Mixed-Member Electoral Systems in Constitutional Context : Taiwan, Japan, and Beyond /

After the electoral reform in 1994, Japan saw a gradual evolution from a multi-party system toward a two-party system over the course of five House of Representatives election cycles. In contrast, after Taiwan’s constitutional amendment in 2005, a two-party system emerged in the first post-reform legislative election in 2008. Critically, however, Taiwan’s president is directly elected while Japan’s prime minister is indirectly elected. The contributors conclude that the higher the payoffs of holding the executive office and the greater degree of cross-district coordination required to win it, the stronger the incentives for elites to form and stay in the major parties. In such a context, a country will move rapidly toward a two-party system. In Part II, the contributors apply this theoretical logic to other countries with mixed-member systems to demonstrate its generality. They find the effect of executive competition on legislative electoral rules in countries as disparate as Thailand, the Philippines, New Zealand, Bolivia, and Russia. The findings presented in this book have important implications for political reform. Often, reformers are motivated by high hopes of solving some political problems and enhancing the quality of democracy. But, as this group of scholars demonstrates, electoral reform alone is not a panacea. Whether and to what extent it achieves the advocated goals depends not only on the specification of new electoral rules per se but also on the political context—and especially the constitutional framework—within which such rules are embedded.

Optical scan manual of instructions for Illinois election judges.

" ... may be duplicated or sections may be rewritten to conform to local specifications. Any modified manual must be consistent with the Illinois Election Code and submitted to the State Board of Elections for approval prior to distribution."

Optical scan manual of instructions for Illinois election judges.

"...may be duplicated or sections may be rewritten to conform to local specifications. Any modified manual must be consistent with the Illinois Election Code and submitted to the State Board of Elections for approval prior to distribution."

Optical scan manual of instructions for Illinois election judges.

The instructions in this manual describe the statutory responsibilities of election judges and their duties on Election Day. ... Included in this manual are step-by-step instructions which describe in detail the procedures to be followed before the polls open, during voting hours, and after the polls close. This manual also includes information on voter coding, who can vote, pollwatchers rights and limitations, challenging a person's right to vote, voter assistance and instruction, processing absentee ballots, and remaking damaged and overvoted ballot cards. In addition, this manual reflects the many changes brought about by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and Senate Bill 428, PA 0574.

Optical scan manual of instructions for Illinois election judges.

Election judges serve a vital role in protecting the rights of voters. They are responsible for ensuring that the electoral process is administered fairly and in accordance with federal and state election laws. This manual of instructions has been prepared by the State Board of Elections to assist the election judges with the administration of their duties in accordance with Illinois statutes. The instructions in this manual describe the statutory responsibilities of election judges and their duties on Election Day. ... Included in this manual are step-by-step instructions which describe in detail the procedures to be followed before the polls open, during voting hours, and after the polls close....In addition, this manual reflects the many changes brought about by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and Senate Bill 428, PA 0574. These changes include provisional voting, eligbility requirements for serving as a pollwatcher, campaign free zones and other processes encountered on Election Day.

Modern American law; a systematic and comprehensive commentary on the fundamental principles of American law and procedure, accompanied by leading illustrative cases and legal forms, with a rev. ed. of Blackstone's Commentaries;

v. I. The modern democracy, the citizen and the law - Legal ethics - Law : its origin, nature, development - Courts : federal and state - Law of contracts -- v. 2. Law of torts -- v. 3. Criminal Law - Law of criminal procedure - Law of persons and domestic relations -- v. 4. Personal property and bailments - Law of liens and pledges - Law of agency - Law of sales of personal property -- v. 5. Law of real property -- v. 6. Law of descent and distribution, wills and administration, guardian and ward - Law of landlord and tenant - Law of irrigation and water rights - Law of mines and mining -- v. 7. Equity - Law of trusts - Law of quasi-contacts - Law of estoppel -- v. 8. Law of negotiable instruments - Law of suretyship and guaranty - Law of mortgages : real and chattel - Interpretation of statutes -- v. 9. Law of private corporations - Law of partnership - law of banks, banking and trust companies - Law of receivers -- v. 10. Pleadings in civil actions at common law and under modern statutes - Practice in civil actions - Law of equity pleading - Law of evidence - Laws of attachment and garnishments - Law of judgments and executions - Law of extraordinary remedies - Law of habeas corpus -- v. 11. Constitutional law : definitions and general principles - Organization and powers of the United States Government - Constitutional guaranties of fundamental rights - Eminent domain - Taxation - Naturalization -- v. 12. Conflict of laws - International law - Law of interstate commerce - Law of bankruptcy - Law of patents - Law of copyright - Law of trademarks - Unfair competition and good-will -- v. 13. Law of public service companies, especially common carriers - Law of municipal corporations - Law of public officers and elections - Parliamentary law -- v. 14. Law of damages - Law of insurance - Admiralty law - Medical jurisprudence - Forms -- v. 15. Blackstone's Commentaries.

Off-line and on-line affective recognition of a computer user through a biosignal processing approach

Physiological signals, which are controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS), could be used to detect the affective state of computer users and therefore find applications in medicine and engineering. The Pupil Diameter (PD) seems to provide a strong indication of the affective state, as found by previous research, but it has not been investigated fully yet. ^ In this study, new approaches based on monitoring and processing the PD signal for off-line and on-line affective assessment ("relaxation" vs. "stress") are proposed. Wavelet denoising and Kalman filtering methods are first used to remove abrupt changes in the raw Pupil Diameter (PD) signal. Then three features (PDmean, PDmax and PDWalsh) are extracted from the preprocessed PD signal for the affective state classification. In order to select more relevant and reliable physiological data for further analysis, two types of data selection methods are applied, which are based on the paired t-test and subject self-evaluation, respectively. In addition, five different kinds of the classifiers are implemented on the selected data, which achieve average accuracies up to 86.43% and 87.20%, respectively. Finally, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is utilized to investigate the discriminating potential of each individual feature by evaluation of the area under the ROC curve, which reaches values above 0.90. ^ For the on-line affective assessment, a hard threshold is implemented first in order to remove the eye blinks from the PD signal and then a moving average window is utilized to obtain the representative value PDr for every one-second time interval of PD. There are three main steps for the on-line affective assessment algorithm, which are preparation, feature-based decision voting and affective determination. The final results show that the accuracies are 72.30% and 73.55% for the data subsets, which were respectively chosen using two types of data selection methods (paired t-test and subject self-evaluation). ^ In order to further analyze the efficiency of affective recognition through the PD signal, the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) was also monitored and processed. The highest affective assessment classification rate obtained from GSR processing is only 63.57% (based on the off-line processing algorithm). The overall results confirm that the PD signal should be considered as one of the most powerful physiological signals to involve in future automated real-time affective recognition systems, especially for detecting the "relaxation" vs. "stress" states.^

Classes sociais e eleições presidenciais no Brasil contemporâneo (2002-2010)

This work aims to analyze, in terms of class, the social composition of the constituency of the presidential candidates of the Workers Party in 2002, 2006 and 2010 elections. Such research object is constructed from a preliminary critical debate with recent Brazilian electoral studies, especially the literature on the infl uence of social programs on voting and Singer’s formulations about the lulismo phenomenon. Incorporating advances and pointing out gaps in such research efforts, is formulated a roadmap for empirical research constituted of three key elements - the measure ment of the dimensions of class structure in Brazilian capitalism; the observation of material interests related to the constituents locations of such structure; the development of measures of association between the insertion in class groupings and indivi dual voting behavior. Based on the neo - Marxist approach of class analysis, especially as formulated by Wright, it is made an adaptation of the typology formulated by such approach (mainly developed by Santos to the Brazilian case) to the data available fro m databases of censuses of 2000 and 2010. This theoretical construct reveals that during the period considered for the analysis, the structure of class - relations in Brazil became more proletarized and consequently had a decrease of the dimensions of the de stitute class locations. In addition, it was found, in relation to the objective class interests, widespread increments of economic welfare that allowed advances in relation to the material conditions of the proletariat, without, however, incurring losses to the privileged class positions. Such changes in the structural sphere focused in various ways on the political arena. Based on an adaptation to electoral analysis of the concept of "class formation", also formulated by Wright, associated with the use of techniques of ecological inference (especially those proposed by King and associates), it was possible to draw up an overview of class voting in period studied. As main results, three general patterns of individual voting behavior, related to each of the three analyzed class groupings were identified - a contraposition against PT candidates, by voters in privileged class locations; the adhesion, recurring throughout the study period, of workers to Lula and Dilma Rousseff; a favorable electoral shift unde rtaken by economically deprived voters in favor of those candidatures in the 2006 election.

Off-line and On-line Affective Recognition of a Computer User through A Biosignal Processing Approach

Physiological signals, which are controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS), could be used to detect the affective state of computer users and therefore find applications in medicine and engineering. The Pupil Diameter (PD) seems to provide a strong indication of the affective state, as found by previous research, but it has not been investigated fully yet. In this study, new approaches based on monitoring and processing the PD signal for off-line and on-line affective assessment (“relaxation” vs. “stress”) are proposed. Wavelet denoising and Kalman filtering methods are first used to remove abrupt changes in the raw Pupil Diameter (PD) signal. Then three features (PDmean, PDmax and PDWalsh) are extracted from the preprocessed PD signal for the affective state classification. In order to select more relevant and reliable physiological data for further analysis, two types of data selection methods are applied, which are based on the paired t-test and subject self-evaluation, respectively. In addition, five different kinds of the classifiers are implemented on the selected data, which achieve average accuracies up to 86.43% and 87.20%, respectively. Finally, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is utilized to investigate the discriminating potential of each individual feature by evaluation of the area under the ROC curve, which reaches values above 0.90. For the on-line affective assessment, a hard threshold is implemented first in order to remove the eye blinks from the PD signal and then a moving average window is utilized to obtain the representative value PDr for every one-second time interval of PD. There are three main steps for the on-line affective assessment algorithm, which are preparation, feature-based decision voting and affective determination. The final results show that the accuracies are 72.30% and 73.55% for the data subsets, which were respectively chosen using two types of data selection methods (paired t-test and subject self-evaluation). In order to further analyze the efficiency of affective recognition through the PD signal, the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) was also monitored and processed. The highest affective assessment classification rate obtained from GSR processing is only 63.57% (based on the off-line processing algorithm). The overall results confirm that the PD signal should be considered as one of the most powerful physiological signals to involve in future automated real-time affective recognition systems, especially for detecting the “relaxation” vs. “stress” states.

ACCESS FOR ALL VOTERS In South Carolina

The State Election Commission and your county voter registration and elections office work to ensure every voter has full access to the voting process. This paper explains assistance in voting, curbside voting, voter registration, the design of the voting machine and how to get additional information regarding voting.

(Don’t) Make My Vote Count

Proponents of proportional electoral rules often argue that majority rule depresses turnout and may lower welfare due to the 'tyranny of the majority' problem. The present paper studies the impact of electoral rules on turnout and social welfare. We analyze a model of instrumental voting where citizens have private information over their individual cost of voting and over the alternative they prefer. The electoral rule used to select the winning alternative is a combination of majority rule and proportional rule. Results show that the above arguments against majority rule do not hold in this set up. Social welfare and turnout increase with the weight that the electoral rule gives to majority rule when the electorate is expected to be split, and they are independent of the electoral rule employed when the expected size of the minority group tends to zero. However, more proportional rules can increase turnout within the minority group. This effect is stronger the smaller the minority group. We then conclude that majority rule fosters overall turnout and increases social welfare, whereas proportional rule fosters the participation of minorities.

Policy Making in Divided Government. A Pivotal Actors Model with Party Discipline.

This article presents a formal model of policy decision-making in an institutional framework of separation of powers in which the main actors are pivotal political parties with voting discipline. The basic model previously developed from pivotal politics theory for the analysis of the United States lawmaking is here modified to account for policy outcomes and institutional performances in other presidential regimes, especially in Latin America. Legislators' party indiscipline at voting and multi-partism appear as favorable conditions to reduce the size of the equilibrium set containing collectively inefficient outcomes, while a two-party system with strong party discipline is most prone to produce 'gridlock', that is, stability of socially inefficient policies. The article provides a framework for analysis which can induce significant revisions of empirical data, especially regarding the effects of situations of (newly defined) unified and divided government, different decision rules, the number of parties and their discipline. These implications should be testable and may inspire future analytical and empirical work.

Policy making in divided government. A pivotal actors model with party discipline

This article presents a formal model of policy decision-making in an institutional framework of separation of powers in which the main actors are pivotal political parties with voting discipline. The basic model previously developed from pivotal politics theory for the analysis of the United States lawmaking is here modified to account for policy outcomes and institutional performances in other presidential regimes, especially in Latin America. Legislators' party indiscipline at voting and multi-partism appear as favorable conditions to reduce the size of the equilibrium set containing collectively inefficient outcomes, while a two-party system with strong party discipline is most prone to produce 'gridlock', that is, stability of socially inefficient policies. The article provides a framework for analysis which can induce significant revisions of empirical data, especially regarding the effects of situations of (newly defined) unified and divided government, different decision rules, the number of parties and their discipline. These implications should be testable and may inspire future analytical and empirical work.

How enforcement institutions affect markets

In an experiment we study market outcomes under alternative incentive structures for third-party enforcers. Our transactions resemble an anonymous credit market where lenders can give loans and borrowers can repay them. When borrowers default, judges are free to enforce repayment but are themselves paid differently in each of three treatments. First, paying judges according to lenders votes maximizes surplus and the equality of earnings. In contrast, paying judges according to borrowers votes triggers insufficient enforcement, destroying the market and producing the lowest surplus and the most unequal distribution of earnings. Lastly, judges paid the average earnings of borrowers and lenders achieve results close to those based on lender voting. We employ a steps-of-reasoning argument to interpret the performances of different institutions. When voting and enforcement rights are allocated to different classes of actors, the difficulty of their task changes, and arguably as a consequence they focus on high or low surplus equilibria.

MIAR: hacia un entorno colaborativo de editores, autores y evaluadores de revistas

Se describe la evolución del proyecto MIAR (Matriu d'Informació per l'Avaluació de Revistes), un sistema originalmente diseñado para cuantificar la indización en bases de datos de revistas de humanidades y ciencias sociales. Sin embargo, a la vista del panorama de recursos de evaluación actualmente disponibles en España, los autores plantean la transformación de MIAR hacia un portal colaborativo en el que todos los interesados puedan difundir las principales características de las revistas en las que participan directa o indirectamente. Se estudia una transformación del proyecto contemplando el uso de redes sociales, sistemas de votación y de sugerencia, y la aplicación de tecnologías como open linked data que permiten una mayor difusión y socialización de los datos recogidos para cada publicación. De esta manera los datos podrían ser mejor aprovechados por los tres colectivos más directamente interesados: evaluadores, editores y autores/lectores.