Politics

Do anti-party reforms ironically require major-party backing?

I’m sure we will hear a lot about the RCV measures that just were on the ballot. Only in DC did one pass/cause RCV adoption (or retention).¹

Why don’t some voters rank?

I just discovered several papers on the determinants of ballot invalidity (informal voting) in Australia. Two recent conversations prompted me to look for these. The overarching issue is whether an invalid ballot reflects confusion or protest voting. You can find the papers in my reference list. The answer seems to be: both but more of the latter, especially among young people dissatisfied with the party system.

An out-of-sample test of the ‘shifting coalitions’ view of electoral reform

Portland (OR) journalist Maja Harris has an interesting post about the surfeit of candidates running in the city’s first STV elections. Does the experience so far reflect the perspective I built to understand Progressive Era adoptions of the same?