A Ballot-Level Study of Intentional and Unintentional Abstention in Presidential Election Voting

总统选举投票中有意和无意弃权的选票级别研究

• 批准号: 0440909
• 负责人: Michael Herron
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Dartmouth College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-07-01 至 2007-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0440909&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Ballot; Level; Study; Intentional; Unintentional

An election's residual vote rate is the fraction of ballots cast in it that do not contain valid votes, and within contemporary literatures on uncounted votes, voter disfranchisement, and electoral reform residual vote rates are considered the barometer by which election administration is measured. Nonetheless, a limitation of residual vote rates is that they aggregate many types of invalid votes. Voter errors, voting machine problems, and intentional abstention all produce residual votes that are observationally equivalent insofar as affecting an election's overall residual vote rate. This is problematic as researchers studying technology-related residual votes and those focusing on minority voter disfranchisement care more about unintentional residual votes than they do about intentional residual votes, i.e., deliberate abstention.The project disaggregates residual vote rates into, among other rates, unintentional and intentional rates. This requires generating and coding a set of ballot images. Contrast a general election ballot that has no vote for president yet includes valid votes in all other contested races with a ballot that has attempted votes for all offices including president. The former ballot presumably contains an intentional presidential residual vote while the latter, an unintentional residual vote. Distinguishing between these nonvotes-that is, distinguishing between residual votes caused by voter error, technology, and abstention-requires ballot images. On account of the recount that took place in Florida following the 2000 general election, the Florida State Archive now houses all the ballots cast in the state during this contest. Across the United States there are no comparable ballot archives. The ballots in the Florida archive consist of sheets of paper sorted by precinct, and the ballots are not coded in any sense. Thus, the first step of the research project is making electronic images of the ballots from a set of representative Florida counties and then coding the images. For each county so considered images will be made of all its ballots that have invalid presidential votes and also of a randomly selected set of ballots that have valid presidential votes. The second step of the project is applying case control statistical techniques to estimate intentional residual vote rates, unintentional residual votes, and residual vote rates associated with technology limitations.The project concludes by publishing its ballot images and associated codings on an Internet site so as to benefit scholars of election reform, voting irregularities, and electoral participation. This will generate an unprecedented resource on uncounted votes that will also be of interest to researchers who study ticket splitting-a phenomenon that occurs when individuals vote for a presidential candidate of one party and a Congressional candidate of another in the same election. Ticket splitting rates are unobservable and can only be estimated reliably with ballot images. Elections influence the extent to which groups in society have their interests represented in government, yet groups with high residual vote rates receive less representation than groups with low rates. This is a concern for civil rights scholars as there is compelling evidence that minority voters have high residual vote rates relative to white voters. Knowing more about the origins of residual votes and whether they are in general unintentional or intentional will help academics and election reform practitioners ensure that all groups in society are well-served by elections. Finally, the project illustrates the importance of ballot-level analyses and may encourage the creation of ballot archives beyond Florida's. Such archives can vastly improve the scholarly understanding of residual votes, and as such the project shows how making ballots accessible for research will strengthen the legitimacy afforded to American elections.

选举的剩余选票率是其中不包含有效选票的选票的比例，在有关未清点选票、选民剥夺选举权和选举改革的当代文献中，剩余选票率被认为是衡量选举管理的晴雨表。尽管如此，剩余投票率的一个限制是它们聚合了多种类型的无效投票。选民失误、投票机问题和故意弃权都会产生剩余选票，这些剩余选票在影响选举总体剩余选票率方面在观察上是等效的。这是有问题的，因为研究与技术相关的剩余选票的研究人员和那些关注少数族裔选民被剥夺选举权的研究人员更关心无意的剩余选票，而不是有意的剩余选票，即故意弃权。该项目将剩余投票率分解为无意和有意的投票率。这需要生成并编码一组选票图像。对比一下没有投票给总统但在所有其他有争议的竞选中包含有效选票的大选选票与尝试为包括总统在内的所有职位投票的选票。 前一张选票可能包含有意的总统剩余投票，而后者则包含无意的剩余投票。区分这些不投票的人，即区分由选民错误、技术和弃权造成的剩余选票，需要选票图像。 由于 2000 年大选后佛罗里达州进行了重新计票，佛罗里达州档案馆现在保存了本次竞选期间该州投下的所有选票。美国各地没有可比的选票档案。佛罗里达州档案馆中的选票由按选区分类的纸张组成，并且选票没有任何编码。因此，该研究项目的第一步是制作佛罗里达州一组代表性县的选票的电子图像，然后对图像进行编码。对于每个如此考虑的县，图像将由其所有具有无效总统选票的选票以及随机选择的一组具有有效总统选票的选票组成。该项目的第二步是应用案例控制统计技术来估计有意剩余投票率、无意剩余投票率以及与技术限制相关的剩余投票率。该项目最后在互联网网站上发布选票图像和相关编码，以使选举改革、投票违规行为和选举参与方面的学者受益。这将产生前所未有的未统计选票资源，研究分票的研究人员也会对此感兴趣。分票是个人在同一次选举中投票给一个政党的总统候选人和另一个政党的国会候选人时发生的现象。分票率是无法观察到的，只能通过选票图像进行可靠估计。选举影响社会群体在政府中代表其利益的程度，但剩余选票率高的群体所获得的代表权少于剩余选票率低的群体。这是民权学者关注的问题，因为有令人信服的证据表明少数族裔选民相对于白人选民拥有较高的剩余选票率。更多地了解剩余选票的起源以及它们总体上是无意的还是有意的，将有助于学者和选举改革实践者确保社会所有群体都得到选举的良好服务。 最后，该项目说明了选票级别分析的重要性，并可能鼓励创建佛罗里达州以外的选票档案。此类档案可以极大地提高学术界对剩余选票的理解，因此该项目表明，使选票可供研究将如何加强美国选举的合法性。