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Participation in the administration of elections and perceptions of electoral integrity
Abstract
In recent years, election administration has become a subject of intensified debates, raising questions of how to organize elections to ensure electoral integrity. One question concerns who should serve as members of polling station boards, administer election day proceedings, and participate in the vote count. Different models co-exist in modern democracies, with some countries – among them Austria – actively involving the political parties in the election administration. Against this background, this paper examines perceptions of electoral integrity among Austrian poll workers and citizens using data from an original survey of poll workers and survey data of the voting population. The results show that poll workers have greater confidence in the election administration than regular voters but are equally or more skeptical regarding other aspects of electoral integrity. Also, their partisan background shapes perceptions of electoral integrity. To conclude, we discuss the benefits and limitations of the ‘party model’ for poll worker recruitment.
... Research in political science has not paid much attention to the topic of poll workers' evaluations of elections, which is surprising, because elections are the most important part of the democratic process. Most of the existing literature about poll workers' experiences of elections has focused on the USA (e.g., Atkeson et al. 2014; Suttmann-Lea 2020), on Great Britain to some extent (Clark and James 2017;James and Clark 2020), and on a few other countries, for example Austria (Partheymüeller et al. 2022). 1 Several previous studies in the research field have focused on rules relating to identification, such as identification requirements for voters, and on voters' evaluations of poll workers. For example, Atkeson et al. (2014) use data from a post-election survey of randomly selected New Mexico poll workers when they investigate why poll workers asked voters for photo identification in the November 2008 election. ...
... A previous study (Partheymüeller et al. 2022) has shown that poll workers and voters rate election administration and electoral integrity differently. This study focuses only on poll workers' evaluations of elections, and voters' views are not considered, which could be seen as a limitation. ...
In democracies, elections in which voters elect their leaders and hold them accountable are the most important part of the democratic process. This study is about the people who work on the frontline of democracy and who play a major role in elections, namely poll workers. Surprisingly little is known about how poll workers evaluate elections, and we provide a detailed analysis of poll workers' views of how elections work in Sweden. We do this by reporting and analysing the results from a survey conducted among poll workers in Sweden shortly after the 2022 election. The results show that although many types of polling station-related problems were rare, some problems occurred to a greater extent than we expected. It is also clear that many of the problems had a negative impact on the poll workers' evaluations of the quality of the voting process.
... The involvement of the community holds significant meaning in the realm of election monitoring, as it serves to ensure transparency, accountability, and equality during the electoral process. Active community engagement in election monitoring is vital for preventing and exposing potential violations or irregularities, thereby enhancing the integrity and credibility of the electoral process (Partheymüller et al., 2022). Active community participation in election monitoring yields several benefits, including the prevention of election violations (Junaidi, 2013). ...
Elections are a fundamental mechanism within the democratic framework, facilitating the selection of leaders and representatives who will be the voice and embodiment of the people. The preservation of integrity and fairness in the conduct of the electoral process is essential to ensure proper representation and foster public confidence in the final outcome. This study aims to explore previous research that has been conducted in the area of public participation in election monitoring and provide in-depth analyses. This study is a qualitative research. Data collection techniques include listening and recording important information to conduct data analysis through data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing. The findings of this study show that the involvement of the general public in the management of election monitoring plays an important role in upholding the principles of integrity, transparency and trust in the electoral system. The public has the opportunity to be actively involved in monitoring, reporting and supervising the conduct of elections through both direct and institutionalised participation mechanisms. Strong public participation can also serve as a mechanism to prevent and detect potential election violations, increase the level of transparency, and improve the credibility of election results.
... That is, a presidential election could be different from the parliamentary or gubernatorial election. In these views, the political behavior of the people determines the voting pattern of each election in the country Partheymuller et al. (2022). In Nigeria, as a case study in Africa, political participation has been very high since the inauguration of democracy in 1999. ...
This article investigates the electoral administration in Nigeria, focusing on conflicts and problems in the Fourth Republic. Nigeria’s transition to democracy in 1999 involved the crucial role of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The study aims to highlight that both international and local electoral observers have reported deficiencies in the initial elections conducted by INEC, which have had negative impacts on democracy in Nigeria. Additionally, the article discusses how an incumbent political party may collaborate with INEC to manipulate election results in their favor. Consequently, INEC has faced accusations from opposition parties after announcing electoral outcomes. The article argues that INEC has not maintained political independence in managing elections in Nigeria and suggests that INEC should be more powerful than the incumbent government. The study utilized qualitative and primary documents as its research methods.
... Moreover, while moral reasoning and integrity, shaped by ethical culture, are known to prevent fraud, there is a need to investigate how values-based training can be optimised to alter perspectives on misconduct effectively (Khusnah & Soewarno, 2022). Furthermore, Partisanship's influence on poll workers' integrity perceptions, despite their higher election confidence compared to voters, indicates a research gap in how recruitment models can mitigate the impact of partisanship on the integrity of electoral processes (Partheymueller et al., 2022). ...
This systematic review synthesises and analyses current research on ethical behaviour and integrity among public sector employees. Despite the growing emphasis on ethics in public administration, there remains a significant gap in consolidating the diverse factors influencing ethical conduct and integrity. Employing the Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) approach, a comprehensive search of Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) was conducted
using the keywords (1) ethical behaviour, (2) employee, and (3) public sector. The final dataset included (n = 44) relevant articles meticulously reviewed and validated by experts. These articles were categorised into four coherent themes: (1) factors influencing ethical behaviour and integrity in the public sector; (2) challenges and barriers to ethical behaviour and integrity; (3) the leadership
role as well as trust with regard to enhancing ethical behaviour; and (4) the implementation and prevention of ethical issues. Key findings indicate that ethical leadership, organisational culture, personal dispositions, education, professionalism, and holistic approaches are vital to fostering ethics in public service, and comprehensive initiatives are needed to address systemic and individual barriers to ethical conduct and integrity.
... Basically, there are three kinds of general election objectives: enabling the transition of government in a safe and orderly manner, exercising people's sovereignty, and exercising the rights of citizens. General election is a democratic process that is held periodically to produce representatives of the people or leaders who can voice the interests of the people, maintain national stability, and create a legitimate and democratic government [1]. ...
... Relatedly, people with stronger antimedia populist attitudes are more susceptible to alternative information sources, which are said to produce popular political mythologies and are often associated with domestic or foreign actors' strategies to undermine institutional legitimacy and to destabilize elections (Bennett and Livingston, 2018). As a result, even in objectively fair elections, the deep-seated distrust towards the established system, including both the political elites and news media, means that citizens with populist attitudes are less likely to believe in the fairness of elections due to electoral fraud or other flaws (Edelson et al., 2017;Partheymueller et al., 2022). Hence, we expect that people with stronger populist attitudes are more likely to perceive a lower level of election fairness at the European election level (Hypothesis 4). ...
If elections are to perform their legitimizing role, they should not only be objectively free, fair and non-fraudulent, but should also be perceived by the public as such. This paper investigates who perceives elections to be fair and why by contrasting two main logics: one based on the idea that perceptions of election integrity arise from external cues voters get from their environment and a second logic claiming that perceptions are internally created based on attitudes and beliefs. We use original survey data collected in ten countries around the European Elections 2019. We find that perceptions of election fairness are unrelated to country levels of integrity but mainly relate to voters’ status as winners/losers of the elections, attachment to the institutions they elect and populist attitudes. We also find beliefs on fake news influence to weakly mediate the relation between populist attitudes and perceptions of election fairness.
... Democracy, in this sense, is referred to as representational. It can be "democratic" to some extent because it is founded on the two tenets above of equality for all (one person, one vote) and the right to some measure of personal autonomy for every person (Partheymüller et al., 2022). ...
This study aims to determine the framework related to the Government Policy of determining the Average weightage against each citizen of the country, which will decide the value or impact of the Individual Vote given to the Candidate by the Voter in the Election process and similarly that Average Weightage will be deciding the Election Candidate validity to run in the Election. Researchers are doing research work in this specific use case using 'Qualitative Research.' This research data was taken from social media, Online Media, Websites, Journals, and Articles and then represented in descriptive format. This study indicates that the creation of this Policy will surely improve the quality of the Election process in the country and build more trust in the Citizens in the Electoral Process. There are several milestones that need to be fulfilled for the development and successful implementation of this policy-first, the analysis and determining the critical indicators required for the Average Weightage calculation. Second, the selection of the medium for the solution. Finally, then start the development of the solution based on the analysis. This paper is limited to the extent to which the problem is clearly described, then proposing the solution and how it should work, and lastly, what benefits the solution will be given to resolve the challenge the current Election process is facing.
... While previous research has acknowledged the role of institutional characteristics (Birch, 2008) and party identification (Beaulieu, 2014;Cantú and García-Ponce, 2015) in shaping citizens' assessment of elections, less attention has been paid to ways in which personal experiences at the voting booth might be correlated with perceptions of electoral integrity. To bridge this gap, we build upon recent research comparing poll workers to the general population (Partheymueller et al., 2022) and examine how differences in citizens' exposure to electoral integrity issues and the administration of electoral processes might be linked to their perceptions of electoral fairness. Therefore, our analysis focuses on the following research questions. ...
Trust in the integrity of the electoral process is essential for a functioning democracy. However, doubts about the legitimacy of electoral processes have increased in established and emerging democracies. We analyzed electoral integrity perceptions and related variables across 26 elections and 18 countries using post-election surveys conducted between 2004 and 2021 as part of the Comparative National Elections Project. We found that citizens' experiences of electoral integrity failures, such as bribery and intimidation, are crucial in shaping their perceptions of electoral integrity. Additionally, we found that autonomous electoral offices have little effect on citizens' perceptions of integrity and freedom in the electoral process. Finally, electoral integrity perceptions significantly impact attitudes towards democracy. Our results emphasize the importance of well-functioning electoral processes and institutions in upholding the legitimacy of democracies.
... Berbeda dengan penyelenggaraan pemilu di Kenya yang tingkat kepercayaan pemilih terhadap penyelenggara pemilu ISSN PRINT : 2502-0900 ISSN ONLINE : 2502-2032 semakin menurun, pemilih berharap penyelenggara pemilu bisa transparan dan tidak melakukan intervensi (Marx et al., 2017). Di Austria, partisipasi pemilu kelompok usia 18-21 tahun masih memerlukan motivasi untuk sadar menggunakan hak pilihnya, meskipun kepercayaan generasi muda terhadap proses politik relatif rendah (Partheymüller et al., 2022). Akurasi merupakan hal yang penting dan merupakan kepentingan konstitusional di Australia, sehingga peran pemantau adalah memastikan sistem beroperasi sesuai aturan (Teague & Keyzer, 2020) Oleh karena itu, penelitian ini ingin mengkaji peran pengawas pemilu dalam proses pemilu, khususnya dalam proses pendataan pemilih untuk meningkatkan kepercayaan pemilih. ...
Performance as a result of work related to organizational goals such as quality, efficiency and other effectiveness criteria, the quality of voter data is one of the goals of holding elections. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which the performance of election supervisors influences the improvement of the quality of voter data in the South Sulawesi Province region. The research will be carried out using a qualitative approach, namely a more in-depth approach that will result in a more comprehensive study of existing phenomena, in addition to the method of collecting data by conducting interviews with informants and sources who are in direct contact with the object of research, there are 8 informants who consisting of election supervisors (Bawaslu), technical implementers (KPU) and people who have been registered as voters. The results of this study are to show that there is a positive and significant relationship between the performance of election supervisors in carrying out their duties and responsibilities with the quality of voter data, especially in the province of South Sulawesi, even though currently the quality of voter data has not yet reached a quality value because there are still many problems left from the start. election until the completion of the election so that it takes the active role of all parties such as society and government.
... A free and fair election highlights the indicators of a healthy practice of democracy in a country. Citizens of an organisation or nation show their support or opposition to the policies and operations of the government through these elections [1,2]. In our country, elections are held every 4-5 years, and sometimes, these occur in different phases for different States [3]. ...
In this paper, an end-to-end secure, anonymous, anti-quantum, tamper-resistant e-voting system has been proposed using blockchain-based decentralized architecture. The available key generation and key exchange algorithms have been analyzed based on different parameters. Currently, almost all models are prone to quantum type of attacks. The proposed methodology implements the concepts of quantum cryptography, thus preventing these types of attacks. After the registration and authentication phases, voters cast votes which are then encrypted using Elliptical Curve-Diffie–Hellman key agreement protocol. Smart contracts and some libraries are used for automating the execution. These contracts are deployed over Polygon network that uses a modified proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. Polygon has the ability to process the transactions at a faster rate and also has lower transaction fees compared to Ethereum. InterPlanetary File system (IPFS) which is a more reliable and decentralized alternative to cloud storage system has been used. It also provides security benefits and makes it impossible for the third party to access the voting information.
... La integridad electoral es un concepto multidimensional que se refiere a gran variedad de aspectos a lo largo del ciclo electoral, como las leyes y procedimientos electorales, el proceso de votación, el conteo de votos y la declaración de resultados (Várnagy y Ilonszki, 2017). La percepción que la ciudadanía tenga sobre la existencia y garantía de dicha integridad afecta su disposición a participar en los procesos de elección popular (Partheymüller et al., 2022;Stockemer, 2018). La transparencia, como atributo de la integridad, conlleva la exigencia de realizar seguimiento al proceso electoral, incluyendo el control de las herramientas tecnológicas en la fase de escrutinio y la auditoría del software empleado por los organismos encargados de la gestión del proceso electoral (Zhang et al., 2021). ...
La tecnología es fundamental en el desarrollo de procesos electorales. Este factor tuvo incidencia en los comicios de 2014 en Colombia, especialmente en la transparencia de la gestión electoral (GE). El objetivo de este artículo fue proponer lineamientos de gestión tecnológica (GT) enfocados en el escrutinio electoral, donde se definen los resultados de las elecciones populares. La metodología seguida fue de tipo cualitativo y con un enfoque interpretativista, orientado al entendimiento de la unidad de estudio desde la administración, de forma complementaria a sus bases jurídicas y políticas. Se desarrolló en cuatro fases, empleando en las dos primeras de revisión documental y análisis de contenidos de fuentes de información actual sobre el escrutinio en Colombia, para desarrollar un análisis DOFA de este proceso, como base para generar, en la tercera fase, una propuesta de gestión tecnológica para el escrutinio, validada por medio de juicio de expertos en la cuarta fase. El diagnóstico evidenció debilidades como falta de control y tercerización, que impactan en la integridad, transparencia y legitimidad de las elecciones, pero también fortalezas en cuanto a disponibilidad de herramientas informáticas y certificaciones de calidad. La propuesta de GT está conformada por seis etapas: identificación de necesidades tecnológicas para la transparencia del escrutinio, selección del rumbo tecnológico, acceso a la tecnología, protección, explotación y mejora continua. Se concluye que la implementación de tecnología debe enlazarse con una visión sistemática y estratégica al interior de procesos como el escrutinio electoral para garantizar transparencia y aportar a la integridad electoral. Esta propuesta constituye una hoja de ruta hacia la implantación progresiva de medidas de transparencia, trazabilidad, seguridad y auditabilidad, en concordancia con la modernización normativa y de gestión, para mitigar deficiencias históricas con efectos críticos, y busca ser referente de mejora y credibilidad de la gestión de las elecciones y la democracia en Colombia.
... 348-349). Previous studies have focused on assessments by independent election observers (Hyde, 2011;Roussias and Ruiz-Rufino, 2018), electoral officials and practitioners (Garnett and James, 2021), election agents of political candidates (Fisher and Sällberg, 2020), poll workers (Partheymüller et al., 2022), country experts Martínez i Coma and van Ham, 2015), and ordinary citizens (Birch, 2008;Bowler et al., 2015;Coffé, 2017;Garnett, 2019;Schnaudt, 2023a). While these studies have made substantial headway in illuminating our understanding concerning the quality of elections as well as the causes and consequences of electoral-integrity beliefs, they have thus far completely neglected the perspective and perceptions of political elites (for a notable exception, see Rosas, 2010). 2 In light of recent developments in many advanced democracies, with political elites increasingly relying on rhetoric that questions the fairness and integrity of democratic elections (Norris et al., 2020;Schmitt-Beck and Faas, 2021;Fogarty et al., 2022), this omission in the scholarly debate is not only inimical to an encompassing understanding of electoral integrity as such. ...
Elections in many democracies have come under attack "from within", with political elites challenging the integrity of the electoral process and calling its outcomes into question. Such allegations may delegitimize democratic outcomes and compromise citizens' confidence in elections. Yet aside from their rhetoric, little is known about political elites' electoral-integrity beliefs. This study breaks new ground by investigating how political elites perceive the integrity of elections, and which factors may account for differences in their electoral-integrity beliefs. Using innovative data from the 2021 candidate survey of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), the empirical analysis shows that political candidates exhibit mostly positive views about the integrity of the electoral procedures and the 2021 election, while being more skeptical about the fairness of the campaign period. Moreover, the findings show that negative campaign experiences, an affiliation with a populist political party, and electoral defeat are important drivers of candidates' skepticism about the integrity of elections. These findings provide novel insights on the nature, background, and diagnostic significance of political elites' electoral-integrity beliefs in modern democracies.
Hingga saat ini, dualisme kelembagaan lembaga pengawas pemilu dan pilkada di Aceh masih terjadi. Kondisi tersebut masih menyisakan masalah dalam pelaksanaan pengawasan pemilu dan pilkada di Aceh. Artikel ini memfokuskan bahasan pada aspek pilihan kebijakan hukum yang dapat diambil untuk menyelesaikan dualisme tersebut. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian hukum normatif yang sepenuhnya menggunakan data sekunder berupa bahan hukum primer dan sekunder. Kajian ini berkesimpulan bahwa akar persoalan dualisme lembaga pengawas pemilu dan pilkada di Aceh disebabkan tidak sinkronnya pengaturan UU Pemilu dan UU Pilkada dengan UU Pemerintahan Aceh. Hal itu juga diperkuat dengan Putusan MK yang menyatakan Pasal 557 dan Pasal 571 huruf d UU Pemilu bertentangan dengan UUD 1945 karena pembentukannya tidak sesuai dengan ketentuan perubahan UU Pemerintahan Aceh yang dimuat dalam UU Pemerintahan Aceh itu sendiri. Penelitian ini merekomendasikan agar dualisme kelembagaan lembaga pengawas pemilu dan pilkada di Aceh segera diakhiri melakukan perubahan terhadap UU Pemilu, UU Pilkada dan UU Pemerintahan Aceh
As a democratic country, in order to promote the general welfare, all citizens have the same right to exercise their political rights. In the context of organizing general elections, a form of democracy adopted by Indonesia. . Elections that are carried out transparently and peacefully and the elected leaders are generated by the most votes, then the country can be called a democratic country. The purpose of this research is to show that the function of political parties in selecting legislative candidates This type of research is normative legal research, using a conceptual approach. The research method is a legal scientific logic research procedure. The results of this study indicate that the application of an open proportional system has a major influence on every determination of the quality of legislative members, and the enactment of an open proportional system causes many popular legislative candidates to be elected without considering the capacity of the ability of legislative candidates who will ascend to office, and an open proportional system that best reflects the basic principles of democracy a In the implementation of several policies of t h e Constitutional Court with the Decision issued by allowing educational institutions as campaign sites. There are pros and cons to this. But basically where the community is smart in politics is one of the requirements in realizing a good democracy. The other main requirements are fair law enforcement and respect for human rights values.
Simultaneous general elections have a lousy tendency by several people but do not see a large future impact on national development planning in 2025–2045. The purpose of this article is to present a new perspective on viewing simultaneous general elections by linking national development planning as a future impact on public welfare. This research is qualitative by using a statute approach in comparing laws and regulations that change in each period of simultaneous general elections and synchronising laws and regulations with national development planning. The conceptual approach is the basis for the author to conceptualise the synchronisation of simultaneous general elections to national development planning in the RPJPN 2025–2045. The research results from this article show three outlines: First, the impact of simultaneous general elections results in harmony in the implementation of national development planning. Second, synchronising simultaneous general elections to national development planning eliminates the disparities between regions that occur in Indonesia. Third, the synchronisation results, as discussed, will produce a gradual welfare state in 2025–2045.
Elections depend on the thousands of people who give up their time to administer this crucial public service. They staff polling stations and ensure votes are issued, cast and counted. Poll workers are effectively ‘stipended volunteers’, receiving some limited financial compensation, but working for the broader public good. It is important to understand why people choose to give up their time to provide this fundamental public service to their fellow citizens. Using original data from a poll worker survey conducted in the 2015 British general election, this article investigates the motivations and incentives for poll workers volunteering to administer major elections in an important advanced democracy. Exploratory expectations are set out about the motivations of poll workers, and the relationship to their socio-economic characteristics, and levels of social capital and satisfaction with democracy. Contrary to expectations, the findings note that, earning some extra money is important to many, although motivations are more broadly structured around solidary, purposive and material motivations. The article establishes a range of relationships between each set of incentives, and poll workers’ socio-economic, social capital and satisfaction profiles.
Systematic and openly accessible data are vital to the scientific understanding of the social, political, and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article introduces the Austrian Corona Panel Project (ACPP), which has generated a unique, publicly available data set from late March 2020 onwards. ACPP has been designed to capture the social, political, and economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the Austrian population on a weekly basis. The thematic scope of the study covers several core dimensions related to the individual and societal impact of the COVID-19 crisis. The panel survey has a sample size of approximately 1500 respondents per wave. It contains questions that are asked every week, complemented by domain-specific modules to explore specific topics in more detail.
This contribution adds a new perspective to the debate on electoral integrity by asking how electoral integrity affects the way in which election results translate into citizen attitudes towards the political system. It introduces a causal mechanism that links political losing to political trust via evaluations of electoral fairness: citizens who voted for the losing camp are more likely to view the electoral process as unfair than citizens who voted for the winning camp, resulting in political distrust. It further suggests that the effects of political losing on political trust depend on the level of electoral integrity. In conditions where the elections were conducted in a free and fair manner, even those who voted for the losing camp have little reason to suspect foul play and therefore political losing should barely affect perceptions of the electoral process. Whenever there are actual indications of electoral malpractice, however, political losers have much more reason to doubt the integrity of the electoral process than those who are content with the outcome of the election. The contribution makes use of a unique dataset that ex-post harmonizes survey data from three cross-national survey projects (Asian Barometer Survey, European Social Survey, Latinobarómetro) and macro-level data from the Varieties-of-Democracy Project to cover 45 democracies in Europe, East Asia, and Latin America. Using multi-level modeling, it finds that political losing indeed decreases political trust indirectly via perceptions of electoral fairness. Confirming its key proposition, the empirical analysis shows that political losing has a weaker effect on political trust in countries where electoral integrity is high.
The PopuList offers academics and journalists an overview of populist, far right, far left and Eurosceptic parties in Europe since 1989. The PopuList is supported by the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies, The Guardian, and the ECPR Standing Group on Extremism and Democracy.
The PopuList dataset has been used in numerous publications in academic journals and public media.
It may be found here: https://popu-list.org
Doubts about electoral integrity, whether true or false, can undermine faith in the legitimacy of the democratic process. We investigate the reasons for such doubts in the case of the 2016 Federal elections in Australia. A three-wave panel survey of the electorate established that one third of Australians believed (falsely) that the outcome was fraudulent – a remarkable level of scepticism in an established democracy with a long history of clean and well-run contests. One reason was that many Australians misunderstood their electoral system. Media stories of electoral maladministration also led Australians – especially electoral losers -- to be suspicious and to embrace reforms. The results suggest that officials seeking to restore public confidence should strengthen civic education and improve electoral administration, particularly where the rules of the game are complex.
Previous research has shown that voters’ perception of electoral fairness has an impact on their attitudes and behaviors. However, less research has attempted to link objective measurements of electoral integrity on voters’ attitudes about the democratic process. Drawing on data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the Quality of Elections Data, we investigate whether cross-national differences in electoral integrity have significant influences on citizens’ level of satisfaction with democracy. We hypothesize that higher levels of observed electoral fraud will have a negative impact on evaluations of the democratic process, and that this effect will be mediated by a respondent’s status as a winner or loser of an election. The article’s main finding is that high levels of electoral fraud are indeed linked to less satisfaction with democracy. However, we show that winning only matters in elections that are conducted in an impartial way. The moment elections start to display the telltale signs of manipulation and malpractice, winning and losing no longer have different effects on voter’s levels of satisfaction with democracy.
p>The 2016 Austrian presidential runoff election have been repealed by the Austrian constitutional court. The results of the counted votes had yielded a victory of Alexander van der Bellen by a margin of 30.863 votes as compared to the votes for Norbert Hofer. However, the constitutional court found that 77.769 votes were ``contaminated'' as there have been - at least on a formal level - violations of the legal procedure when counting those votes. For example, the envelopes were opened prematurely, or not all the members of the electoral board were present during the counting etc. Hence the court considered the scenario that the irregular counting of these votes might have caused a reversal of the result as {\it possible}. The constitutional court sentenced that this {\it possibility} presents a sufficient irregularity in order to order a repetition of the entire election.
While it is, of course, {\it possible} that the irregular counting of those 77.769 votes reversed the result, we shall show that the probability, that this indeed has happened, is ridiculously low.</p
Problems with election fraud and election integrity are of increasing interest in both established and transitional democracies. In many transitional democracies, independent electoral management bodies (EMBs) have been championed as a key institutional reform measure to successfully strengthen election integrity. However, empirical findings regarding the impact of EMB institutional design on election integrity are mixed. While regional studies have found a positive impact of independent EMBs on election integrity in Latin America and Africa, global comparative studies appear to show that EMB institutional design is either negatively, or only very weakly related to election integrity. In this paper, we examine the effects of EMB institutional design on election integrity using the new Varieties of Democracy dataset and data from the International IDEA. We find that the mixed findings on EMB institutional design are due to the differences between transitional and established democracies on the one hand, and regimes with low and high quality of government on the other. The paper concludes with a reflection on results and a discussion of implications of these findings for the debate on electoral reform in Ireland.
In the discussion of the sources of social capital, it has been stressed that generalized trust is built up by the citizens themselves through a culture that permeates the networks and organizations of civil society. This approach has run into conceptual problems, and empirical evidence has provided only mixed support. An alternate approach is to highlight how social capital is embedded in and linked to formal political and legal institutions. Not all political institutions matter equally, however. Trust thrives most in societies with effective, impartial, and fair street-level bureaucracies. The causal mechanism between these institutional characteristics and generalized trust is illustrated in a cross-national context.
As street-level bureaucrats, poll workers bear the primary responsibility for implementing voter identification requirements. Voter identification requirements are not implemented equally across groups of voters, and poll workers exercise substantial discretion in how they apply election law. In states with minimal and varying identification requirements, poll workers appear to treat especially minority voters differently, requesting more stringent voter identification. We explain why poll workers are different from other street-level bureaucrats and how traditional mechanisms of control have little impact on limiting poll-worker discretion. We test why many poll workers appear not to follow the law using a post-election survey of New Mexico poll workers. We find little evidence that race, training, or partisanship matters. Instead, poll worker attitudes toward photo-identification policies and their educational attainment influences implementation of voter-identification laws.
Although membership in voluntary associations has been presumed to be a central element in the building of social capital, micro-level knowledge about whether and how voluntary associations make their members more trusting and cooperative has been lacking. The link between trust and involvement in associations in Germany and Sweden was explored by means of a questionnaire concerning traits of individuals and of the associational groups to which they belong. The analysis of the resulting data set considered the extent to which various group characteristics (such as demographic diversity, in-group trust, and engagement level) are related to the generalized trust of the members. The results indicate that more diverse, more engaged voluntary associations, and those with weak ties, indeed accommodate more trusting people. In particular, time spent in groups with foreigners, or in groups with weaker ties, affects the generalized trust levels of the members.
What role does executive partisan interest play in the reform of election administration? The forces for reform and continuity in the USA, the UK and Ireland from 1980 to 2007 are compared. Partisan involvement is found to be present in the USA and the UK but less so in Ireland. This is explained by conceiving partisan interest as a context-specific causal mechanism which varies according to three factors. First, an issue trigger may be required to bring election administration on to executive policy agenda. Five such triggers are identified in the cases. Second, the systemic institutional features of political systems shape and refract the (non-)politics of election administration by altering the incentives, opportunities for and constraints upon elite action. Executive interest in and action on election administration are influenced by the electoral system, party system and constitutional control over procedures. Finally, executive strategy on election administration is influenced by the reform process of other electoral institutions.
This article offers the beginnings of a methodology for assessing the quality of a national election, its freeness, fairness and administrative efficacy. The historical lack of a comprehensive framework of analysis has compelled election observers to make pronouncements on the basis of incomplete evidence, usually gathered on the day of the vote and count. It has allowed international observation missions to ‘call’ the results of elections on the basis of political expediency rather than the facts of the case. The intent in this article is not to offer a foolproof method for categorizing election quality but rather to lay out a framework which we believe is more comprehensive and meaningful than anything that has come before. To illustrate its workings the article scores six multi-party elections: two in established democracies – Australia and Denmark 2001– and four in fledgling democracies – South Africa 1994 and 2004, East Timor 2001 and Zimbabwe 2002. The framework outlined here will make it possible to identify patterns of success and failure in the fairness of elections. It should enable all kinds of observers from academics and election administrators to election observers to spotlight the weak areas of election administration, where a government might then choose to focus its efforts to improve the quality of subsequent elections.
The integrity of the electoral process is vitally important for the delivery of democracy. However, there is an ongoing debate about how the integrity of elections can be measured. This article makes the theoretical and normative case for the use of practitioner knowledge. Unlike public and expert perceptions, electoral officials have unique practice-based, experiential, tacit knowledge about the conduct of elections, and more insights about the technical aspects of administration of which the public and even experts may be unaware. The article presents results from the first ever cross-national datasets based on a survey of electoral officials in 31 countries. Practitioner assessments are then compared to expert and public assessments, the traditional methods for assessing electoral integrity, and are found to be a reliable measure of electoral integrity. Analysis also shows that gender does shape practitioner assessments, suggesting that some electoral malpractices might be gendered in nature. Job satisfaction is also significant, which suggests that it should be controlled for in future studies. Overall, this study is significant for identifying the utility of a new method for assessing electoral integrity and provides important lessons for how they should be surveyed in the future.
Contemporary research on electoral integrity has focused on the functioning, evaluation, and legitimacy of electoral processes in emerging democracies. By contrast, this study investigates whether a failed election in a well-established democracy can affect individuals' evaluations of the electoral management body, the Election Authority, and whether those evaluations affect satisfaction with democracy. Using the case of a Swedish regional election in 2010 that had to be rerun due to procedural mistakes in the vote handling, we found that, in the short term, individuals’ confidence in the Election Authority was reduced after it was announced that the election had to be rerun because of the mistakes. Subsequently, this decreased confidence was strongly associated with less satisfaction with democracy at the regional and national level. As good news for the authority, after a successful rerun election, confidence rebounded to the levels prior to the failed election.
When political leaders are chosen by democratic means, the electoral process supposedly legitimates their authority, whatever the outcome. Nonetheless, disliked democratic outcomes may result instead in denigration of the electoral process. If positive reactions to winning and negative reactions to losing ultimately balance one another out, then perceived electoral integrity should remain roughly constant in a highly competitive political environment such as the United States. However, little is known about the symmetry or duration of these effects. Using panel data spanning more than nine years, we examine individual perceptions of electoral integrity across three American presidential election cycles. Our conclusions suggest that the effects of winning versus losing are not symmetric. Moreover, effects on people’s perceptions of electoral integrity are surprisingly persistent over time. We find that repeated losing has especially important long-term consequences for how citizens view elections.
This article addresses a critical gap in the literature on winner–loser effects that consists of the lack of attention for highly contentious constitutional referenda. It uses unique multi-wave panel data of over 13,000 people that is unrivalled in size and richness. We estimate causal effects of the referendum on rarely studied but crucial public perceptions of the fairness of the way a referendum is conducted. These perceptions pertain to the highly contentious 2016 European Union (Brexit) referendum in the United Kingdom, which is an ideal-type example of a wider class of referenda for which similar outcomes can be expected. We use difference-in-differences methods and find winner–loser effects of a magnitude far greater than ever observed for general elections. Moreover, we find that these effects not only persist, but even grow over time. The findings have profound implications for the use of such referenda.
Electoral integrity is a persistent concern in both established and transitional democracies. Independent Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) have been championed as a key institutional reform measure to strengthen electoral integrity and are now the most common model of electoral management worldwide. Yet, empirical research has found conflicting evidence on the link between formal EMB independence and electoral integrity. We argue that conflicting findings might be driven by the lack of detailed data on EMB institutional design, with most studies using rudimentary classifications of ‘independent’, ‘governmental’ and ‘mixed’ EMBs, without addressing specific dimensions of EMB formal independence such as appointment procedures, budgetary control and formal competences. In this paper we analyse new detailed data on EMB institutional design in 72 countries around the world, develop a more detailed typology of dimensions of de jure EMB independence, and demonstrate how de jure EMB independence affects de facto EMB independence and electoral integrity.
This concluding article begins by considering the reasons behind the growing demand for policy-relevant comparative research into the institutional structures and processes of electoral management. It then outlines the theoretical framework used in this special issue – distinguishing the structure, capacities, and ethos of electoral management – and summarizes the key insights arising from the evidence. Research on electoral management is expanding, nevertheless it suffers from several major challenges, including the difficulties of isolating aid effectiveness in this sector and of determining the impact of electoral management on broader indicators of democratic performance. This constitutes the future research agenda.
Polls report that, contrary to the evidence, one quarter of Americans believe that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 elections. What explains these types of beliefs? This article tests the predictors of public evaluations of electoral integrity in the 2016 American Presidential election, as measured by judgements about the fairness of the voting processes in the 2016 American National Election Study. We demonstrate that conspiratorial beliefs and populist values contribute towards citizens’ electoral mistrust. The results suggest that the paranoid style of American politics is alive and well in contemporary US elections.
Electoral malpractices are commonly thought to occur in polling stations. This chapter makes the normative case for electoral management bodies (EMBs) around the world routinely using poll worker surveys. These surveys provide concrete sources of information about the extent and nature of any problems in the electoral process. Accusations by partisan actors can therefore be readily tested and challenged. Poll worker surveys can therefore increase the transparency of EMBs and the electoral process. They also increase opportunities for evidence based policy making in electoral management. Their usefulness is demonstrated through the first-ever non-US poll worker survey which was undertaken in Britain at the 2015 general election. This survey (n = 1,321) contradicted the existing literature on electoral administration in Britain in a number of ways.
The organisation of the electoral counting process is a complex task that, in Germany, is delegated to local authorities. This article presents novel data from a representative survey of local communities in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, to describe and to explain the variation of the ways in which the electoral count for major elections is organised. The findings are: (1) local communities differ greatly in the ways they recruit poll workers for election day and in the ways the counting teams are composed; (2) the inclusion of parties in the recruitment of poll workers, the only main prescription in the legal framework, is not heeded by one third of all local communities, and (3) most importantly, actual election results such as the proportion of invalid votes systematically and widely co-vary with the ways in which local authorities organise the counting process – a pattern that should not exist. This article discusses the implications of these patterns for the electoral integrity of Germany during the electoral administration process.
Citizen confidence in elections remains a salient topic when discussing democracy and representation. While scholars have argued that voter experiences affect satisfaction, confidence, and trust more broadly, often absent from this conversation is the unique role that poll workers play in shaping citizen confidence. For racial and ethnic minorities, descriptive representation in public institutions has a positive effect on trust in administrative procedures. However, the relationship between descriptive representation and confidence in local election administration has received limited attention. Utilizing the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE), we investigate the influence of poll workers on citizen confidence in local election operations. Specifically, we focus on the relationship between citizen interaction with racially/ethnically congruent poll workers and trust in American elections for African American and Hispanic voters. Findings indicate that for African American and Hispanic voters, in-person interaction with a poll worker of the same race/ethnicity increases general confidence in election administration.
Today a general mood of pessimism surrounds Western efforts to strengthen elections and democracy abroad. If elections are often deeply flawed or even broken in many countries around the world, can anything be done to fix them? To counter the prevailing ethos, Pippa Norris presents new evidence for why programs of international electoral assistance work. She evaluates the effectiveness of several practical remedies, including efforts designed to reform electoral laws, strengthen women’s representation, build effective electoral management bodies, promote balanced campaign communications, regulate political money, and improve voter registration. Pippa Norris argues that it would be a tragedy to undermine progress by withdrawing from international engagement. Instead, the international community needs to learn the lessons of what works best to strengthen electoral integrity, to focus activities and resources upon the most effective programs, and to innovate after a quarter century of efforts to strengthen electoral integrity.
Belief in electoral fraud has received heightened attention due to elite rhetoric and controversial voter identification (ID) laws. Using a two-wave national survey administered before and after the 2012 election, we examine the individuallevel correlates of belief in a range of election-related conspiracy theories. Our data show that partisanship affects the timing and content of belief in election-related conspiracy theories, but a general disposition toward conspiratorial thinking strongly influences those beliefs. Support for voter ID laws, in contrast, appears to be driven largely by party identification through elite-mass linkages. Our analysis suggests that belief in election fraud is a common and predictable consequence of both underlying conspiratorial thinking and motivated partisan reasoning.
The development of a neutral, professional bureaucracy has been a profound concern for emerging democracies. International and domestic actors have expended significant resources to encourage the development of the rule of law, yet many postcommunist societies remain mired in corruption. When corrupt behaviors are integrated with a core function of democratic states, such as the implementation of free and fair elections, the implications of failures to professionalize bureaucrats are enhanced. This article empirically evaluates how professionalization and corruption interact in election administration, using unique survey data from Ukraine. We assess the results of pre- and postelection surveys of administrators conducted across Ukraine during the 2014 parliamentary elections. Our results suggest that aspects of a professionalized bureaucracy coexist with corruption and that mitigating incentives for state capture is a major challenge for democratization.
The 2016 Austrian presidential election was remarkably different than the previous ones in the history of the country characterized by its stable political system. Not only did it open the role of president in Austria to debate, but it also sidelined the two political parties that had dominated Austrian politics since World War II. Alexander Van der Bellen won the election with one of the closest margins in recent history. This article argues that the election divided the country in more than one way. Besides the near 50–50 divide between the candidates, the results show that it generated important dynamics in territorial politics as well, notably in the states and cities of Austria. These results point towards a party system transformation in Austrian politics.
Much discussion of electoral integrity focusses on new democracies. This paper explores the determinants of electoral integrity in a major established democracy in order to begin to identify drivers of electoral integrity for comparative scholars to exploit further. It does so through a novel measure of electoral administration in Britain which is brought together with comprehensive data on spending on electoral administration, whether concurrent elections were being held, size of electorate, number of constituencies administered, type of administration overseeing local electoral administration, and various socio-economic measures. The results establish a range of relationships to electoral integrity which will inform subsequent debates on election quality in other democracies, whether advanced or otherwise. In particular, the findings point to the importance of administrative resources in delivering electoral integrity in advanced democracies.
In competitive and contested democratic elections, ensuring integrity is critical. Evaluating Elections shows why systematic analysis and reporting of election performance are important and how data-driven performance management can be used by election officials to improve elections. The authors outline how performance management systems can function in elections and their benefits for voters, candidates, and political parties. Journalists, election administrators, and even candidates all often ask whether recent elections were run well, whether there were problems in the administration of a particular state’s elections, and how well elections were run across the country. The authors explain that such questions are difficult to answer because of the complexity of election administration and because there is currently no standard or accepted framework to assess the general quality of an election. © R. Michael Alvarez, Lonna Rae Atkeson, and Thad E. Hall 2013.
Social capital is the web of cooperative relationships between citizens that facilitates resolution of collection action problems (Coleman 1990; Putnam 1993). Although normally conceived as a property of communities, the reciprocal relationship between community involvement and trust in others is a demonstration of social capital in individual behavior and attitudes. Variation in social capital can be explained by citizens' psychological involvement with their communities, cognitive abilities, economic resources, and general life satisfaction. This variation affects citizens' confidence in national institutions, beyond specific controls for measures of actual performance. We analyze the pooled General Social Surveys from 1972 to 1994 in a latent variables framework incorporating aggregate contextual data. Civic engagement and interpersonal trust are in a tight reciprocal relationship, where the connection is stronger from participation to interpersonal trust, rather than the reverse.
According to a popular version of social capital theory, civic engagement should produce generalized trust among citizens. We put this theory to the test by examining the causal connection between civic engagement and generalized trust using multiple methods and multiple (prospective) panel datasets. We found participants to be more trusting. This was mostly likely caused by selection effects: the causal effects of civic engagement on trust were very small or nonsignificant. In the cases where small causal effects were found, they turned out not to last. We found no differences across types of organizations and only minor variations across countries.
A rapidly-growing research agenda shared by scholars and applied policy analysts is beginning to explore three questions: when do elections meet standards of electoral integrity? When do they fail to do so? And what can be done to mitigate these problems?
To address these issues, Part 1 in this paper outlines the concept of electoral integrity, proposing a comprehensive and broad definition founded upon global norms and international conventions. Part 2 argues that several sub-fields contribute towards the study of electoral integrity, although commonly fragmented at present, including (i) public sector management; (ii) political culture; (iii) comparative institutions; and (iv) security studies. The emerging research agenda focused on electoral integrity, cutting across these conventional disciplinary boundaries, is characterized by its problem-oriented focus and global comparative framework, as well as by its use of pluralistic methods and analytical techniques. Part 3 outlines the contribution of papers in this symposium. The conclusion summarizes the key features of this new research agenda studying electoral integrity.
Concerns about electoral malpractice have been raised in many democracies in recent years because of errors made in the administration of elections by local election officials (LEOs). This article argues that adopting appropriate policy instruments to manage LEOs is an under-explored method for improving election administration and reducing electoral malpractice. The article provides a case study of the use of performance benchmarking schemes in the UK 2008–2010. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 74 LEOs from 41 organisations subject to newly devised performance indicators. The research demonstrates that performance benchmarking can encourage learning amongst local electoral officials and strengthen central control over them.
Human beings are consummate rationalizers, but rarely are we rational. Controlled deliberation is a bobbing cork on the currents of unconscious information processing, but we have always the illusion of standing at the helm. This book presents a theory of the architecture and mechanisms that determine when, how, and why unconscious thoughts, the coloration of feelings, the plausibility of goals, and the force of behavioral dispositions change moment-by-moment in response to “priming” events that spontaneously link changes in the environment to changes in beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. Far from the consciously directed decision-making assumed by conventional models, political behavior is the result of innumerable unnoticed forces, with conscious deliberation little more than a rationalization of the outputs of automatic feelings and inclinations.
This article outlines the logic and consequences of the classical theory of electoral governance. By empowering the executive with the administration of elections and the legislature with the certification of the vote tally, the theory expected elected officials to generate widely acceptable election results. This article argues that the classical theory breaks down when the same party controls the executive and the legislature. Developments in several presidential systems offer tentative support for its central hypothesis. Only when parties delegated election governance to an autonomous court system did election conflicts stop promoting political instability. Comparisons between us and Latin American separation of power systems also suggest that political developments in North and South America are much more similar than commonly assumed.
It is often assumed that the institutional organization of electoral management bodies (EMB) has an impact on the credibility of elections, but this proposition has been difficult to verify empirically. I examine whether the degree of autonomy from the political process of EMB administrators affects attitudes towards elections among citizens and legislators by analyzing mass and elite surveys across Latin America. I conclude that levels of confidence in the electoral process among political elites are higher in countries with politically autonomous EMBs, but this effect is muted in the analysis of citizen attitudes. This association holds after controlling for individual-level determinants of trust in elections and for other relevant country-level predictors in multilevel statistical models.
Previous research has established a link between turnout and the extent to which voters are faced with a “meaningful” partisan choice in elections; this study extends the logic of this argument to perceptions of the “meaningfulness” of electoral conduct. It hypothesizes that perceptions of electoral integrity are positively related to turnout. The empirical analysis to test this hypothesis is based on aggregate-level data from 31 countries, combined with survey results from Module 1 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems survey project, which includes new and established democracies. Multilevel modeling is employed to control for a variety of individual- and election-level variables that have been found in previous research to influence turnout. The results of the analysis show that perceptions of electoral integrity are indeed positively associated with propensity to vote.
