Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ballot Structure and Voting Decisions

本项目的重点是选票设计和投票程序在影响选民在投票站作出的决定以及选举结果方面所发挥的作用。独立选举委员会认为，向选民提供选举选择的不同方式，对于了解人们如何投票，以及不同类型的选票在多大程度上对某些候选人或政党不成比例地有利或不利，是至关重要的。为该项目选定的国家(阿根廷、智利、厄瓜多尔、萨尔瓦多和洪都拉斯)提供了衡量由于选票结构不同而影响代表性的各种结果的机会。在提交选举名单方面的这种差异可能会使某些政党受益，抵消妇女当选的可能性，和/或影响在正式选票上包括的候选人的照片中观察到的候选人的个人属性是否影响当选的可能性。研究选票的后果及其对选举结果的特点，有助于解释人们如何投票以及投票给谁，有助于了解代表权的不同方面，如少数群体获得立法席位的机会以及投票提供的信息线索的有效性和相关性。该项目的成果将为考虑或参与选举设计改革的政策制定者和公民提供宝贵的信息，了解改革对代表制和问责制的潜在影响，以及特定政治制度中选举民主的质量。两种不同的分析策略被用来评估选举提供给选民的方式如何影响选民的行为和选举结果。首先，该项目使用观测数据来评估不同的投票设计是否会导致不同的选举结果。其次，考虑到因果机制在个人层面上运作，以及选民行为可能受到无数因素的影响，我们使用了一个实验研究设计来评估选民在实际选举中可能如何判断候选人的特征。在第一种策略中，PI使用了阿根廷各省的数据，这些省份已经用不同版本的澳大利亚选票取代了传统的党派纸质选票。她使用准实验研究设计分析了选举方案的不同陈述如何使某些政党受益。利用1992年至2008年的智利市政数据，独立选举委员会审查了在公开名单多成员比例代表制中，鉴于候选人在选票上的顺序，来自代表人数不足的群体的候选人当选的可能性。对于第二种策略，她在三个采用包容制的开放名单系统国家(萨尔瓦多、厄瓜多尔和洪都拉斯)进行了试验，这些国家的选民有机会在多成员选区的不同政党的候选人之间分配他们的多张选票。这些实验评估了候选人的个人属性是否影响当选的可能性，以及投票站提供的背景信息如何通过提供额外的工具来解码信息线索来改变选民对候选人的评价和偏好。

General Summary This project focuses on the role played by ballot design and vote casting procedures in shaping the decisions made by voters in the polling booth and, therein, electoral outcomes. The PI argues that the different modes through which electoral alternatives are presented to voters are critical to understanding how people vote, and the extent to which certain candidates or parties are disproportionately advantaged or disadvantaged by different types of ballots. The countries selected for this project (Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador and Honduras) offer the opportunity to measure a variety of outcomes affecting representation as a result of variations in the ballot structure. Such variations in presenting the electoral offering may benefit certain parties, offset the probability of women being elected, and/or affect whether candidates' personal attributes observed in the picture of them included on the official ballot affect the probability of being elected. Studying the consequences of ballots and their features on electoral outcomes can help to explain how and who people vote for, shedding light on different aspects of representation, such as minority groups' access to legislative seats and the effectiveness and relevance of informational cues provided by the ballot. The results of this project will provide policymakers and citizens considering or engaged in ballot design reform with invaluable information regarding the potential impact of reforms on representation and accountability in particular and the quality of electoral democracy in a given political system more generally.Technical SummaryThis project contributes to a deeper understanding of the electoral process by addressing the role of ballot design and vote casting procedures on representation. Two different analytic strategies are applied to evaluate how the way the electoral offering is presented to the voter affects voter behavior and electoral outcomes. First, the project uses observational data to assess whether different ballot designs lead to different electoral outcomes. Second, given that the causal mechanism operates at an individual level, and that voter behavior can be influenced by a myriad of factors, an experimental research design is used to assess how voters may judge candidates' traits in actual elections. For the first strategy, the PI uses data from Argentina provinces that have replaced the traditional partisan paper ballot with different versions of the Australian ballot. She analyzes how different presentations of the electoral offering benefit certain parties using a quasi-experimental research design. Using Chilean municipal data from 1992 to 2008, the PI examines the probabilities of candidates from underrepresented groups being elected given their order placement on the ballot in open list multi-member proportional representation systems. For the second strategy, she conducts experiments in three open list system countries (El Salvador, Ecuador and Honduras) that employ panachage (where voters have the opportunity to distribute their multiple votes among candidates from different parties in multimember districts). The experiments assess whether candidates' personal attributes affect the probability of being elected and how contextual information provided in the voting booth alters voters' evaluation of and preference for candidates by supplying additional tools to decode informational cues.