"Colorblind" Policy in Black and White: Racial Consequences of Disenfranchisement Policy

Disenfranchisement policies were formulated with discriminatory intent in several states ( Behrens, Uggen, and Manza 2003 ; Mauer 2001 ; Preuhs 2001 ). Does such discrimination persist? Do disenfranchisement laws disparately impact black voters? I argue that disenfranchisement policies target black citizens and impact black voters disparately compared with white voters. I show that disenfranchisement laws have a disparate impact on the black community that becomes increasingly disproportionate as disenfranchisement laws increase in severity. I find that disenfranchisement policies have a significant independent effect on voting rights in the black community and do not have a similar effect on white voters. I conclude that the ability of the black community to achieve adequate representation is substantially diminished as fewer and fewer blacks qualify for voter registration.     

Rich,Wrinkly and Rowdy politicians: Is this how teenagers ‘read’ television news?

Australian legislators have expressed concern about the indifference shown by young Australians toward government (SSCEET 1988, 1991). Those educators who have taken up their call for programmes in ‘active citizenship’ must look closely at what adolescents take from TV news. TV has sometimes been blamed for popular disenchantment with politics. Such arguments have been rejected because TV news shows no anti‐institutional bias, but instead underlines the importance of government However, like any text, the meaning of TV news is polysemic and not fixed by its producers. The interviews on which this article is based show that fifteen and sixteen year olds will decode TV news in ways quite unintended by its authors. They can see suits in which male politicians are shown as signifying their affluence and distance from their own lives, or read into the ages of politicians that politics concerns old people and not them.     

Challenging the Australian Government Approach Towards Expatriate Voting: The Case of Italy

In 1999 the Australian government dropped its objections to the Italian legislation that contemplated postal voting and parliamentary representation for its Italian citizens resident abroad. This was a significant turning point for the Australian government approach on the question of voting rights for expatriate communities in Australia voting in their homeland elections. Based on undisclosed government sources and interviews with former Australian diplomatic and government officials, this paper will recall and examine the Australian government's reaction to the Italian political debates leading up to, and eventual passage of, the Italian expatriate vote legislation.     

Graphical Estimation of Military Heights

Abstract

The author analyzes the voting behavior of legislators in the Congresses of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He shows that the occupation of Confederate Congressional districts by Federal troops led legislators to abandon their previous voting behavior and instead support the strengthening of the central government in Richmond. Specific case evidence involving voting on a number of salient issues is provided to further demonstrate the robustness of this result. Most importantly, the result leads to outcomes at odds with the logic of secession as enunciated by Southern elites.     

Are secessionists making the right arguments for independence?

There are roughly 70 secessionist movements around the world, and all of them advance arguments for why they deserve independence. These include restorative rights, remedial rights, primary rights, a history of conflict and functionality-based arguments. However, no one has conducted a comprehensive analysis to see how these arguments (or grievances) match reality. That is, are secessionists making the right arguments given their context? To answer this question, we utilise a data set of potential secessionist grievances to determine what normative arguments each secessionist movement ought to make given their setting. We conduct a content analysis of the normative appeals/grievances that have actually been made by specific secessionist movements since 2000. We then compare the predicted grievances against the actual grievances and summarise the patterns. The results matched our predictions where restorative rights, remedial rights and functionality-based arguments are concerned. Our analysis returned a positive and statistically significant relationship. However, we found no evidence that those making conflict-related arguments were more likely to exist in conflict settings. Interestingly, the findings for primary rights were the opposite of our expectations; it is the secessionists with the most political voice, not the least, that are the keenest to stress primary rights.     

Representational Inconsistency: Presentation of Self and Explanations of Washington Activity in Campaign Mail and Franked Mail

Studies of representation have focused primarily on the correlation between legislators’ voting records and their constituents’ preferences; however, accountability inevitably includes representatives’ explanations of their legislative actions. Unlike previous research that has examined consistency within a single form of communication, this study systematically examines legislators’ consistency in the explanations they give across different means of communication. Contrary to arguments that members of Congress do not vary their explanations or presentational styles, we find that incumbents present themselves to constituents differently through different methods of communication. Using the 2006 Campaign Communication Survey, a random survey of registered voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania who were asked to send in all campaign mail received during three weeks in 2006, we compare the content of campaign mail and franked mail incumbents send to constituents. Even though the mediums of communication are similar and the timing of franked mail suggests its use as a campaign tool, we find incumbents use these different tools to present themselves to their constituents in different ways. As such, we argue that fully understanding a member of Congress's representational style requires an examination of a wide range of congressional activities.     

The ‘hip pocket nerve’ and electoral volatility in Australia and Great Britain

Over the course of the post‐war period, Australian voting behaviour has manifested a marked degree of aggregate stability, whereas British voting patterns have become increasingly volatile. Since class voting has declined at a similar rate in both countries, it cannot explain this divergence. This article suggests that the explanation is to be found in the differential electoral impact of the two countries' macroeconomic performance in this period. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, the state of the economy, as measured by the rates of inflation and unemployment, is shown to have been a less influential force in Australian general elections than in British ones. The greater aggregate volatility in Britain, in other words, would seem to reflect‐the electorate's greater sensitivity to its ‘hip pocket nerve’, especially when it is touched by inflation. Why this same relationship does not characterize Australian commonwealth elections can be speculated upon, but is a puzzle that remains to be solved.     

International Human Rights Conventions and Australian Political Debates: Issues Raised by the 'Toonen Case'

In April 1994, the United Nations Human Rights Committee communicated its view to the Australian Government that Tasmanian anti-gay laws were inconsistent with Australia's international human rights obligations. Issues of Australia's human rights protection, treaty accession and Commonwealth-State relations, each of which have traditionally been characterised by major partisan differences, were brought to the fore of political debate. While the HRC decision at first appeared to give the coalition much scope to advance its arguments, subsequent developments highlighted considerable weaknesses in the rhetorical strategies of conservatives, and the difficulty of using the Tasmanian laws as a federalist cause ce le bre. In the long term, ironically, the coalition may well have weakened the efficacy of sovereignty-based arguments in Australian political debate.     

Attitudes Towards Divided Government and Ticket-splitting in Australia and the United States

Divided party government has become a frequent occurrence in both the United States and Australia in recent years. In the United States, Morris Fiorina has argued that this result is intentional on the part of the voters, who do not fully trust either party to govern by itself. We test this theory in both the United States and Australia by comparing the voting patterns of those who prefer divided versus united party government. It is hypothesised that Fiorina's theory will actually work better in Australia than in the United States, due to the presence of a strong party system as well as a voting system for the Australian Senate that facilitates strategic voting on behalf of small parties. Indeed, near-identical logistic regression models demonstrate that Australians' attitudes about divided government are a very significant predictor of straight-ticket voting even when a host of other factors is controlled for, whereas in the United States such attitudes are insignificant.     

Children and families: Relationships between family attitudes,household composition and voting in Australia

In the light of ongoing demographic trends (such as low fertility rates and growth of single-person households), some of the features of the 2004 Australian federal election outcomes and campaign raise the possibility that we might have seen the beginnings of a divide in voting behaviour based on family structure, particularly those aspects related to the presence of children. Relevant data from the 2004 Australian Election Study (AES) are quite limited, so I use data from both the 2004 AES and the 2003 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes to explore the relationships between federal voting and family structure, and attitudes towards children, parenting and families of different types. The results show effects on voting that apparently result from financial considerations related to the presence of children and others that are related to differences of values.     

Postmaterialist and Economic Voting in Australia, 1990-98

Recent research in Australian sociology and political science has debated the extent to which postmaterialist values and economic self-interest shape voting in federal elections. Some researchers have argued that postmaterialist values have partly displaced materialist concerns with physical security and economic well-being in Australian public life. This displacement, coupled with the adoption by major political parties of postmaterialist 'quality of life' issues such as the environment, has meant that voting in Australia has come to be more dependent on postmaterialist values than on perceptions of economic interest. Other research, however, has found no relationship between postmaterialist values and voting behaviour, while economic evaluations remain a strong determinant of voting behaviour. Part of the disagreement reflects methodological differences in the research. But different methodological problems compromise each of the previous studies. In this paper we use data from the 1990, 1993, 1996 and 1998 Australian Election Studies to investigate postmaterialist and economic voting in the Commonwealth House of Representatives and the Senate. Using various statistical methods, we first explore bivariate relationships between key variables and then use multivariate models of postmaterialist and economic voting to adjudicate between the contending positions.     

When Loyalty Is Tested: Do Party Leaders Use Committee Assignments as Rewards?

Theories of parties in Congress contend that one tool that party leaders possess to induce loyalty among rank-and-file members is control over committee assignments, but conventional tests of this linkage have failed to distinguish loyalty from simply voting one's preferences in accordance with party leaders. We characterize loyal legislators as having a higher propensity for voting with party leaders when it matters, even when their preferences diverge from the mainstream of their party. Testing this strong definition of loyalty on committee assignment data for 1991–2015, we show that majority party members who support their party on the subset of votes for which party leaders have taken positions in floor speeches are more likely to be rewarded with plum committee assignments, especially those members on the ideological extremes.     

The global spread of preferential voting: Australian institutional imperialism?

In recent years, a number of countries have adopted versions of the ‘Australian’ electoral system of preferential voting for both national and sub‐national elections. This article examines the diffusion of preferential voting systems around the world. It distinguishes between various types of preferential voting manifested in both majoritarian (eg alternative vote) and proportional (eg single transferable vote) contexts. It then examines the empirical record of the adoption of preferential voting in Europe, North America and the Pacific, identifying three ways in which the ‘Australian’ system has been transferred to other countries, via colonial transplanting, international imitation, and normative appeal. While the first two approaches have been traditionally influential, in recent years the normative appeal of preferential voting systems has become paramount. This is in part because of the globalisation of electoral assistance, which has provided an important opportunity for the diffusion of what have been, until recently, distinctively ‘Australian’ electoral procedures.     

How Do Unionists Vote? Estimating the Causal Impact of Union Membership on Voting Behaviour from 1966 to 2004

This paper explores the voting patterns of trade union members in Australian elections conducted between 1966 and 2004 and finds that, on average, 63% of trade union members vote for the Australian Labor Party. Despite the fact that union membership declined from around half of the workforce in the early 1980s to a quarter of the workforce in the early 2000s, unionists have not become more pro-Labor. Analysing unionists' voting behaviour by gender, it is found that male unionists were more pro-Labor than female unionists in the 1960s, but that the reverse is true today. Recognising that union membership may be endogenous with respect to political ideology, this study instruments for union membership and concludes that the observed association between union membership and voting reflects a causal relationship.     

Valence politics and immigrant voting in the 2013 Australian election

Using data from the 2013 Australian Election Study, this article investigates voting patterns among Australian voters from non-English-speaking backgrounds (NESB). It reveals that a valence politics model – comparing images of the two major parties and their leaders, partisan attachments, and judgements about party performance on economic issues – outperforms rival models. That is, it provides a powerful explanation of the decisions NESB voters made. In deciding between competing parties in the 2013 election, NESB voters resembled Australian voters who emigrated from English-speaking backgrounds and Australian-born voters. The findings of this article offer new insights into electoral research in Australia, indicating that previous studies have underestimated the important role of the valence politics model in explaining voting patterns among Australian voters. The article also provides plausible explanations for the convergence between various cohorts of voters in the 2013 election.     

Swings and Roundabouts? Patterns of Voting for the Australian Labor Party at State and Commonwealth Lower House Elections, 1901-96

Federation for Australia in 1901 was closely followed by the rise of the mass party, an organisation with the potential to reduce the regional differentiation that federalism is designed to protect. Loyalty to party can submerge local issues in nationally based partisanship, and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) may have performed precisely this role, particularly if voters have not differentiated between voting for the ALP at state and Commonwealth elections. This article examines the pattern of electoral support for the ALP at state and Commonwealth elections since 1901 and finds that an apparent similarity in long-term voting support masks important variations both within and between states. The potential for mass party loyalty to create uniform voting responses across the federation has been strongly moderated by the diversity inherent in the federal system.     

Western Australian electoral reforms: Labor finally succeeds

Australian electoral systems have a history of malapportionment, designed to give added voting weight to rural and remote areas. However, by 2000, all Australian jurisdictions except Western Australia had adopted voting equality within specified tolerances. This paper provides a brief analysis of the Gallop Labor government's efforts to reform the Western Australian system, drawing primarily on interviews with key players involved in the debates, including parliamentary members of the political parties involved. Quotations in this paper are drawn from these interviews, which were conducted in August 2004.     

Time travel,labour history,and the null curriculum: new design knowledge for mobile augmented reality history games

This paper presents a case study drawn from design-based research (DBR) on a mobile, place-based augmented reality history game. Using DBR methods, the game was developed by the author as a history learning intervention for fifth to seventh graders. The game is built upon historical narratives of disenfranchised populations that are seldom taught, those typically relegated to the ‘null curriculum’. These narratives include the stories of women immigrant labour leaders in the early twentieth century, more than a decade before suffrage. The project understands the purpose of history education as the preparation of informed citizens. In paying particular attention to historical themes that endure over time, the game aims to draw connections between historical and contemporary narratives of diverse and disenfranchised populations. The study discusses new design knowledge for addressing such narratives. Self-reflexivity, the technique of revealing the means of production of the game technology itself can be used to spotlight contemporary issues of disenfranchisement. Supra-reveals, historical thematic foreshadowing, can help establish key links between themes of disenfranchisement of diverse groups in the past and those in the present. These techniques used together, and the subsequent curriculum, brought focus to teaching issues of diversity and disenfranchisement typically written out of curriculum.     

National Uniformity,and State and Local Effects on Australian Voting: A Multilevel Approach

The existence and extent of influences arising within spatial contexts is an important issue in the study of voting behaviour. This paper extends previous Australian research by using the relatively new technique of multilevel analysis to draw together individual survey data from the 1993 Australian Election Study and ecological census data to investigate the question. The results show that, once individual voter characteristics are taken into account, influences on first preference voting for the ALP at the 1993 election were quite uniform nationally, with relatively small spatial variations. Moreover, those spatial variations which were present were at the divisional, not the state, level and can be almost completely explained by a very small number of sociotropic factors, especially a local economic prosperity influence and the well-known rural-urban cleavage. As far as influences on voting at the 1993 election at the level of individual voters are concerned, these multilevel analyses provide some new insights, as well as confirming some previous results.     

Transnationalism and expatriate political engagement: the case of the Italian and French voting in Australia

The aim of this article is to provide an appreciation and analysis of the expatriate connectivity of Italian and French citizens from their place of residence in Australia through their respective elections in their home countries. Specifically, the article examines the case of Italians in Australia voting in the 2013 Italian elections and equally that of French citizens in Australia voting in the French presidential and the following legislative elections in 2017. The article examines the voting patterns there might be between those voting in their home country (Italy and France) and those voting in external electoral colleges (in this case, the relevant Australian college). The article shows that those living abroad—in this case, Australia—provide different political choices and less surprising low voting participation compared to the domestic districts. It also highlights that the transnational community can be, and is, influenced by the political context of their host country, which will be different from that which occurs in their home country.