Elections Laws of Iowa, 2014

This publication is produced by the Legislative Services Agency. This publication contains all election laws to be included in the 2014 Iowa Code. Changes in Code language to be included in the 2014 Iowa Code are marked by highlighting in yellow. Code sections with changes are also highlighted in yellow in the Table of Contents.

Partisan targeting of inter-governmental transfers & state interference in local elections: evidence from Spain

[spa] En este trabajo examinamos si, en la asignaci��n de transferencias, los gobernantes regionales discriminan a favor de los gobiernos locales controlados por el mismo partido pol��tico, y si las perspectivas electorales de los gobiernos locales mejoran si est��n pol��ticamente alineados con el gobierno regional. Con una nueva base de datos que considera 3.000 municipios espa��oles durante el per��odo 2000-07 y un dise��o de discontinuidad en la regresi��n, documentamos un efecto robusto de importante magnitud: en elecciones ajustadas, los municipios alineados con el gobierno regional reciben, en media, un 83% m��s de transferencias per c��pita y su gobernante obtiene un 10% m��s de votos en las elecciones locales. Tambi��n demostramos que el efecto de la alineaci��n pol��tica es mayor: (i) si las elecciones regionales y locales se celebran el mismo d��a, (ii) en regiones donde las elecciones regionales son menos competidas, y (iii) en regiones con m��s recursos presupuestarios.

Partisan targeting of inter-governmental transfers & state interference in local elections: evidence from Spain

[spa] En este trabajo examinamos si, en la asignaci��n de transferencias, los gobernantes regionales discriminan a favor de los gobiernos locales controlados por el mismo partido pol��tico, y si las perspectivas electorales de los gobiernos locales mejoran si est��n pol��ticamente alineados con el gobierno regional. Con una nueva base de datos que considera 3.000 municipios espa��oles durante el per��odo 2000-07 y un dise��o de discontinuidad en la regresi��n, documentamos un efecto robusto de importante magnitud: en elecciones ajustadas, los municipios alineados con el gobierno regional reciben, en media, un 83% m��s de transferencias per c��pita y su gobernante obtiene un 10% m��s de votos en las elecciones locales. Tambi��n demostramos que el efecto de la alineaci��n pol��tica es mayor: (i) si las elecciones regionales y locales se celebran el mismo d��a, (ii) en regiones donde las elecciones regionales son menos competidas, y (iii) en regiones con m��s recursos presupuestarios.

Voting advice applications : impact on voting decisions in the 2011 Swiss national elections

In most democracies voting Advice Applications (VAAs) advising citizens which candidate or party they should vote for become more and more popular. It is therefore crucial to know more about the functioning and the effects of such tools. After some general remarks about the spread of these tools and their possible effects gathered so far in various studies, this paper presents the latest results from a research conducted in the course of the 2011 Swiss national elections. They confirm that VAAs can lead to better informed voters and are likely to have a positive impact on electoral turnout. Additionally it can be shown that the Swiss VAA smartvote made voters change their voting intention and that they voted for a different party. This was particularly advantageous for the Green Liberal Party. At the moment, only a minority of voters rely on the voting recommendation by smartvote. This might change dramatically with the introduction of e-voting. Once people can vote electronically, there are hardly any possibilities to prevent voters from transferring their selection of candidates based on the recommendation given by a VAA into the official electronic ballot paper. If this is possible, e-voting will become more popular than postal voting.

Forecasting with social media ��� Using Facebook likes to predict the results of the 2015 Finnish Parliamentary elections

Already one-third of the human population uses social media on a daily basis. The biggest social networking site Facebook has over billion monthly users. As a result, social media services are now recording unprecedented amount of data on human behavior. The phenomenon has certainly caught the attention of scholars, businesses and governments alike. Organizations around the globe are trying to explore new ways to benefit from the massive databases. One emerging field of research is the use of social media in forecasting. The goal is to use data gathered from online services to predict offline phenomena. Predicting the results of elections is a prominent example of forecasting with social media, but regardless of the numerous attempts, no reliable technique has been established. The objective of the research is to analyze how accurately the results of parliament elections can be forecasted using social media. The research examines whether Facebook ���likes��� can be effectively used for predicting the outcome of the Finnish parliament elections that took place in April 2015. First a tool for gathering data from Facebook was created. Then the data was used to create an electoral forecast. Finally, the forecast was compared with the official results of the elections. The data used in the research was gathered from the Facebook walls of all the candidates that were running for the parliament elections and had a valid Facebook page. The final sample represents 1131 candidates and over 750000 Facebook ���likes���. The results indicate that creating a forecast solely based on Facebook ���likes��� is not accurate. The forecast model predicted very dramatic changes to the Finnish political landscape while the official results of the elections were rather moderate. However, a clear statistical relationship between ���likes��� and votes was discovered. In conclusion, it is apparent that citizens and other key actors of the society are using social media in an increasing rate. However, the volume of the data does not directly increase the quality of the forecast. In addition, the study faced several other limitations that should be addressed in future research. Nonetheless, discovering the positive correlation between ���likes��� and votes is valuable information that can be used in future studies. Finally, it is evident that Facebook ���likes��� are not accurate enough and a meaningful forecast would require additional parameters.