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Electronic-voting(e-voting), compared with paper voting, has advantages in several aspects. Among those benefits, the ability to audit the electoral process at every stage is one of the most desired features. In Eurocrypt2015, Kiayias et al. proposed an E2E verifiable e-voting system which first provides E2E verifiability without relying on external sources of randomness or the random oracle model. The main advantage of the system is that election auditors need only the election transcript and the feedback from the voters to pronounce the election process unequivocally valid. Unfortunately, their system comes with a huge performance and storage penalty for the election authority (EA) compared to other e-voting systems such as Helios. The reason is the EA forms the proof of tally results. It is required to precompute several ciphertexts. The performance penalty on the EA appears to be intrinsic: voters cannot compute an enciphered ballot themselves because it seems unprovable. In this work, we construct a new e-voting system that retains strong E2E characteristics while eliminating the performance and storage penalty of the EA. Our construction is practical and has a similar performance to Helios. The privacy of our construction relies on the SXDH assumption over bilinear groups via complexity leveraging.

This paper argues for a reorientation of how we think about ethnic voting, away from an exclusive focus on voters to one that links voter behavior to the supply side of candidates. It introduces the concept of choice set, or the set of choices a voter sees on the ballot on election day, and shows that the modal choice set in three legislative elections – Kenya (2007), Ghana (2008), and Uganda (2011) – is not the mixed co-ethnic/non-co-ethnic set assumed in much of the literature on ethnic voting in Africa. Most African voters in fact see ballots that consist of either all co-ethnics or no co-ethnics. These uniform choice sets constrain choice in ways that predetermine behavior. Moreover, breaking behavior into choice and choice set reveals that differences in prevalence rates of co-ethnic voting across cases is driven as much by the choices voters see on their ballots as the choices they make in the voting booth. Shifting from choice to choice set thus induces us to identify and theorize factors shaping electoral outcomes in Africa beyond those rooted in individual voter psychology: the entry decisions of candidates and parties, constituency boundaries, and the distribution of groups across geography.

In list proportional representation (PR) systems, parties shape political selection. We propose a theory of party list choice and elections in list PR systems. Our results describe how a party allocates candidates of heterogenoeus quality across list ranks depending on (1) its electoral goals and (2) its competitive environment. We test our predictions on the universe of Swedish local politicians from 1991 to 2014. While parties assign better candidates to higher ranks at all ballot levels, the pattern is most pronounced among electorally advantaged parties, i.e., those with the strongest prospect of controlling the executive. These results contrast with existing accounts of candidate selection, which emphasize that parties prioritize candidate quality in their nomination strategies only when constrained by electoral incentives. Our results, instead, suggest that the principal demand for high-quality politicians derives from parties, rather than voters.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is experiencing explosive growth and has gained extensive attention from academia and industry in recent years. However, most of the existing IoT infrastructures are centralized, which may cause the issues of unscalability and single-point-of-failure. Consequently, decentralized IoT has been proposed by taking advantage of the emerging technology called blockchain. Voting systems are widely adopted in IoT, for example a leader election in wireless sensor networks. Self-tallying voting systems are alternatives to unsuitable, traditional centralized voting systems in decentralized IoT. Unfortunately, self-tallying voting systems inherently suffer from fairness issues, such as adaptive and abortive issues caused by malicious voters. To address these issues, in this paper, we introduce a framework of the self-tallying voting system in decentralized IoT based on blockchain. We propose a concrete construction and prove that the proposed system satisfies all the security requirements, including fairness, dispute-freeness and maximal ballot secrecy. We simulate the algorithms on a laptop, an Android phone and a Raspberry Pi to test the time consumption and evaluate the gas cost of each algorithm in a private blockchain as well. The implementation results demonstrate the practicability of our system

Voting by mail is increasingly popular. Although voters enjoy the convenience of voting by mail, the public is unaware how prone to error mail ballots are. Election administrations reject mail ballots for a variety of reasons. Because German electoral laws treat rejected ballots as not having been cast, the reported number of invalid mail ballots underestimates the true share of uncounted mail ballots. Between 3.2% and 4.0% of the mailed ballots in German elections are estimated to remain uncounted, which is far higher than the share of invalid in-person votes. This paper argues that rejected mail ballots should be reported in the official records to make voters aware of the risks of an uncounted mail ballot.

We propose a definition of ballot secrecy as an indistinguishability game in the computational model of cryptography. Our definition improves upon earlier definitions to ensure ballot secrecy is preserved in the presence of an adversary that controls ballot collection. We also propose a definition of ballot independence as an adaptation of an indistinguishability game for asymmetric encryption. We prove relations between our definitions. In particular, we prove ballot independence is sufficient for ballot secrecy in voting systems with zero-knowledge tallying proofs. Moreover, we prove that building systems from non-malleable asymmetric encryption schemes suffices for ballot secrecy, thereby eliminating the expense of ballot-secrecy proofs for a class of encryption-based voting systems. We demonstrate applicability of our results by analysing the Helios voting system and its mixnet variant. Our analysis reveals that Helios does not satisfy ballot secrecy in the presence of an adversary that controls ballot collection. The vulnerability cannot be detected by earlier definitions of ballot secrecy, because they do not consider such adversaries. We adopt non-malleable ballots as a fix and prove that the fixed system satisfies ballot secrecy.

This paper aims to describe the supervision of the Central Kalimantan regional head election during the pandemic. The problem is focused on how the description of election supervision by Election Supervisory Agency? and what constraint are faced and their solutions in the context of local wisdom?. The research type is descriptive qualitative. Data Collecting through interviews, observation, and literature study. The data obtained were analyzed descriptively using the Mile and Huberman model. This study shows several things: First, the implementation of supervision is more on tasks outside the crucial task of Bawaslu, namely the supervision of the pandemic health protocols as an additional task burden. Second, the obstacles faced by Bawaslu starting from the preparation, voting, and post-voting. Namely: Updating and determining the voter list was constrained by the Work From Home and Large-Scale Social Restrictions policies; Procurement and distribution of logistics whose suppliers had not yet recovered from the impact of the pandemic; Some officials were reluctant and resigned because of the rapid test rules; distorted ballot papers; The officers' lack of compliance with the working mechanism that had been determined. Third, The context of local wisdom in the supervision of Pilkada in Central Kalimantan, namely: Balanga, Huma Betang, Ma'mapas Lewu, Isen mulang, and Dayak Greetings: Tabe salamat lingu nalatai, Salam Sujud Karendem malempang, Adil ka’ Talino bacura’mi ka’ Saruga, Basengat kajubata.

Motivated by the increasing influence of shareholder votes on corporate policies, we examine investors’ perceptions of activism via voting. To identify instances of activism via voting, we focus on annual meetings with at least one ballot item where a substantial fraction of shareholders is expected to vote against management’s voting recommendation, indicating an increase in their monitoring activity. We define such meetings as “contentious.” Using a sample of almost 28,000 meetings between 2003 and 2012, we examine stock returns over the period between the proxy filing and the annual meeting. This period captures when investors learn about the contentious nature of the upcoming meeting and form expectations about its likely impact on firms’ policies. We find that abnormal stock returns prior to contentious meetings are significantly positive and higher than those prior to non-contentious meetings. These higher abnormal returns increase with the contentiousness of the meeting; are more pronounced in firms with poor past performance, which are more likely to respond to shareholder pressure; and persist after controlling for firm-specific news and proxies for risk factors. Our results are consistent with investors’ expecting activism via voting to have a positive impact on firm value, on average, and cast doubts on regulatory attempts to restrict the use of shareholder votes.

Internet voting can afford more inclusive and inexpensive elections. The flip side is that the integrity of the election can be compromised by adversarial attacks and malfunctioning voting infrastructure. Individual verifiability aims to protect against such risks by letting voters verify that their votes are correctly registered in the electronic ballot box. Therefore, voters need to carry out additional tasks making human factors crucial for security. In this article, we establish a categorization of individually verifiable Internet voting schemes based on voter interactions. For each category in our proposed categorization, we evaluate a voting scheme in a user study with a total of 100 participants. In our study, we assessed usability, user experience, trust, and further qualitative data to gain deeper insights into voting schemes. Based on our results, we conclude with recommendations for developers and policymakers to inform the choices and design of individually verifiable Internet voting schemes.

Introduction: Voters facing illness or disability are disproportionately under-represented in terms of voter turnout. Earlier research has indicated that enfranchisement of these populations may reinforce the implementation of policies improving health outcomes and equity. Due to the confluence of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the 2020 election, we aimed to assess emergency absentee voting processes, which allow voters hospitalized after regular absentee deadlines to still obtain an absentee ballot, and election changes due to COVID-19 in all 50 states. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study collecting 34 variables pertaining to emergency voting processes and COVID-19-related election changes, including deadlines, methods of submission for applications and ballots, and specialized services for patients. Data were obtained from, in order of priority, state boards of elections websites, poll worker manuals, application forms, and state legislation. We verified all data through direct correspondence with state boards of elections. Results: Emergency absentee voting processes are in place in 39 states, with the remaining states having universal vote-by-mail (n = 5) or extended regular absentee voting deadlines (n = 6). The emergency absentee period most commonly began within 24 hours following the normal absentee application deadline, which was often seven days before an election (n = 11). Unique aspects of emergency voting processes included patients designating an “authorized agent” to deliver their applications and ballots (n = 38), electronic ballot delivery (n = 5), and in-person teams that deliver ballots directly to patients (n = 18). Documented barriers in these processes nationwide include unavailable online information (n = 11), restrictions mandating agents to be family members (n = 7), physician affidavits or signatures (n = 9), and notary or witness signature requirements (n = 15). For the November 2020 presidential election, 12 states expanded absentee eligibility to allow COVID-19 as a reason to request an absentee ballot, and 18 states mailed absentee ballot applications or absentee ballots to all registered voters. Conclusion: While 39 states operate emergency absentee voting processes for hospitalized voters, there are considerable areas for improvement and heterogeneity in guidelines for these protocols. For future election cycles, information on emergency voting and broader election reforms due to COVID-19 may be useful for emergency providers and patients alike to improve the democratic participation of voters experiencing illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health is the property of Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With 90% of the 2020 U.S. general election ballot contents verifiable by paper, why do only 65% of voters trust the results?

Internet is playing an increasingly important role in shaping citizens’ political experience. We turn to it to consume political news and, in some countries, to even cast our ballots at parliamentary elections. Leading the way in embracing Internet voting (i-voting) is Estonia where nearly half of the ballots cast during the 2019 parliamentary election were submitted online. Using original data from the 2019 Estonian Candidate Study, this paper explores the relationship between how candidates campaign and their electoral performance. It finds greater use of both offline and online campaign tools to contribute to higher vote shares as candidates win more traditional and i-votes. These positive effects are similar in size, in terms of candidates’ overall electoral performance as well as their ability to attract different types of votes. The results show not only that individual-level campaigns continue to matter, but that online campaigns have become as important as offline campaigns for candidates, and voters’ political activity often transcends the medium through which they receive political communication.

Postal voting intends to provide citizens residing abroad with a convenient voting technique to influence political representation in their country of origin. However, its adoption among individuals is dependent on two opposing factors. On the one hand, voting via post helps to overcome the increasing distance between a voter’s residency abroad and the nearest polling station organized by a diplomatic mission (mostly at an embassy or a consulate). On the other hand, this way of voting also requires enough trust that the postal service and designated state office will successfully deliver one’s vote to the ballot box because the result cannot be effectively verified without violation of the ballot secrecy. We examine the interaction of these two factors in an originally conducted survey among Finnish citizens residing abroad fielded shortly after the 2019 Parliamentary elections—the first occasion after Finland put postal voting into effect. Altogether, 664 respondents responded to all questions required for our specification of binomial logistic regression models controlling for various potential confounders. The results demonstrate that trust in postal voting moderates the impact of distance on one’s probability to adopt postal voting. While low-trusting emigrant voters remain largely indifferent regardless of the distance to the nearest polling station, medium-trusting non-resident citizens increasingly mail their ballots when the nearest polling station is more than 100 km away. High-trusting individuals begin to increasingly do so when they are ten to 30 km away.

Road traffic offences in time series analysis when trend-cycle component is quadratic is discussed in this study. The study is to investigate the variance stability, trend pattern, seasonal indices and suitable model for decomposition of study data. The study shows that, the series is seasonal with evidence of upward trend or downward trend. There is an upsurge of the series in the months of March, August and November and a drop in January, June and December. The periodic standard deviations are stable while the seasonal standard deviations differ, suggesting that the series requires transformation to make the seasonal indices additive.

There is no quantum election protocol that can fulfil the eight requirements of an electronic election protocol, i.e., completeness, robustness, privacy, legality, unreusability, fairness, verifiability, and receipt-freeness. To address this issue, we employ the general construction of quantum digital signature and quantum public key encryption, in conjunction with classic public key encryption, to develop and instantiate a general construction of quantum election protocol. The proposed protocol exhibits the following advantages: (i) no pre-shared key between any two participants is required, and no trusted third party or anonymous channels are required. The protocol is suitable for large-scale elections with numerous candidates and voters and accommodates the situation in which multiple voters vote simultaneously. (ii) It is the first protocol that dismantles the contradiction between verifiability and receipt-freeness in a quantum election protocol. It satisfies all eight requirements stated earlier under the physical assumptions that there exists a one-way untappable channel from the administrator to the voter and that there is no collusion between any of the three parties in the protocol. Compared with current election protocols with verifiability and receipt-freeness, this protocol relies upon fewer physical assumptions. (iii) This construction is flexible and can be instantiated into an election scheme having post-quantum security by applying cryptographic algorithms conveying post-quantum security. Moreover, utilizing quantum digital signature and public key encryption yields a good result: the transmitted ballots are in quantum states, so owing to the no-cloning theorem, ballot privacy is less likely to be compromised, even if private keys of the signature and public key encryption are leaked after the election. However, in existing election protocols employing classic digital signatures and public key encryption, ballot privacy can be easily violated if attackers obtain private keys. Thus, our construction enhances privacy.

This study aimed at describing the model of voter education of women-based democracy volunteers in Pekanbaru City and Dumai City. Democracy volunteers are partners in the General Election Commission, who deliver electoral information to the public. The voter education model consists of the strategies used, the material delivered, the methods used to provide knowledge, raise awareness, and increase women voters' political participation. This research employed a qualitative approach with descriptive methods—the informants in this research selected through a non-probability sampling method with a purposive sampling technique. The data validity testing technique used triangulation of data sources. The research findings show that (1) the strategy used was the mapping of target communities and personal communication with community administrators; (2) the material presented included voter requirements, the number of candidates in the 2019 simultaneous elections in Pekanbaru City and Dumai City, introduction of ballot papers, and procedures for voting; (3) the method used was lectures using props in the form of ballots. The female voter is strategic, seeing from the quantity and regulation in Indonesia.

This study examines the problems of election logistics and political meddling and their effects on African elections. It relies essentially on primary data drawn from participant observation and 53 key participant interviews conducted across 16 electoral wards in Southeastern Nigeria during the 2019 election. The study reveals some logistical problems involved in the hiring of public transport services (‘town service’ buses) to convey electoral materials in Nigeria such as poor ethical conduct among public transporters/drivers, lack of effective mobilization of drivers, poor compliance with road safety standards, breach of contract agreement, ineffective information sharing on the flow of election materials, and complicity in electoral malpractices. Also, poor road networks result in random breakdowns of hired ‘town service’ buses. Local politicians leverage these gaps to meddle in election logistics which orchestrate electoral fraud. The study sheds light on the need to streamline election logistics and develop ballot tracking systems in order to improve the distribution, tracking, and retrieval of sensitive and non-sensitive election materials during elections.

This paper presents guidelines and tools for action research in the school library which will help the librarian justify expenditures and personnel and evaluate and plan services. It shows how statistics can be turned into meaningful knowledge about what is currently being done in the library, how well it is being done, whether it should be done, and what needs to be known to prepare for the future. The paper covers: what needs to be measured in school libraries; what can be measured; how to measure--types of data and measurement techniques; analyzing the data--quantitative and qualitative analysis; and reporting the data--who needs the data, what data should be reported, and how to report the data to a variety of audiences. All institutions, including libraries, need to assess their value and performance in order to justify funding. In an era of increased expenses and reduced funding, programs which are not highly rated can be deprived of even maintenance levels of funding, phased out, or placed on the ballot for referendum by taxpayers. Information technology has dramatically increased the budgets of school libraries, and school librarians need to demonstrate the real benefits of these technologies for students. Action research is a tool which can help to examine, report on, and improve the total school library program. (Author/SWC) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ********************************************************************************

A democracia pressupõe a participação das pessoas em processos decisórios que, em alguma medida, afetam individual e/ou coletivamente suas vidas. Um dos pilares da democracia representativa é a liberdade de expressão, concebida como direito fundamental que, no contexto constitucional brasileiro, garante aos cidadãos a “livre manifestação do pensamento.” Outro sustentáculo, não menos importante, é o direito à informação, igualmente protegido pela Constituição Federal, que garante às pessoas o acesso a conteúdos informacionais de interesse individual e coletivo. Mas o que acontece quando a liberdade de expressão é usada para disseminar informações falsas? E quando esse processo corrompido se utiliza das facilidades tecnológicas e da falta de competência informacional dos usuários para propagar a desinformação no país? É nesse contexto que o sistema de votação eletrônica vem sofrendo ataques constantes, sobretudo no ambiente das redes sociais. O presente artigo tem por objetivo geral mapear os artigos acadêmicos que se debruçam sobre as temáticas competência informacional, desinformação e fake news, além dos objetivos específicos: contextualizar a temática competência informacional e desinformação, identificar ações já desenvolvidas de combate à desinformação no sistema de votação eletrônica brasileiro, e, propor iniciativas educacionais para o seu fortalecimento. A coleta foi realizada no portal Google Acadêmico, utilizando-se os termos “competência em informação”, “desinformação”, “fake news, além de “democracia”, “votação eletrônica” e “urna eletrônica”, nos idiomas português, inglês e espanhol. Por fim, apresentou uma proposta para estimular a iniciativa educacional no âmbito dos Tribunais Regionais Eleitorais.

This paper developed for the risk free and person oriented Online Voting System. The Online Voting gadget is made for the humans of the united states living round the world and needs to vote for their representative. The election can be carried out in two methods the paper ballot election and the computerized ballot elections. The automatic ballot elections are referred to as the digital voting. The on line vote casting device is rather developed and the on-line polling machine can be changed through precisely and at once vote casting on line and on the spot results. The on line balloting gadget is completed by using the net so it can be known as the Internet Voting. The gadget proceeds the on-line vote casting machine in a new approach known as Homomorphic Encryption . Homogeneous encryption is the form of encryption, which lets the computer generate encrypted end results in ciphertexts, as though they were performed in a plaintext, when decrypted, which matches the end result of the operations. In this paper we have a digital voting device based on homomorphic encryption to make sure that the vote is confidential. The benefits of multi-homorphic encryption systems are all presented in our suggestion. The proposed electoral system is suitable for elections that include non-partial votes and for multi-candidate elections. For outsourced storage and counting, homomorphic encryption can be used.

How does engagement in leisure activities, such as playing videogames, affect political behavior and preferences? Are young adult gamers just a group of basement-dwellers who are disengaged from po...

Why did Washington State citizens vote down a 2010 ballot measure that would have increased taxes on the rich? This outcome appears to contradict consistent survey findings that majorities of the p...

On California's November 2020 ballot were some contentious and important issues, including Proposition 22, classifying rideshare drivers and app-based delivery workers as independent contractors. Gig economy giants Uber, Lyft, Doordash, and others spent a whopping $111 million on Prop 22. Of course, the companies had a lot to lose. If they were made to treat their drivers or delivery people as employees and compensate them accordingly, they would be bankrupted, they claimed.

In recent decades, modern ballroom dancing as an artistic phenomenon is spreading around the world. During the twentieth century, the society formed a clear idea of ​​ballroom dancing as a folk dance (waltz, tango, etc.) and sports competitions of ten standardized ballroom dances. However, in recent times, modern ballroom dancing is increasingly fighting for the right to recognize it as an independent phenomenon of choreographic culture, given the original system of means of expression, which distinguishes it from other types of ballroom choreography (sports and household) and stage forms of folk dance. Modern society places high demands on the professional training of future teachers in the field of culture and art. Fundamental knowledge of philosophy, pedagogy and psychology, ethics and aesthetics, other sciences help to organize the educational process with its main purpose, didactic, educational, developmental tasks, traditional and interactive methods, learning technologies and organizational forms determined by the teacher in accordance with modern requirements. put forward by the «Law of Ukraine on Higher Education» and state educational standards. The process of training a specialist in the field of ballroom dancing is based on the presence of practical training, adjustment, consolidation of movements and skills of the teacher, because without in-depth analysis of body movements in various dance performances, the idea of ​​ballroom dancing Constant quality control and the creation of individual tasks will promote self-analysis of the student, his understanding and understanding of the importance of the balance between mental activity, physical and spiritual development. In the article the author explores the specifics of teaching modern ballroom dancing in higher education; defines the essence, criteria, requirements of choreographic and performing skills as a competence. The characteristics and features of the teacher-choreographer, his personal qualities are presented.

Election and voting play crucial roles in democratic society for an elactorate to make a collective decision. E-voting is one of the most challenging problems in cryptographic research to provide multiple dimensions security assurances. In this paper, we study an important voting paradigm, score voting, with privacy protection, which has not been investigated in previous work. We propose a blockchain based self-tallying election system to support score voting, dubbed “PriScore”, where the ballots are recorded on blockchain to prevent vote forgery or tampering. PriScore makes it possible for each voter to assign different evaluation scores (within a certain range) for the candidates as ranked-choice, where the sum of the scores in each ballot should be a predefined constant, and the evaluation scores are encrypted to maintain confidentiality. A major challenge in score voting is to simultaneously prove two constraint conditions: range proof and sum proof. We introduce a new technique, called dual zero-knowledge proof (dual-ZKP), to prove the scores satisfying two crucial requirements, which integrates “1-out-of- $K$ ” proof and distributed ElGamal crypto in a non-trivial way. The self-tallying mechanism in PriScore enables any party in the system to calculate and verify the election result, which provides fairness, dispute-freeness. The security analysis demonstrates that PriScore achieves completeness, soundness, eligibility, universal/individual verifiability and multiple-voting detection. We evaluate the performance of PriScore on modern workbench to test the performance, and also on a blockchain platform to measure the resource consumption. The experiments show that PriScore preserves privacy of score voting with reasonable overheads.

The article is devoted to the study of the acceptability of the introduction of digital technologies in the electoral process and their compliance with democratic standards. It is indicated, that the Recommendation CM / Rec (2017) revised the problematic aspects of the legal regulation of electoral technologies in accordance with the current stage of development of science and information technology and today remains virtually the only agreed act, containing requirements for electronic voting. The most common digital technologies in the election process are highlighted: devices for direct recording of electronic voting without a paper ballot form; means of scanning the ballot; technical mechanisms for speeding up the counting of votes; online voting system via a computer or mobile device with Internet access; a device for voter identification online or at a polling station (including by recording fingerprints or the retina). The following essential principles of this method of election are summarized: clarity of procedure, reliability, stability of electoral legislation and broad public support. The authors highlight the following advantages of the electronic election system - the presence of a coordinated, verified, labile voter register; increases administrative efficiency; reduces long-term costs of financial and labor resources; eliminates the possibility of manipulation; speeds up the counting of votes; improves political transparency; overcomes the problems of ignorance of the electorate. The article proves that elections, referendums or other forms of democracy, conducted using digital technologies, must meet the requirements and general principles of suffrage. Legitimation of digital technologies is possible only in the absence of discriminatory advantages. Therefore, the possibility of using digital technologies is possible in the case of organizing the technical perfection of the electronic voting system and counting of votes, as well as their alternatives, along with the classic form of voting

Objective The aim of this paper is to present a UK-based consensus of principles and recommendations to guide rheumatology US training and practice. Method A Delphi process was conducted involving 19 US experts representing each of the 14 regions of the UK. A working group of experienced British Society for Rheumatology Ultrasound Special Interest Group (BSRUSSIG) members made seven proposals that were presented to the whole group for further discussion. This resulted in minor modifications and seven preliminary recommendations. Members were then asked to anonymously agree or disagree with each recommendation using an electronic ballot. A threshold of 75% was used to determine consensus agreement. Results were collated by an independent chairperson and presented to the BSRUSSIG in a face to face meeting where agreement for each recommendation was ratified and an action plan agreed for dissemination of the results and future development work. Results Using a validated process, experts in rheumatology US have worked through an iterative process and have unanimously agreed seven recommendations for rheumatology training and practice. These cover a hierarchy of practice indications, education and training, including the need for practitioners to demonstrate lifelong learning, as well as a commitment to support mentors and trainers through the BSRUSSIG. Conclusion These are the first specific education and practice recommendations for rheumatology US in the UK and have been developed and endorsed by the BSRUSSIG. We intend that these proposals will help to support and validate rheumatology US practice and inform the development of future rheumatology training curricula and education programmes.

Since 1980, many have marveled at Los Angeles’“innovation” of funding transportation through ballot measures that are raising billions for transportation improvements. In fact, historically much transportation infrastructure in Los Angeles was financed by local voter-approved revenues. It began in 1868 with a narrowly approved $225,000 bond measure to build the region’s first railroad, followed by an 1876 measure to grant the Southern Pacific railroad a $602,000 subsidy to entice the company to route its transcontinental line through the region. Angeleno voted on an additional 23 different transportation-related ballot measures between the passage of the Good Roads Act (1908) and the end of the New Deal (1937)—a key period of Los Angeles’ history that saw dramatic population increase and with it political contention over the direction of the region’s growth. Overall, these early transportation measures fared well with voters. Of the 25 transportation-related ballot measures in Los Angeles County from 1860 to 1960, only seven (28%) failed to pass, a far better record than nontransportation measures of which 21 of 31 (71%) went down to defeat. Regardless of whether, as some contend, Los Angeles missed a golden opportunity to create the backbone of an effective transit system that would have reduced the need for automobiles and spending many billions on freeways, it is clear that local voters have long faced competing visions for the future of Los Angeles and arguments over whether to fund transportation systems to serve these visions.

Marketing orders allow farmers to collectively fund industry-wide services that may be difficult to provide through a voluntary approach. But not all farmers support collective approaches. We employed ballot data from U.S. Department of Agriculture and survey data we collected to explore why farmers in California voted to terminate the federal fresh peach and nectarine marketing orders in 2011 and the implications of this termination. Even after controlling for other factors, we found that farmers who produced more were significantly less likely to vote for continuation. We also found that detailed industry information provided via the marketing orders was significantly more important to respondents voting for continuation, and respondents with more organic production were significantly more likely to vote for continuation. These results suggest farmers may have lost important production and marketing resources due to termination of the orders, with evidence that smaller farms were more affected. This termination may thus have accelerated the exit of farmers from this industry.

In most electronic voting schemes, a voter signs his/her ballot using a digital signature algorithm before submission to ensure that the ballot is generated by himself/herself, which results that the workload of the verification process in ballot tallying increases with the number of voters and candidates. In this paper we present a new electronic voting scheme, HSE-voting, to lighten the workload of tallying. The cryptographic approach of this scheme is homomorphic signcryption, whose signature homomorphism enables that the number of signature verifications depends on the number of candidates only, and the encryption homomorphism keeps ballots from being decrypted during the tallying process. Moreover, for voters, the encryption and signature of ballots can be completed in one step using the homomorphic signcryption. Finally, this paper gives proofs for the privacy of voters and the security and verifiability of voting, and provides a comparative analysis with the latest scheme.

Do (many) voters like ranking? We address this question through an experimental study performed in four countries: Austria, England, Ireland and Sweden. Respondents were invited to participate in three successive elections. They were randomly assigned to one of four possible voting scenarios and asked to vote. The voting scenarios differed in terms of party supply (three or five parties) and the type of vote choice (vote for one party only or possibility of ranking all parties). After they had voted, respondents were asked about their satisfaction with the party supply and the voting system (using a scale from 0 “not at all satisfied” to 10 “very much satisfied”). We find little difference in overall satisfaction between those elections where people could rank order the parties and those where they could not.

Research on clientelism emphasizes the use of brokers to mobilize voters. To utilize these agents efficiently, politicians must learn about brokers’ relative abilities and allocate scarce resources accordingly. Drawing upon a hand-coded dataset based on the archives of Gustavo Capanema, a powerful mid-twentieth-century congressman from Minas Gerais, Brazil, this paper offers the first direct evidence of such learning dynamics. The analysis concentrates on Brazil’s pre-secret ballot era, a time when measuring broker performance was particularly straightforward. Consistent with theories of political learning, the data demonstrate that resource flows to local machines were contingent on the deviation between actual and expected votes received in previous elections. Moreover, given politicians’ ability to discern mobilization capacity, payments to brokers were highly effective in bringing out the vote.

States have increasingly used ballot initiatives to legislate education policy in recent years, although the consequences for educational equity and justice have been underexamined. This article investigates the extent to which ballot initiatives disproportionately affect traditionally minoritized students, with particular attention to two phenomena: tyranny of the majority and racial threat hypothesis. Results across models consistently find that minority-targeted education initiatives pass at significantly higher rates than those that do not target minoritized students, and they garner considerably more yes votes regardless of passage. For states with more people of color, this effect is magnified, suggesting the potential for tyranny of the majority may increase when there are greater proportions of people of color within a state. This research contributes to the body of literature regarding the impact of state-level policy on education and sheds light on the benefits and potentially negative consequences of the ballot initiative process as an education policy making tool, particularly for our nation’s most disadvantaged students.

How does ethnic diversity within a jurisdiction impact residents’ demand for local public goods? This question is central to the literature on diversity and local spending but remains relatively untested. To fill this gap, we study outcomes from California school district ballot measures to increase school funding. We use an instrumental variable approach to account for endogeneity in diversity. We find no evidence that diversity impacts willingness to be taxed to fund local schools. Our findings suggest that the negative effects of diversity on spending may be occurring through other channels, such as the decision-making of local officials.

The end-to-end (E2E) verification enables a voter to check if his ballot is recorded as he intended and the public to check if the system has correctly counted all of the recorded ballots. The Internet voting systems based on the principle of E2E verifiability have many challenges; the most important is its security. Several E2E voting systems have been discussed in the last decade in terms of analyzing the e-voting system and formalizing its security requirements. This article presents an E2E verifiable internet voting system that provides mobility to a voter and allows him to cast his vote secretly in public computer with the benefit of early voting. The proposed system aims to support the election process universally by using the voter's unique identification and biometric features. We propose a new identity-based blind signature scheme that ensures the voter's anonymity. We adopt the Boneh–Lynn–Shacham short signature scheme that ensures the vote privacy with the least ballot size. The system provides a digital witness to a voter that enables him to check whether his vote is recorded as he meant and the public to check if all the recorded ballots are counted correctly. The privacy of the proposed system is achieved under the well-known elliptic curve discrete logarithm and gap Diffie–Hellman assumptions.

This study empirically examines the outcomes of two solar energy amendments that were on the ballot in Florida in 2016. One amendment exempts solar energy devices from ad valorem taxation, effectiv...

Student council election is a routine school activity every year, but currently the student council election is done manually using ballot papers containing the candidates. The weakness of this system is in addition to the process of getting longer results, it is also prone to fraud due to the excess of manipulated ballot papers, as well as being less environmentally friendly. Therefore the need for a system that is able to provide solutions to these problems, one of which is a responsive web-based student council election system. Web-based systems are more common than mobile-based systems, because they are supported by all device platforms, different if only based on mobile (Android), only devices based on the Android operating system can use the application. Moreover, web technology is now very good, responsive web allows the display of web pages to adjust to the user's screen size automatically, responsive web framework used in this study is bootstrap. In this study, researchers used a software development model which is a prototype. And for the tools used in developing this application is the Unified Modeling Language, and the system testing method uses a blackbox. The results of this study are expected to provide results in the form of a system that is fast and accurate, cost effective and environmentally friendly. Keywords: e-voting, bootstrap, prototype

Recent studies document the increasing effectiveness of shareholder voting as a monitoring mechanism. Because both directors and the market respond to shareholder votes, management has stronger incentives to influence voting outcomes. We identify one channel through which management can affect voting outcomes: increasing the turnout of (typically management-friendly) retail shareholders. Our study focuses on an observable managerial choice of how to deliver proxy materials to maximize retail turnout. Management can opt to send a full set of proxy materials to all shareholders, which increases retail turnout but also increases printing and mailing costs, or they can send a notice directing shareholders to proxy materials available online, which reduces costs but also decreases retail turnout. We find that managers are more likely to choose to deliver a full set of proxy materials when there are contentious items on the ballot for which they need additional voting support; and, indeed, the resulting support increases the likelihood that voting outcomes will align with management recommendations. This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting.

Members of parliament are key actors for the implementation of energy transitions, such as phasing out nuclear power. Before legislators can cast their maybe decisive vote in parliament, they need to run for office and actively strive for election. This paper assesses what political candidates oppose renewable energy transitions and questions whether the energy issue matters in national elections, and thus has consequences for the implementation of new sustainable energy sources. We analyze these questions by first describing the specific characteristics of political candidates. The paper then evaluates the relevance of the energy issue for electoral success in three national elections in Switzerland (2007, 2012, and 2015). Based on candidate data from the voting advice application smartvote.ch, we find that female candidates support ETs more than men do; that especially the French-speaking part of the country is more in favor of a nuclear phase-out, and that younger candidates are also more open toward restructuring the energy system than older candidates are. Our models further show that the energy issue does not matter in elections, independently from its salience in the respective election campaigns. Candidates are thus relatively free to choose their position on the issue and do not have to fear consequences at the ballot. However, candidates of center parties, in contrast to the pole parties, are sensitive to the energy issue and reflect public mood in their positions.

This paper investigated the reflections of Electoral Commission (EC) officers and voters in the Jaman South District with regard to ballot paper wastage in elections in Ghana using descriptive exploratory research design. Purposive and convenience sampling techniques were used to select 172 respondents for the study with questionnaires, structured interview and interview guide as the research instruments. The study revealed that elections were conducted to help select leaders for the nation and to help ensure that leaders are accountable to the people. Policies and ideologies of candidates were found to have little influence on how persons vote. Factors such as protest voting, low public education on elections, and high level of illiteracy were responsible for rejected ballots in the district. Rejected ballot paper was a cost to the EC officers and the voters in terms of resources, time and energy especially during periods of run-offs. The study recommended that the government effectively collaborate with the EC officials in the district to implement policies that will increase voters’ appreciation of issues underpinning democracy. The EC officers in the district should properly collaborate with the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) to provide adequate public education to enable the electorates in the district to have a proper understanding of basic electoral issues.Key words: Elections; democracy; democratization; disenfranchisement; rejected ballots.

As urban growth and competition for natural resources heighten, the attention to preserving such resources, including land, is also growing. As one example, the appearance and passage of conservation referenda represents a high-profile, grassroots political effort across the USA. In this study, factors influencing the appearance and passage of ballot initiatives in Colorado are compared to previous literature, identifying potential regional variation in such drivers. Results suggest that, while some place-based characteristics like total population and educational attainment have a consistent effect, the role of income and households with children does not. It appears support for conservation is much more broadly distributed across the population in the West and that residents view conservation as an ongoing activity, not a singular event. Likewise, there is some evidence that Western voters view agriculture and conservation as mutually exclusive. Although fundamental results do not change, accounting for spatial effects alters the magnitude and significance of factors affecting both appearance and passage of conservation referenda.

Resistance narratives in composition studies often focus on how students resist pedagogies that challenge their received values and identities. These narratives ignore the complex developmental trajectory that students face in the writing classroom. The authors apply a developmental framework to this resistance and argue that helping students work through these challenges is essential to developing complex ways of seeing themselves as writers and citizens.

Referendums are regularly criticised for reducing complex policy decisions to two maximally opposed options. This reduces opportunities for voter expression and can polarise debates. Alternative referendum designs which present more than two ballot options can offer innovative opportunities, but also raise new challenges. We can benefit by learning from previous experiences with multi-option referendum voting. Discussions of such experiences are rare and have often focussed on a limited number of cases. This article provides an overview of over 100 multi-option referendum experiences around the world. It discusses the topics on which they were held and the ballot options that were offered. It then analyses the variety in ballot design in terms of questions posed and voting methods applied. Drawing on the experiences of multi-option referendums, the article concludes with lessons that can be learned in relation to initiating and designing these referendums.

Contains fulltext : 225310.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) New parties can shake up party systems by advancing new issues, influencing established competitors and affecting the dynamics of party competition. However, which kinds of new parties are successful? While the literature has extensively focused on institutional-level and election-level drivers of new party success, the literature on party-level determinants of new party success is scarce. As most studies on new party success focus on party entry at the election level or on new party survival, we argue that these studies suffer from selection bias as they do not leverage information on unsuccessful parties. This is understandable, since quality data on unsuccessful parties’ vote shares, party organizations and ideological characteristics are scant. To overcome this limitation, we examine the party-level determinants of new party success in the Netherlands, including all parties that have participated in national parliamentary elections since 1946. Our findings have important implications for the study of new parties in modern democracies. 21 oktober 2020 12 p.

The purpose of this study is to determine the process of ballot distribution and propose a model of the optimal ballot distribution process. This research is useful in providing input on the distribution of ballot papers for the first time this election is held simultaneously. The input is expected to increase effectiveness in the distribution or distribution of ballots so that they can produce good ballots when needed by the parties concerned. This study uses a qualitative approach with in-depth interviews with key informants, observation and documentation studies. The distribution model on the 2019 Simultaneous Election ballots is to be implemented in stages. For overseas distribution, in order to reduce distribution costs, enable digital signatures, and eVote, because the internet infrastructure is more adequate.

There are many people use their smartphones, tablets and computers to read English text. Theuse of gadget was popular to students to help them to improve their English skills especiallyreading. This study sought the preference of the students on reading which is reading onpapers or reading on screen. The respondent of this study was 1% from total students enrolledfor the short-semester, academic year 2018/2019. Each respondent was the representativefrom 5 majors; 1 from Accounting, 1 from Management, 1 from System Information, 1 fromMathematic Education, and 1 from Information Technology. The respondent was chosen randomly using the ballot system. The semi-structured interviews were utilized with open-ended questions. The semi-structured interview consisted of 10 questions and some followed-up questions to simplify and to make it easy for the students to understand the questions. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed in order to find out the answer of theresearch questions. The result of the study showed that the students prefer reading on screeninstead of paper because it is easy to access and easy to carry everywhere. Three of therespondents was chosen handphone as the easier tool to use when reading English text. Basedon the result, it is recommended for the English teachers to mix the teaching and learningprocess with new technique especially something that work with screen.