Search

Lawrence Norden, an American attorney and vice president of the Elections & Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, discusses the security and integrity of US elections. He identifies cyberthreats, physical threats, and disinformation as the main threats, with both foreign governments and domestic actors posing a risk. Norden emphasizes the progress made in securing election infrastructure, such as the use of paper ballots and post-election audits. He also stresses the importance of information sharing and public education to combat disinformation. Norden mentions the potential impact of artificial intelligence on elections, particularly in spreading misinformation. He concludes by highlighting the need for ongoing investment and updating of election infrastructure to address evolving threats. The article also explores the benefits and challenges of the decentralized election system in the United States, emphasizing the need for minimum security standards across all jurisdictions. The author expresses concern about Project 2025, which proposes to limit the role of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in assessing cyber hygiene. The article also emphasizes the importance of effective communication between government agencies and social media companies to address foreign interference in elections. Lastly, the author discusses threats to American democracy, including harassment and abuse faced by election officials and the potential weaponization of the Department of Justice against them. Despite these challenges, the article highlights the resilience of democratic institutions and the efforts of individuals to protect democracy and civil society. [Extracted from the article]

The article examines the European Union (EU) strategies to combat Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated misinformation in the 2024 election year. Topics discussed include recent examples of AI-driven disinformation in global elections, the EU's legal framework for managing deep fakes, and the role of public awareness initiatives in preserving electoral integrity.

Objectives Methods Findings Conclusion We investigate potential determinants of voter fraud perceptions and support for voter photo identification laws among British voters.Using data from an original nationally representative survey of British voters, we analyze how respondents’ partisanship, ideology, immigration views, and demographic factors influence perceptions of voter fraud and support for voter identification.The analysis shows that respondents’ partisanship and immigration views are the primary factors in explaining voter fraud perceptions. Ideologically conservative respondents exhibit greater support for voter photo identification laws, irrespective of partisanship. Additionally, our results show that while men and women hold similar beliefs about the prevalence and impact of voter fraud, women are significantly less supportive of voter photo identification laws than men.The study demonstrates that political partisanship and immigration views play a crucial role in shaping perceptions of voter fraud and support for voter photo identification laws in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, gender differences also significantly influence support for these laws, with women being less supportive than men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fog's basic distributed nature and ability to process data in transit—that is, to make decisions in real time—make it a good fit for scenarios involving several distributed devices that need to communicate, provide real‐time data analysis, and carry out storage functions. The majority of fog computing applications are driven by the user's demands and/or their desire for functioning services, either neglecting or giving security considerations second attention. Fog computing security issues have not received enough attention. Fog computing could be exploitable due to the security difficulties associated with cloud computing. Due to its flexibility to function near the end user and independence from a centralized design, fog computing provides the dependability required by time‐sensitive smart healthcare systems. There is a need for enhanced security and privacy solutions for fog computing, where trust is essential, due to the importance of healthcare data. This research aims to develop a context‐based adaptive trust solution for the smart healthcare environment utilizing Bayesian approaches and similarity measures against bad mouthing and ballot stuffing, while context‐dependent trust solutions for fogs remain an unexplored area of study. The proposed trust model has been simulated in Contiki‐Cooja to evaluate our findings. In contrast to static weighting, adaptive weights are provided to direct and indirect trust using entropy values that ensure the least degree of trust bias, and context similarity calculations eliminate recommender nodes with malicious intent by leveraging server, colleague, and service similarities. The proposed model protects smart healthcare systems from attacks using similarity metrics, incorporates context, and also uses adaptive weighting for trust calculation. By eliminating trust bias and also detecting attacks, this solution enhances the trust calculation by 10% as compared to the previous solution. This paradigm is efficient due to its small trust computation overhead and linear complexity O(n). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision-making process in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks heavily relies on the information provided by smart sensors. Ensuring the trustworthiness of these sensors is essential to prolong the lifetime of the network. Additionally, dependable data transmission by sensor nodes is crucial for effective decision-making. Trust management approaches play a vital role in safeguarding industrial sensor networks from internal threats, enhancing security, dependability, and network resilience. However, existing trust management schemes often focus solely on communication behaviour to calculate trust values, potentially leading to incorrect decisions amidst prevalent malicious attacks. Moreover, these schemes often fail to meet the resource and dependability requirements of IWSNs. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a novel hybrid Trust Management Scheme called the Multi-layered Assessment System for Trustworthiness Enhancement and Reliability (MASTER). The MASTER scheme employs a clustering approach within a hybrid architecture to reduce communication overhead, effectively detecting and mitigating various adversarial attacks such as Sybil, Blackhole, Ballot stuffing, and On–off attacks with minimal overheads. This multifactor trust scheme integrates both communication-based trust and data-based trust during trust estimation, aiming to improve the lifetime of industrial sensor networks. Furthermore, the proposed MASTER scheme utilizes a flexible weighting scheme that assigns more weight to recent interactions during both direct and recommendation (indirect) trust evaluation. This approach ensures robust and precise trust values tailored to the specific network scenario. To efficiently process and glean insights from dispersed data, machine learning algorithms are employed, offering a suitable solution. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the MASTER scheme in several key metrics compared to recent trust models. For instance, when 30% of malicious Sensor Nodes (SNs) exist in a network comprising 500 sensor nodes, the MASTER scheme achieves a malicious behaviour detection rate of 97%, surpassing the rates of other models. Even after the occurrence of malicious SNs exceeding 30%, the False Negative Rate (FNR) in the MASTER scheme remains lower than other models due to adaptive trust functions employed at each level. With 50% malicious SNs in the network, the MASTER scheme achieves a malicious behaviour detection accuracy of 91%, outperforming alternative models. Moreover, the average energy consumption of SNs in the MASTER scheme is significantly lower compared to other schemes, owing to its elimination of unnecessary transactions through clustered topology utilization. Specifically, with 30% and 50% malicious SNs in the network, the MASTER scheme achieves throughput rates of 150 kbps and 108 kbps, respectively, demonstrating its efficiency in challenging network scenarios. Overall, the proposed MASTER scheme offers a comprehensive solution for enhancing security, trustworthiness, and collaboration among sensor nodes in IWSNs, while achieving superior performance in various metrics compared to existing trust models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subtext of this extended commentary for the 2024 Policy Studies Yearbook in Politics & Policy is the crucial role that liberalism and civil rights must play in U.S. foreign policy if America is to be on the right side of history. Our explicit subject is the conflux of elite and populist forces that constantly work against such liberal‐democratic engagement. It is no secret that today's MAGAism ("Make America Great Again") wears many of the same antiliberal stripes as did postwar McCarthyism, which was its direct progenitor. Thanks largely to the center‐right resistance of President Eisenhower, McCarthyism was ultimately held in check domestically. Unfortunately, that was not the case on the side of U.S. foreign policy, where tenacious strains of antiliberalism had a very long shelf life. Thus, McCarthyism ended up having its most durable impact in the developing world, where cozy relations with highly reactionary regimes were considered necessary in the face of communist inroads. At a time when liberalism was hitting its full stride on American soil, U.S. foreign policy was exporting a very different America abroad, and especially in Asia. Even domestically, the waspish virulence of McCarthyism was never eradicated. It simply hibernated, and in 2016, it came back with a vengeance in the even more truculent form of Trumpism. Once again, xenophobic populism is laying claim to U.S. foreign policy and savaging liberal internationalism. The entrenched progressivism that stood its ground against McCarthyism has long since eroded. MAGAism faces no obstacle comparable to the dynamic liberalism of the 1950s or the counterculture of the 1960s. Seen from the perspective of January 6, 2021, the old McCarthyism looks tame by comparison. Related Articles: Craig, Stephen C., and Jason Gainous. 2024. "To Vote or Not to Vote? Fake News, Voter Fraud, and Support for Postponing the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election." Politics & Policy 52(1): 33–50. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12577. Haar, Roberta N., and Lutz F. Krebs. 2021. "The Failure of Foreign Policy Entrepreneurs in the Trump Administration." Politics & Policy 49(2): 446–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12399. Skidmore, Max J. 2023. "Abortion—Reactionary Theocracy Rises in America, While Declining Elsewhere." Politics & Policy 51(3): 437–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12534. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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.)

Objective/context: This article has three objectives: to differentiate the theoretical arguments on the empty chair policy in Latin America, to analyze the process of institutional change that culminated with its implementation in Colombia, and to describe how it has been carried out between 2010 and 2024. Methodology: The methodological approach has three components: a theoretical part, a documentary component, and an empirically based analysis. The first describes the contrast between two approaches to the autonomy, control, and accountability of political parties and parliamentarians. The second reviews how these approaches are reflected in the rules on seat ownership (of parties or congresspersons/deputies), accountability, and sanctions for parties and congresspersons when they violate the law. The third consists of identifying cases of loss of seats, their analysis, and the determination of their effects. The principal sources of the study are constitutional reforms, Supreme Court rulings, and decisions of the Attorney General's Office on convictions of congressmen. The information is complemented with journalistic reports and electoral data. Conclusions: The empty chair policy is established in two Latin American countries (Colombia and Peru). It is an effective legal norm to sanction political parties and legislators convicted for their links with criminal groups, corruption, electoral fraud, and other crimes. It has been applied in eighteen cases due to links to paramilitarism, drug trafficking, and corruption. The affected parties have decreased their electoral performance and their seats in Congress. Originality: This is the first empirical study on the subject in Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan's 2024 elections delivered a shocking surprise. Imran Khan's PTI won the largest number of seats amid heavy state repression. With this result, well-worn political patterns—whereby military favor virtually guaranteed a party's electoral success—were upended. This essay argues that Pakistan's 2024 election is not a "black swan" event but instead signals a coming crisis of governability that grows out of three structural changes: the rise of an aspirational middle class, the erosion of traditional authority patterns, and an intensifying economic and climate crisis. Consequently, a historic loss of military legitimacy is unlikely to abate in years ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Extinction de vote?" by Tristan Haute and Vincent Tiberj analyzes the growing abstention in elections in France and raises the question of whether the vote is in danger of extinction. The authors examine the inequalities that arise due to high abstention, highlighting the overvaluation of the voice of property owners and the elderly, and the undervaluation of the voice of young people and workers. They also explore the history and materiality of the electoral act to understand the relationships with voting. Several experts present different approaches to voting in France, emphasizing the importance of restoring importance to the vote and to the voters themselves. [Extracted from the article]

Courts prosecuting corruption serve a critical horizontal accountability function, but they can also play a role in moments of vertical accountability when voters can sanction corrupt candidates. This article documents the strategic use of corruption lawsuits, demonstrating the presence of an electoral cycle in filing new corruption accusations against politicians. Using an original dataset of daily corruption complaints filed in federal courts against members of Argentina's main political coalitions between 2013 and 2021, we document increased corruption accusations against and by politicians in the periods immediately preceding an election. A second dataset of daily media coverage of corruption accusations in two leading newspapers suggests that corruption is more salient before elections, offering politicians a temporal focal point to prepare and launch especially impactful lawsuits. Our findings shed new light on using courts for accountability and debates about the so-called 'lawfare' in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vote buying remains one of the main flaws of elections in many parts of the world. As most other forms of corruption, it is sticky and unlikely to vanish in the short and medium run. In this article, we look at the demand side of vote buying using the case of the Edo State governorship elections in Nigeria. Through original survey research using the in-person interview format, we try to detect how widespread this practice is, as well as establish the profile of the voter, who morally condones vote buying, and accepts such bribes on Election Day. Generally, we find that vote buying has high acceptance and most voters who receive an offer accept it. We further detect that party members, politically interested people, as well as young citizens are more likely to condone the practice; these groups are also more likely to accept such a bribe. The two main motifs for accepting bribes are (1) citizens feel a sense of reciprocity, or the need to reciprocate the favor that parties bestow upon them through the payment of the election money, (2) our respondents also feel entitled to receive some money on Election Day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral registers provide the definitive record of who can participate in an election, but there is often thought to be considerable variations in their quality cross-nationally. This leads to concerns about eligible voters being de facto disenfranchised on election day; but also ineligible voters or fictitious names appearing on the roll which can enable electoral fraud. In either case, the legitimacy of the election can be questioned. The electoral register is also used for other purposes such as drawing electoral boundaries. This article introduces some common international terminology for electoral register quality and a conceptualisation of the different ways in which an electoral register can be compiled. It then introduces a new global dataset on registration procedures (n = 159). The article hypotheses that automatic voter registration, as well as organisational and structural factors, strongly affects accuracy and completeness. The results show that automatic voter registration increases the completeness of the electoral register and also has a positive impact on accuracy. The organisational performance of the electoral management body was also shown to have positive effects on completeness and accuracy, suggesting an additional means of improving electoral registers beyond the registration model, which also rest in the hands of policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Matter of Giuliani, the New York Appellate Division held that Rudy Giuliani's knowingly false statements of fact during the period after the 2020 presidential election violated the Rules of Professional Conduct and warranted interim suspension of his license. This paper argues that the court reached the right result but did not use the best rule and the best rationale. Instead of focusing on Giuliani's conduct as a series of false statements in support of a "narrative," the better approach would have been to call it what it was: fraud. Although the fraud was not "transactional" fraud, Giuliani's false statements to state legislatures to convince them to not certify or undo the certification of presidential electors for Joe Biden was a kind of "procedural" fraud akin to fraud on a court. All of Giuliani's false statements can be viewed as supporting that scheme. Focusing on the disciplinary rule prohibiting lawyers from engaging in conduct involving fraud would have avoided doctrinal and constitutional difficulties and better captured the real nature of the harm caused by Giuliani's conduct. The voting fraud that Giuliani claimed others engaged in to steal the 2020 presidential election for President Biden did not happen. The fraud on state legislatures that Giuliani himself engaged in to steal the election for President Trump did happen. It is time that we recognize the real fraud of the 2020 election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature provides four basic theories to explain regional election results and how they differ from national patterns: authority of regional governments, ethnic or linguistic cleavages, congruence of national and regional electoral systems, and second-order election effects. The second-order national election theory explains why regional elections exhibit lower turnout levels, why government parties lose voter support, and why opposition, minor, and new parties gain support. While second-order election theory provides the dominant explanation for countries with low regional power, we argue in favour of an additional explanation based on incumbency effects on parties' electoral support. We test the explanations on Czech regional and national election data for the years 2000–2020. The results attest to a strong effect of regional governorship, with a bonus of 5 percentage points for parties whose governors run for re-election. Parties also receive another bonus when national-level MPs and local mayors are present on the ballot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An electronic democratic framework can also fulfill all the rules and regulations of any governing body. The election is one of the important events for a robust democratic system in a country, but still, many people are not thinking of it as major concern for democracy. There are several issues of vote fraud, hacking of EVM (Electronic Voting Machine), election manipulation, and booth capturing within the current electoral system. In this paper, we proposed a framework for E-voting (Electronic Voting) which might resolve these issues. This framework uses Blockchain technology as a service along with an E-Voting system that addresses all restrictions. Blockchain advancements proposed a wide scope of different applications to reduce the sharing of monetary economies. The proposed framework uses proof of voter's identity (PoVI) consensus algorithm that makes the proposed system more secure and differentiates this model from other models of E-voting systems. The objective of this paper is to clarify the utilization of Blockchain innovation as assistance for an authentic electronic democratic framework. The proposed framework evaluates the capability of distributed record advances with the assistance of illustrative contextual analysis, specifically the cycle of a political decision that improves security and minimizes the expense of facilitating a cross-country casting a ballot framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do surveys measure sincere belief in Donald Trump's "big lie" that fraud decided the 2020 election? We apply a comprehensive approach to detecting expressive responding: three honesty encouragements, a list experiment, two opportunities to express related sentiments, and two opportunities to bet on related predictions about the future. We find that nearly all respondents who endorse the big lie appear to genuinely believe it. These "believers" are evenly split between those who confidently accept the big lie and those who find it plausible but are not deeply convinced. Similarly, those who predicted that evidence of fraud would enable Trump to retain power in January 2021 or be reinstated in August 2021 were overwhelmingly sincere. Our findings indicate that Trump's big lie is unique in terms of the size and veracity of belief differences between Democrats and Republicans. We discuss implications for democratic stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A consensus seems to exist around physically attractive candidates winning elections more often. Unfortunately, we have limited understanding of how voters assess candidates with socioeconomically (dis)advantageous physical appearances. To bridge this gap, we studied the electoral consequences of candidates looking upper class, middle class, or working class. Using official electoral data for the 2017 Finnish municipal elections and a novel data set based on a representative sample of the Finnish population (N = 7,920), we found that Finnish citizens systematically vote for candidates who look like they have (and do have) upper‐class occupations. Furthermore, the data strongly suggest that a systematic electoral penalty exists, particularly for female candidates who look like they have (and do have) working‐class occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This experimental investigation explores the influence of election fraud fact-checking and cognitive processing styles on participants' confidence in the 2020 U.S. presidential election's legitimacy and characterizations of the January Sixth Capitol Hill Attack. The results indicate fact-checking, accuracy motivated reasoning, and systematic processing exerted positive effects on participants' legitimacy levels, especially among Republicans. We also found that participants' systematic processing, affiliation with the Democratic Party, and negative attitudes toward Donald Trump were associated with their characterizations of the January Sixth Capitol Hill Attack as violent and extreme. Overall, these results support both motivated reasoning and dual process models, but partisan motivated reasoning exerted the greatest effects. Further, these findings suggest Republican and pro-Trump participants who rely on heuristic processing may find violent, extra-political actions acceptable means of attempting to achieve their goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Crawford v. Marion County (2008), the Supreme Court ruled that voter identification requirements are lawful on the grounds that, even if they do not prevent fraud, they can instill confidence in voting. However, this reasoning ignores the historical and contemporary racial biases in the enactment and administration of restrictive voting policies in the United States. This legacy likely colors the extent to which Black and white voters see reforms as deterring fraud versus increasing suppression, and as such, how confident they are in election outcomes. We examine how increasing voter restrictions affects voter fraud beliefs and voter confidence among Black and white voters. We find that the enactment of restrictive policies decreases fraud beliefs among white voters but has no effect on fraud beliefs for Black voters; however, Black voters are less confident in elections when conducted with more restrictive policies while white voters are not. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that the racial gap in the effects of restrictive voting policies on voter confidence is partially undergirded by racial elite signaling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of restrictive voting policies argue that they are necessary to reduce fraud beliefs and instill confidence in elections. However, recent scholarship examining this dynamic in the United States finds that the effects of voting restrictions on fraud beliefs and voter confidence differ by party, suggesting the extent to which fraud beliefs undergird this relationship may also differ by party. Whether voter fraud beliefs tie voter restrictions to voter confidence is inherently important given the assumed role of voter fraud beliefs and voter restrictions in increasing voter confidence, an issue well highlighted in the 2020 election. This study contributes to this literature by measuring the extent to which voter fraud beliefs undergird the relationship between restrictive election policies and voter confidence among Republicans and Democrats. Findings suggest that voter fraud beliefs play a significant and substantive mediating role for Republicans but not Democrats, in line with prominent theories arguing that partisan elite signaling colors electoral reform perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can academic research on election fraud undermine public confidence in elections? As election results become instantaneously accessible all over the world, academic research can increasingly influence perceptions of election integrity. To examine how electoral fraud information from academic research can affect voters' beliefs about the legitimacy of election results, we conducted a survey experiment following the 2020 general election in South Korea. Using a nationally representative sample of Korean voters and exploiting a unique real-world situation featuring foreign academics considered relatively impartial, we found that exposure to hypothetical election fraud claims undermined confidence in electoral outcomes, measured via both self-reports and behavioral measures. Moreover, the claims' impact was conditional on voters' partisan attachments—strongest among supporters of the losing party—which is in line with the logic of motivated reasoning. Our work contributes to the literature on election integrity, using a relatively new yet stable democracy as its test case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2020 election and its aftermath present an opportunity to understand how audiences' changing news consumption patterns within an expanded, digitized, and polarized media environment shape electoral judgments. This paper introduces measures that capture individuals' partisan slant, partisan extremity, and overall diversity of news media use to understand how people interact with the contemporary news ecology. The measures combine self-reported media use with the partisan slant of news outlets along the ideological spectrum. Using these measures, we analyze a two-wave panel survey conducted before and after the 2020 US election to investigate how slant, diversity, and extremity are related to post-election beliefs, including public confidence in the election and the acceptance of fraud claims. Our findings show that Republicans have more insulated news use behaviors in terms of slant and diversity. The analysis also reveals that the slant of people's news use is associated with post-election fraud beliefs, with right-wing news consumers more likely to believe such claims. However, a diverse news consumption style can moderate misinformation beliefs. Panel analysis points to the role of extreme-right news use in decreasing confidence in the legitimacy of the election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do electoral turnovers shape citizen perceptions of election quality in competitive authoritarian regimes? We argue that electoral outcomes are crucial for determining perceptions of electoral quality. While detailed evaluation of electoral trust is complex in competitive autocracies with institutional uncertainty and polarized electoral environments, turnovers send strong and unequivocal signals about election quality. Previous literature has noted a strong partisan divide in electoral trust in competitive authoritarian regimes, but turnovers can boost trust among both incumbent and opposition supporters. We test this argument in the case of Zambia's 2021 election, a case where a ruling party lost despite electoral manipulation and strong control over the Election Management Body (EMB). Empirically, we leverage the first-ever panel survey carried out during Zambian elections. Comparing trust in elections before and after the election, we find that perceived election quality increased after the 2021 electoral turnover among both losers and winners. We find that trust in elections increased the most among winning opposition supporters. Moreover, despite the outgoing president's attempt to portray the election as fraudulent, losing ruling-party supporters also increased their trust in elections after the turnover. The study has important implications for the literature on democratic consolidation and institutional trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public concerns about voter fraud are widespread and are frequently cited to justify new voting restrictions and harsh punishment for violators. But to what extent do beliefs about a perpetrator's identity shape public support for efforts to prevent and punish voter fraud? Antipathy toward racial and ethnic groups is a strong predictor of public beliefs about voter fraud. Yet, prior studies have only been able to approximate beliefs about deviant behavior, and not specifically casting an illegal ballot. Drawing from sociology and criminology, we use a "typification" strategy that more directly measures which people are perceived as typical perpetrators of casting illegal ballots. We utilize nationally representative surveys of US voters in the 2017–2020 modules of the Cooperative Election Study to apply and empirically test the typification theory. Among white respondents, we find that the typification of racially minoritized groups such as Blacks, Latinos, Arabs, and immigrants as illegal voters is widespread and is strongly associated with beliefs about voter fraud, support for restrictive election policies, and harsh punishment of illegal voting. The pictures of likely criminals that white voters carry in their heads shape their preferences for crime policies, and this extends to the domain of voter fraud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the dynamic relationship between electoral manipulation and popular trust in political institutions. Governments often manipulate election results by resorting to electoral fraud. They also tilt the electoral field by opportunistically deciding when to hold elections, in other words, election timing maneuvering. How do these two different types of electoral manipulation affect citizens' trust in the government, legislature, and election management bodies (EMBs)? We suggest that although the short-term effects of election timing manipulation are unclear due to its ambiguous nature as an electioneering strategy, substantial electoral margins created by timing maneuvering facilitate smooth decision-making, leading to boosting trust in the government and legislature over the long run. In contrast, as electoral fraud is an unambiguous form of manipulation, it may undermine trust in the government and parliament, although such effects may not last. By combining an original dataset of election timing with existing survey data comprising 335,000 citizens from fifty-eight democratic countries, we find evidence in support of our theoretical expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Security Act 2023 replaces the Official Secrets Acts 1911, 1920 and 1939, updating, rationalising, and expanding the various offences which they contained and introducing new rules aimed at the same broad end of countering the threat posed to the UK by the efforts of hostile states and their proxies. It therefore represents a legislative confirmation of the ongoing pivot back to 'state threats' rather than terrorism as the focus of the national security enterprise in the UK, though now informed by the experience of counter-terrorism law since 2000. This paper assesses the main changes made by the 2023 Act, including in the context of threats to the democratic process, actual and potential, which have been identified in recent years. The argument offered is that the focus of the 2023 Act – encompassing threats to democracy only where they rise to the level of threats to national security – is undermined by the absence of a more thoroughgoing project to protect the democratic process more generally against foreign interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Communist Poland: A Jewish Woman's Experience" is an annotated memoir by Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, a Polish Jewish woman who went from being a prisoner in Auschwitz to a powerful journalist in Poland. The memoir covers her life from her liberation in 1945 to her decision to leave Poland and immigrate to Israel in 1969. The memoir was created through a multilayered translation project involving scholars and family members. It explores Nomberg-Przytyk's involvement in the Communist Party, growing antisemitism, and her evolving doubts about the party. The book offers insights into life in Poland after World War II and serves as an exercise in memory studies and self-reflection. [Extracted from the article]

Beyond the conventional approach to delivering public services, the adoption of digital mechanisms for delivering these services has been advocated. This is to improve how public services are delivered to the general public. INEC is not left out in the search for a better way to provide quality service through digital technology, and they have introduced new technologies over the years to carry out their activities. However, voter impersonation, duplicate registrations, and overcrowding at registration centres are among the problems that have plagued the election system. In light of this, it becomes imperative to identify the effects and challenges of the use of digital technology in INEC activities, specifically in the registration of voters and the distribution of voter's cards. The scope of the study was Lagos state, specifically Alimosho Local Government. This study relied on the Technology Organisation Environment framework as the theoretical framework of analysis. This study used secondary and primary sources of data collection. The data were analysed thematically based on the research questions and the structured interview that guided the study. This study adopted a case-study research design. The population of the study was 25 staff of the Alimosho Local Government INEC office, and the sample size was 5 staff selected using the purposive sampling technique. The result showed that digital technology has a positive effect on the registration of voters and distribution of voters' cards in Alimosho Local Government, but they still experience challenges like a shortage of digital devices and staff as well as delays in fixing and replacing damaged devices. The study concluded that despite digital technology having had a positive impact on the registration of voters and distribution of voters' cards in Alimosho Local Government between 2015 and 2022, there are still some challenges that need to be tackled. The study recommends that INEC should provide more devices to the local government, and adequate staffing and training should be prioritised to ensure the smooth operation and management of digital systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists have largely situated Western Europe's new far right in the noneconomic, sociocultural dimension of party competition that realized greater salience during the relative peace and affluence of the post-war period. Such an investment in 'new politics' implies that far right support should retrench when economic issues regain salience, yet far right support did not appreciably recede in the aftermath of Europe's Great Recession. This article argues that far right durability during the Great Recession is due to a sociodemographically rooted electorate, defined by education, occupation, and working class identity, and that—among the major party families in Western Europe—the far right is uniquely and anachronistically structured by sociodemographics. Analyses using the European Election Study show that by 2014, far right parties exclusively overrepresent working class, blue collar, and less educated voters—even when compared to Social Democrats or the radical left. These voters appear unlikely to abandon the far right once they have lent support, and these traits predict future far right support even controlling for recalled vote. Thus, this article argues that far right success during the Great Recession results from consolidating rather than expanding their electoral base, with implications for democratic competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article assesses the 2019 elections to the European Parliament (EP) in Lithuania and their theoretical relevance. The analysis presents the political stances of parties and the electorate towards the EU. The focus then shifts to information and political campaigns, the parties participating in the EP elections, and the electoral results. These aspects serve to evaluate the theoretical relevance of Second-order election theory and the Europe salience theory, revealing the absence of Eurosceptic, protest, populist, and postmaterial mood in the 2019 EP elections in Lithuania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the political situation in Senegal, focusing on President Macky Sall's presidency and the challenges faced by the younger generation. It discusses the accusations and legal cases against opposition candidate Ousmane Sonko, as well as President Sall's attempts to consolidate power and secure a third term. Despite the concerns raised about the democratic model in Senegal, the article highlights the resilience of democracy, as demonstrated by the peaceful election in March 2024. The text concludes by emphasizing the importance of institutional reform and greater inclusion of women in the government. [Extracted from the article]

We survey recent theoretical and empirical literature on political economics of non-democracies. Nondemocratic regimes face multiple challenges to their rule, both internal, such as palace coups or breakdown of their support coalition, and external, such as mass protests or revolutions. We analyze strategic decisions made by dictators from the standpoint of maximizing the chances of regime survival in the light of these challenges, and show how it explains multiple common patterns, from hiring political loyalists to positions that require competence, to restricting media freedom at the cost of sacrificing bureaucratic efficiency, to running propaganda campaigns, organizing election fraud, purging opponents and associates, and repressing citizens. (JEL D72, D73, D82, D83, L82, O17) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This scientific article examines the system of electoral districting in the 2023 Sejm elections and its impact on the principle of equality of representation. The main objectives of the study are to analyse the relationship between the principle of equality of representation and electoral districting in Sejm elections, evaluate the compliance of current constituency boundaries with this principle, and assess the potential consequences of any changes in districting in the 2023 Sejm elections in terms of electoral representation. The research questions guiding this study are as follows: (1) How should constituencies be determined for the 2023 Sejm elections and what legal criteria should be applied in electoral districting? (2) Does the current districting system align with the principle of equality of representation? (3) Are there disparities in the size or demographics of constituencies that could result in unequal representation in the Sejm? (4) What are the potential implications of the current districting system for the representation of different political parties? (5) How do alternative scenarios of districting affect the principle of equality of representation in the context of the 2023 Sejm elections? The research employs an institutional-legal analysis, along with statistical data analysis and simulations, to model alternative districting scenario and evaluate their effects on the principle of equality of representation. The findings of this study contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the implications of districting on the principle of equality of representation in the 2023 Sejm elections. The research emphasises the significance of fair districting for ensuring equal representation and provides valuable recommendations for policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the subversion of democratic norms in the United States, particularly under the leadership of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. It highlights the party's shift to the extreme right and its exploitation of cultural, economic, and demographic changes to push conservative proposals that are not supported by most voters. The article also examines the partisan biases in the US Constitution, such as the winner-takes-all rule in the Electoral College and malapportionment in the Senate, which have favored Republican candidates and policies. Additionally, it discusses gerrymandering and intentional efforts to suppress Democratic turnout. The article concludes by expressing concerns about the future of US democracy, regardless of the outcome of the 2024 elections. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the shifting electoral geography of England and Wales over the past 40 years, from Margaret Thatcher's premiership in 1979 to Boris Johnson's victory in 2019. The authors analyze constituency-level election results and examine the impact of socioeconomic and demographic changes on the spatial distribution of voters. They also explore the contextual factors that have led to distinct electoral trajectories in certain areas. The article highlights the different types of "left behind" areas and how they have influenced voting trends. It concludes that the electoral map of England and Wales is still undergoing transformation and that future elections may bring further changes. [Extracted from the article]