between electric conductors and a magnetic field in its purest form. This machine also has the distinction of being practically the only type of generator for major power systems, in a...

The devices to be studied in this chapter do not serve as power converters; nor can they be considered as basic components of power systems. They are comparatively small-scale instrumentlike devices used mainly in automatic control systems, often in conjunction with the servomotors studied in Chapter 16. They do have similarities with rotating elec...

It may be difficult to imagine nowadays that in the early years of electric power engineering, there was a serious controversy about the relative merits of directcurrent and alternating-current power systems. The advocates of a-c systems, lead by innovators like Tesla,* were opposed by no less a giant of the engineering world than Edison, † who had...

The machines discussed up to this point, whether they are single-phase or polyphase, synchronous or asynchronous, generators or motors, are all operating with alternating currents and voltages. Their most important mode of operation is the sinusoidal steady state.

The machines to be studied in this chapter are basically induction motors, but their purpose is different from that of the motors discussed so far in this book. The name servomotors is meant to imply that they should be considered as auxiliary parts, namely, as components of automatic control systems. Their essential purpose is not power conversion...

At this point, the reader is reminded of the basic reason why electric energy is mostly generated and transmitted in polyphase form: only in this form can the energy be generated and transmitted at a uniform rate. This fact manifests itself in rotating generators and motors by the presence of the rotating magnetic field. In the steady-state operati...

There are several ways to express Ampère’s law, the relation between a magnetic field and the electric current or currents producing it.

For better or for worse, civilization is a goddess to whom we all pay tribute, and foremost among our payments is the use of electric power.

The operating characteristics of a d-c motor depend greatly on the type of interconnection between the armature and field windings. To study these characteristics, it is, therefore, very helpful to use so-called schematic diagrams that illustrate these connections in symbolic form. The conventional symbols for such diagrams will now be introduced.