Elections, Voting, Technology

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the challenges, controversies, and implications of the 2020 United States presidential election. The authors’ contributions discuss procedures and institutions that are long-established, such as the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the Electoral College, while also considering a variety of evolving challenges, such as race, polling, social media, and voting technology. The authors discuss the political impact on the American election system and what the 2020 election will mean for the future of the American polity. Finally, a substantive chapter takes a comparative perspective on how the 2020 presidential election impacts nations in Africa South of the Sahara.

Voter turnout in local elections is paradoxical. It is where government is closest to those governed and where many first become politically active; yet, it is also where political participation in the form of voting is the lowest. If high participation is an indicator of a healthy democracy, then what can be done to increase participation at the local level? Early voting has long been perceived to increase voter turnout, and there is evidence to suggest that early voting does have an impact on turnout. A majority of early voting scholarship, however, focuses on turnout at the national or state level. What is not clear is how early voting influences turnout at the local level. In the wake of partisan controversy surrounding early voting policies and the reduction of early voting periods in many states, it is important to understand the impact of such policies on all types of elections. Localities are the bedrock of American democracy. Understanding what factors could increase turnout at the local level—where it is devastatingly low—provides valuable insight on local participation, election administration, and early voting laws for scholars and decision-makers alike.

In this book, leading and emerging election scholars document the steps that state and local election officials took to augment their elections during the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of these changes. Written for academics, practitioners, and election laypeople, this book details what went right, what went wrong, and what we can learn from the 2020 US presidential election. The 2020 election cycle was unique in American history. Held during the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts were made at the federal, state, and local levels to ensure voters could safely access elections. These changes included providing greater access to mail/absentee voting, installing ballot drop boxes, outfitting polling places with protective equipment, and much more. Many of these changes were politicized, with Republicans and Democrats viewing these changes differently.

Why do some people conceive their vote choices as mostly against, rather than for a given party/candidate? Who are these negative voters? What macro-level conditions favor the development of negative voting? This volume provides answers to these questions through the first comparative assessment of negative voting in contemporary democracies. It presents a composite theoretical framework for the analysis of negative voting and tests it extensively on originally collected survey data from Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. Examining negative voting as a possible behavioral consequence of affective polarization and negative partisanship, this study sheds light on the electoral implications of increasingly antagonistic attitudes among the electorate.

This book focuses on the more than 8,000 local elections administrators in counties, municipalities, and townships who largely manage the key administrative processes of elections, work with campaigns and candidates, design voting materials and choose voting equipment, staff early, and Election Day polling locations, and communicate with and educate voters. They are the frontline of democracy, and this is the first book that explores who becomes an election administrator; their opinions about election reform and election integrity; how LEOs responded to the unique challenges of the 2020 election which included misinformation and even death threats; and how to move forward to ensure a sustainable, diverse, and sustainable community.