Voting Experiments: Measuring Vulnerability of Voting Procedures to Manipulation

OpenAIRE

Palguta, Jan

2011-01-01

A minimal reduction in strategic voter’s knowledge about other voters’ voting patterns severely limits her ability to strategically manipulate the voting outcome. In this paper I relax the implicit assumption made in the Gibbard-Satterthwaite’s impossibility theorem about strategic voter‘s complete information about all other voters’ preference profiles. Via a series of computation-based simulations I find that vulnerability to strategic voting is decreasing in the number of voters and increa...

Toward more usable electronic voting: testing the usability of a smartphone voting system.

Science.gov (United States)

Campbell, Bryan A; Tossell, Chad C; Byrne, Michael D; Kortum, Philip

2014-08-01

The goal of this research was to assess the usability of a voting system designed for smart-phones. Smartphones offer remote participation in elections through the use of pervasive technology. Voting on these devices could, among other benefits, increase voter participation while allowing voters to use familiar technology. However, the usability of these systems has not been assessed. A mobile voting system optimized for use on a smartphone was designed and tested against traditional voting platforms for usability. There were no reliable differences between the smartphone-based system and other voting methods in efficiency and perceived usability. More important, though, smartphone owners committed fewer errors on the mobile voting system than on the traditional voting systems. Even with the known limitations of small mobile platforms in both displays and controls, a carefully designed system can provide a usable voting method. Much of the concern about mobile voting is in the area of security; therefore, although these results are promising, security concerns and usability issues arising from mitigating them must be strongly considered. The results of this experiment may help to inform current and future election and public policy officials about the benefits of allowing voters to vote with familiar hardware.

How Election Polls Shape Voting Behaviour

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dahlgaard, Jens Olav; Hansen, Jonas Hedegaard; Hansen, Kasper Møller

2017-01-01

This article investigates how election information such as opinion polls can influence voting intention. The bandwagon effect claims that voters ‘float along’: a party experiencing increased support receives more support, and vice versa. Through a large national survey experiment, evidence is found...... of a bandwagon effect among Danish voters. When voters are exposed to a news story describing either an upwards or downwards movement for either a small or large party, they tend to move their voting intentions in the according direction. The effect is strongest in the positive direction – that is, when a party...... experiences increased support, more follows. Consistent effects are found across two different parties for a diverse national sample in a political context very different from earlier research on the bandwagon effects. Considering previous research and the fact that evidence is not found that suggests...

77 FR 30294 - Award of a Single Source Cooperative Agreement Grant to the Congressional Hunger Center in...

Science.gov (United States)

2012-05-22

... Source Cooperative Agreement Grant to the Congressional Hunger Center in Washington, DC AGENCY: Office of...) announces the award of a single source cooperative agreement to the Congressional Hunger Center in Washington, DC to support a Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow. C.F.D.A. Number: 93.647. Statutory Authority...

Voting systems for environmental decisions.

Science.gov (United States)

Burgman, Mark A; Regan, Helen M; Maguire, Lynn A; Colyvan, Mark; Justus, James; Martin, Tara G; Rothley, Kris

2014-04-01

Voting systems aggregate preferences efficiently and are often used for deciding conservation priorities. Desirable characteristics of voting systems include transitivity, completeness, and Pareto optimality, among others. Voting systems that are common and potentially useful for environmental decision making include simple majority, approval, and preferential voting. Unfortunately, no voting system can guarantee an outcome, while also satisfying a range of very reasonable performance criteria. Furthermore, voting methods may be manipulated by decision makers and strategic voters if they have knowledge of the voting patterns and alliances of others in the voting populations. The difficult properties of voting systems arise in routine decision making when there are multiple criteria and management alternatives. Because each method has flaws, we do not endorse one method. Instead, we urge organizers to be transparent about the properties of proposed voting systems and to offer participants the opportunity to approve the voting system as part of the ground rules for operation of a group. © 2014 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., on behalf of the Society for Conservation Biology.

Contexts of Congressional Decision Behavior

Science.gov (United States)

1979-01-01

Timothy provided nimerous, pleasant distractions along the way and a sense of pride with their question "Daddy--when is your book on Congress going...34 books and scholarly studies,’ 2 2 congressional research and in- 23vestigatory agencies such as General Accounting Office, Congressional Budget...Legislative behavior was roll-call analysis. As mapy analysts have argued, roll-call analysis is based on long distance, secondhand supposition. Researchers

Vote Buying or Campaign Promises? Electoral Strategies When Party Credibility is Limited

OpenAIRE

Hanusch, Marek; Keefer, Philip; Vlaicu, Razvan

2016-01-01

What explains significant variation across countries in the use of vote buying instead of campaign promises to secure voter support? This paper explicitly models the tradeoff parties face between engaging in vote buying and making campaign promises, and explores the distributional consequences of this decision, in a setting where party credibility can vary. When parties are less credible they spend more on vote buying and target vote buying more heavily toward groups that do not believe campa...

Sex, race, gender, and the presidential vote

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Susan B. Hansen

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Racial resentment has been shown to have a significant impact on voting by whites in recent presidential elections, and a much larger impact than the traditional gender-gap measure based on the male-female dichotomy. This analysis will use data from the American National Election Studies [ANES] to compare broader indicators of race and gender applicable to the Democratic and Republican parties as well as to respondents’ opinions of appropriate roles for women. Since the 1980s the parties have diverged considerably on abortion and women’s issues, and voters now view the Democrats as more supportive than Republicans of equality for women and reproductive rights. Perceptions of party differences on women’s issues strongly influenced vote choice, 1988–2008, and in 2008 had greater impact on whites’ votes than opinions on aid to blacks, abortion, gay marriage, or the economy. Although racial resentment was a strong predictor of the white vote in 2012 as in previous years, presidential voting was also significantly influenced by respondent sex as well as opinions on gender roles. Voters regarded the Democratic Party as “better for the interests of women,” and this proved to be a highly effective wedge issue for the Democrats in 2012.

7 CFR 1205.204 - Voting.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... Regulations of the Department of Agriculture (Continued) AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (MARKETING AGREEMENTS... through the Internet during the voting period. A completed and signed CN-100 and supporting documentation.... Forms obtained via the Internet will be located at http://www.ams.usda.gov/Cotton. Upon request by...

Improving Remote Voting Security with CodeVoting

OpenAIRE

Joaquim, Rui; Ribeiro, Carlos; Ferreira, Paulo

2010-01-01

One of the major problems that prevents the spread of elections with the possibility of remote voting over electronic networks, also called Internet Voting, is the use of unreliable client platforms, such as the voter’s computer and the Internet infrastructure connecting it to the election server. A computer connected to the Internet is exposed to viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, malware and other threats that can compromise the election’s integrity. For instance, it is pos...

The Witness-Voting System

Science.gov (United States)

Gerck, Ed

We present a new, comprehensive framework to qualitatively improve election outcome trustworthiness, where voting is modeled as an information transfer process. Although voting is deterministic (all ballots are counted), information is treated stochastically using Information Theory. Error considerations, including faults, attacks, and threats by adversaries, are explicitly included. The influence of errors may be corrected to achieve an election outcome error as close to zero as desired (error-free), with a provably optimal design that is applicable to any type of voting, with or without ballots. Sixteen voting system requirements, including functional, performance, environmental and non-functional considerations, are derived and rated, meeting or exceeding current public-election requirements. The voter and the vote are unlinkable (secret ballot) although each is identifiable. The Witness-Voting System (Gerck, 2001) is extended as a conforming implementation of the provably optimal design that is error-free, transparent, simple, scalable, robust, receipt-free, universally-verifiable, 100% voter-verified, and end-to-end audited.

Secure Biometric E-Voting Scheme

Science.gov (United States)

Ahmed, Taha Kh.; Aborizka, Mohamed

The implementation of the e-voting becomes more substantial with the rapid increase of e-government development. The recent growth in communications and cryptographic techniques facilitate the implementation of e-voting. Many countries introduced e-voting systems; unfortunately most of these systems are not fully functional. In this paper we will present an e-voting scheme that covers most of the e-voting requirements, smart card and biometric recognition technology were implemented to guarantee voter's privacy and authentication.

Congressional Social Darwinism and the American Indian

Science.gov (United States)

Blinderman, Abraham

1978-01-01

Summarizing a congressional report on civil and military treatment of American Indians, this article asserts that the social Darwinism of the day prevailed among all congressional committee members ("Even friends of the Indian... knew American expansionism, technology, and racial ideology would reduce the Indian to a pitiful remnant...) (JC)

Tunable Tensor Voting Improves Grouping of Membrane-Bound Macromolecules

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Loss, Leandro A.; Bebis, George; Parvin, Bahram

2009-04-15

Membrane-bound macromolecules are responsible for structural support and mediation of cell-cell adhesion in tissues. Quantitative analysis of these macromolecules provides morphological indices for damage or loss of tissue, for example as a result of exogenous stimuli. From an optical point of view, a membrane signal may have nonuniform intensity around the cell boundary, be punctate or diffused, and may even be perceptual at certain locations along the boundary. In this paper, a method for the detection and grouping of punctate, diffuse curvilinear signals is proposed. Our work builds upon the tensor voting and the iterative voting frameworks to propose an efficient method to detect and refine perceptually interesting curvilinear structures in images. The novelty of our method lies on the idea of iteratively tuning the tensor voting fields, which allows the concentration of the votes only over areas of interest. We validate the utility of our system with synthetic and annotated real data. The effectiveness of the tunable tensor voting is demonstrated on complex phenotypic signals that are representative of membrane-bound macromolecular structures.

Self-tallying quantum anonymous voting

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Qingle; Yu, Chaohua; Gao, Fei; Qi, Haoyu; Wen, Qiaoyan

2016-08-01

Anonymous voting is a voting method of hiding the link between a vote and a voter, the context of which ranges from governmental elections to decision making in small groups like councils and companies. In this paper, we propose a quantum anonymous voting protocol assisted by two kinds of entangled quantum states. Particularly, we provide a mechanism of opening and permuting the ordered votes of all the voters in an anonymous manner; any party who is interested in the voting results can acquire a permutation copy and then obtains the voting result through a simple calculation. Unlike all previous quantum works on anonymous voting, our quantum anonymous protocol possesses the properties of privacy, self-tallying, nonreusability, verifiability, and fairness at the same time. In addition, we demonstrate that the entanglement of the quantum states used in our protocol makes an attack from an outside eavesdropper and inside dishonest voters impossible. We also generalize our protocol to execute the task of anonymous multiparty computation, such as anonymous broadcast and anonymous ranking.

Workplace Characteristics and Working Class Vote for the Old and New Right

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Arndt, Christoph; Rennwald, Line

2017-01-01

This article focuses on the role of plant size for working class vote. We argue that workplace size does matter for political behaviour. Workers in smaller plants are less unionized and therefore base their voting decisions more strongly on their cultural attitudes, which undermine the support...... for social democratic parties. Using data from the European Social Survey (2002–2010), we find that workers in small plants have more right-wing attitudes and, consequently, vote for new and old right parties, contrarily to workers in larger plants. Our research points towards important structural...... explanations of working class support for the right and its cross-national differences....

The Drastic Outcomes from Voting Alliances in Three-Party Democratic Voting (1990 → 2013)

Science.gov (United States)

Galam, Serge

2013-04-01

The drastic effect of local alliances in three-party competition is investigated in democratic hierarchical bottom-up voting. The results are obtained analytically using a model which extends a sociophysics frame introduced in 1986 (Galam in J. Math. Phys. 30:426, 1986) and 1990 (Galam in J. Stat. Phys. 61:943, 1990) to study two-party systems and the spontaneous formation of democratic dictatorship. It is worth stressing that the 1990 paper was published in the Journal of Statistical Physics, the first paper of its kind in this journal. It was shown how a minority in power can preserve its leadership using bottom-up democratic elections. However such a bias holds only down to some critical value of minimum support. The results were used latter to explain the sudden collapse of European communist parties in the nineties. The extension to three-party competition reveals the mechanisms by which a very small minority party can get a substantial representation at higher levels of the hierarchy when the other two competing parties are big. Additional surprising results are obtained, which enlighten the complexity of three-party democratic bottom-up voting. In particular, the unexpected outcomes of local voting alliances are singled out. Unbalanced democratic situations are exhibited with strong asymmetries between the actual bottom support of a party and its associated share of power at the top leadership. Subtle strategies are identified for a party to maximize its hold on the top leadership. The results are also valid to describe opinion dynamics with three competing opinions.

GPU-Vote: A Framework for Accelerating Voting Algorithms on GPU.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Braak, van den G.J.W.; Nugteren, C.; Mesman, B.; Corporaal, H.; Kaklamanis, C.; Papatheodorou, T.; Spirakis, P.G.

2012-01-01

Voting algorithms, such as histogram and Hough transforms, are frequently used algorithms in various domains, such as statistics and image processing. Algorithms in these domains may be accelerated using GPUs. Implementing voting algorithms efficiently on a GPU however is far from trivial due to

Approval Voting and Parochialism

Science.gov (United States)

Baron, Jonathan; Altman, Nicole Y.; Kroll, Stephan

2005-01-01

In hypothetical scenarios involving two groups (nations or groups of workers), subjects voted on three proposals: one helped group A (their group), one helped B, and one helped both groups, more than the average of the first two but less than their maximum. When subjects voted for one proposal, most voted for the one that helped group A. This…

Voting Varieties: Towards a Plural Sociology of Effective Voting

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Willibald Sonnleitner

2017-05-01

Full Text Available In Mexico, the puzzling relationships between socioeconomic development and voting challenge the classical theories of modernization: in many regions the most participative territories are the poorest ones. To comprehend this contradictory geography of electoral participation, this research explores the varieties of voting in different contexts, levels and scales, focusing on diverse forms of electoral mobilization (based on community or identity; on corporatism and patronage; on psychological, social or territorial linkages; or on individual and rational choice. This invites to revisit the relations between “universal” suffrage and socio‐political inclusion and participation, on democratic contestation and representation, on governance and legitimacy. What conditions favor/inhibit free, egalitarian, autonomous and effective voting, in hybrid situations of transition from/to democratic/authoritarian regimes?

Do authoritarians vote for authoritarians? Evidence from Latin America

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mollie J. Cohen

2016-12-01

Full Text Available During the 2016 presidential election campaign in the United States, scholars argued that authoritarian visions of the family are associated with support for Donald Trump, a candidate also noted to exhibit authoritarian or illiberal tendencies. Though it is plausible that “authoritarian” citizens (defined by parenting attitudes vote for “authoritarian” candidates (defined by disrespect for democratic institutions, past research provides relatively little guide regarding this relationship. One reason is that few US candidates announce overtly authoritarian views. Latin America, by contrast, has had many such candidates. We take advantage of this variation using the 2012 AmericasBarometer, which applied a battery of authoritarian parenting attitudes. We first describe mass authoritarianism across Latin America, showing it is associated with many social attitudes. We then examine authoritarians’ voting behavior, distinguishing between support for “mano dura” (“strong arm” candidates, who are usually rightists, and for candidates threatening violations of general civil liberties, who are often leftists in Latin America. We find that authoritarians tend to vote for right-wing authoritarian candidates, while authoritarianism boosts support for candidates threatening civil liberty violations only among citizens identifying on the ideological right. Education is the most consistent determinant reducing support for both leftist and rightist authoritarian candidates.

Public goods and voting on formal sanction schemes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Putterman, Louis; Tyran, Jean-Robert Karl; Kamei, Kenju

2011-01-01

The burgeoning literature on the use of sanctions to support the provision of public goods has largely neglected the use of formal or centralized sanctions. We let subjects playing a linear public goods game vote on the parameters of a formal sanction scheme capable of either resolving...... or exacerbating the free-rider problem, depending on parameter settings. Most groups quickly learned to choose parameters inducing efficient outcomes. We find that cooperative orientation, political attitude, gender and intelligence have a small but sometimes significant influence on voting....

Public Goods and Voting on Formal Sanction Schemes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Putterman, Louis; Tyran, Jean-Robert; Kamei, Kenju

The burgeoning literature on the use of sanctions to support public goods provision has largely neglected the use of formal or centralized sanctions. We let subjects playing a linear public goods game vote on the parameters of a formal sanction scheme capable both of resolving and of exacerbating...... the free-rider problem, depending on parameter settings. Most groups quickly learned to choose parameters inducing efficient outcomes. But despite uniform money payoffs implying common interest in those parameters, voting patterns suggest significant influence of cooperative orientation, political...

Executive compensation, financial performance and say on pay votes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xiaoli Yuan

2017-03-01

Full Text Available The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 was passed as a response to the late-2000s recession. A shareholder opt-in executive pay vote was introduced as a solution to the managerial power problem. We examine the results of this recommended solution and prove its viability. We find that there is a stronger association between high CEO pay and low say-on-pay vote support for firms with negative financial performance. We also find the market-to-book ratio is significantly lower for companies that failed say-on-pay votes. Furthermore, regulated industries such as financial services are more likely receive unfavourable say-on-pay votes. We document an increase in the sensitivity of CEO pay to poor performance. Overall, these finds are consistent with calls for less “rewards for failure” that led to the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Media Exposure, Interpersonal Communication and the Electoral Decision Process.

Science.gov (United States)

Kimsey, William D.; Hantz, Alan

The relationships among mass media, interpersonal communication, and voting behavior were explored in a two-stage panel study of 141 respondents during a 1974 Illinois congressional election. Analyses of perceived exposures to mass media and to interpersonal communication were interpreted as supporting Rogers and Shoemakers' (1971)…

Twitter accounts followed by Congressional health staff.

Science.gov (United States)

Grande, David; Meisel, Zachary F; Merchant, Raina M; Seymour, Jane; Gollust, Sarah E

2017-07-01

Although health policy research should inform policy making, the communication gap between researchers and policy makers limits successful translation. Social media represents a new opportunity to connect researchers and policy makers. Our objective was to assess who Congressional health policy staff follow on a major social media platform. Cross-sectional study. Our study measured Congressional health policy staff's use of Twitter and the types of individuals and organizations they follow. To focus on more influential Twitter accounts, we restricted our sample to those followed by at least 3 individual Congressional staff members. Of the 30,843 accounts followed by the 115 Congressional health policy staff, 1273 were potentially policy-related and followed by 3 or more staff. Of these, few were academically affiliated (2.4%) or explicitly health-related (5.6%) sites; many were general news media sources (50.9%) and political and governmental sources (36.4%). Health-focused accounts were frequently connected to the news media or government rather than academia. Top accounts followed (ie, highest quintile) were most likely to be national news organizations (odds ratio [OR], 5.88; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.75-19.7) and elected officials (OR, 8.22; 95% CI, 1.75-38.6) compared with advocacy and interest groups. Health-related and academic sources are largely absent from the Twitter conversations with US Congressional health policy staff. Even within social media, traditional and political news media are important information intermediaries that researchers and journals should target to disseminate health policy evidence.

Ethereum blockchain for electronic voting

OpenAIRE

Kairys, Lukas

2017-01-01

Electronic voting is very interesting challenge and there is no reliable and safe solution developed yet. This thesis goal is to analyse decentralised distributed ledger (blockchain) application for electronic remote voting. Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts enables creation of secure and reliable solution for e-voting.

115th Congressional Districts

Data.gov (United States)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — This layer depicts the 115th Congressional Districts for the United States, with attributes listing the elected officials for the 115th Congress. Elected to a...

Vote par sondage uniforme incorruptible

OpenAIRE

Blanchard , Nicolas

2016-01-01

International audience; Introduit en 2012 par David Chaum, le vote par sondage uniforme (random-sample voting) est un protocole de vote basé sur un choix d'une sous-population représentative , permettant de limiter les coûts tout en ayant de nombreux avantages, principalement lorsqu'il est couplé a d'autres techniques comme ThreeBallot. Nous analysons un problème de corruptibilité potentielle où les votants peuvent vendre leur vote au plus offrant et proposons une variation du protocole reméd...

History of voting

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rosema, Martin; Moghaddam, Fathali M.

2017-01-01

Voting is the act of declaring a choice among a number of alternative options in the process of reaching a group decision on a particular matter. In politics, this mostly concerns the selection of a person for a specific position, such as a mayor or a member of parliament. The right to vote in

What makes a vote, and what does a vote make?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dalsgaard, Steffen; Gad, Christopher

Digitalizing electoral processes entails substantial changes to the materialities on which such processes rely, and hence to how they are practiced, organized, and, in turn, how they may be analyzed and reflected upon. As researchers in the Danish strategic research project DemTech, which...... work-in-progress we will focus on one particular ‘problem’ which emerges in light of the project and the current efforts to digitalize electoral processes. That is, the problem of how a vote is constituted and defined as such; how the ways in which a vote works are related to its (potential) material...... of 'the state', ‘citizenship' and ‘democracy’, and what it means if a vote cannot be defined as one exact ‘thing’, but instead may, simultaneously, be many things at once....

On improving the efficiency of tensor voting.

Science.gov (United States)

Moreno, Rodrigo; Garcia, Miguel Angel; Puig, Domenec; Pizarro, Luis; Burgeth, Bernhard; Weickert, Joachim

2011-11-01

This paper proposes two alternative formulations to reduce the high computational complexity of tensor voting, a robust perceptual grouping technique used to extract salient information from noisy data. The first scheme consists of numerical approximations of the votes, which have been derived from an in-depth analysis of the plate and ball voting processes. The second scheme simplifies the formulation while keeping the same perceptual meaning of the original tensor voting: The stick tensor voting and the stick component of the plate tensor voting must reinforce surfaceness, the plate components of both the plate and ball tensor voting must boost curveness, whereas junctionness must be strengthened by the ball component of the ball tensor voting. Two new parameters have been proposed for the second formulation in order to control the potentially conflictive influence of the stick component of the plate vote and the ball component of the ball vote. Results show that the proposed formulations can be used in applications where efficiency is an issue since they have a complexity of order O(1). Moreover, the second proposed formulation has been shown to be more appropriate than the original tensor voting for estimating saliencies by appropriately setting the two new parameters.

Central banks’ voting records and future policy

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Horváth, R.; Šmídková, K.; Zápal, Jan

2012-01-01

Roč. 8, č. 4 (2012), s. 1-19 ISSN 1815-4654 Institutional support: PRVOUK-P23 Keywords : monetary policy * voting record * transparency Subject RIV: AH - Economics Impact factor: 0.895, year: 2012 http://www.ijcb.org/journal/ijcb12q4a1.pdf

Peer Effects in Legislative Voting

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Harmon, Nikolaj Arpe; Fisman, Raymond; Kamenica, Emir

2016-01-01

variation in seating across the two venues of the Parliament (Brussels and Strasbourg), we show that this effect reflects persistent peer influence: a pair of MEPs who have sat together in the past are less likely to disagree on a vote even if they do not sit together during that particular vote.......Abstract We exploit seating rules in the European Parliament to estimate causal peer effects in legislative voting. We find that sitting next to each other reduces by 13 percent the likelihood that two Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the same party differ in their vote. Using...

Quality monitored distributed voting system

Science.gov (United States)

Skogmo, David

1997-01-01

A quality monitoring system can detect certain system faults and fraud attempts in a distributed voting system. The system uses decoy voters to cast predetermined check ballots. Absent check ballots can indicate system faults. Altered check ballots can indicate attempts at counterfeiting votes. The system can also cast check ballots at predetermined times to provide another check on the distributed voting system.

Diverging Life Expectancies and Voting Patterns in the 2016 US Presidential Election

Science.gov (United States)

2017-01-01

Objectives. To assess whether voting patterns in the 2016 US presidential election were correlated with long-run trends in county life expectancy. Methods. I examined county-level voting data from the 2008 and 2016 presidential elections and assessed Donald Trump’s share of the 2016 vote, change in the Republican vote share between 2008 and 2016, and changes in absolute numbers of Democratic and Republican votes. County-level estimates of life expectancy at birth were obtained for 1980 and 2014 from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Results. Changes in county life expectancy from 1980 to 2014 were strongly negatively associated with Trump’s vote share, with less support for Trump in counties experiencing greater survival gains. Counties in which life expectancy stagnated or declined saw a 10-percentage-point increase in the Republican vote share between 2008 and 2016. Conclusions. Residents of counties left out from broader life expectancy gains abandoned the Democratic Party in the 2016 presidential election. Since coming to power, the Trump administration has proposed cuts to health insurance for the poor, social programs, health research, and environmental and worker protections, which are key determinants of population health. Health gaps likely will continue to widen without significant public investment in population health. PMID:28817322

Diverging Life Expectancies and Voting Patterns in the 2016 US Presidential Election.

Science.gov (United States)

Bor, Jacob

2017-10-01

To assess whether voting patterns in the 2016 US presidential election were correlated with long-run trends in county life expectancy. I examined county-level voting data from the 2008 and 2016 presidential elections and assessed Donald Trump's share of the 2016 vote, change in the Republican vote share between 2008 and 2016, and changes in absolute numbers of Democratic and Republican votes. County-level estimates of life expectancy at birth were obtained for 1980 and 2014 from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Changes in county life expectancy from 1980 to 2014 were strongly negatively associated with Trump's vote share, with less support for Trump in counties experiencing greater survival gains. Counties in which life expectancy stagnated or declined saw a 10-percentage-point increase in the Republican vote share between 2008 and 2016. Residents of counties left out from broader life expectancy gains abandoned the Democratic Party in the 2016 presidential election. Since coming to power, the Trump administration has proposed cuts to health insurance for the poor, social programs, health research, and environmental and worker protections, which are key determinants of population health. Health gaps likely will continue to widen without significant public investment in population health.

Administration: Army Congressional Fellowship Program

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

2000-01-01

This printing publishes a new Army Regulation. This regulation presents the policies and procedures under which the Army manages the Army Congressional Fellowship Program and supplements applicable Department...

Congressional interest and input

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Donnelly, W.H.

1985-01-01

While congressional interest in nonproliferation policy has been evident since the 1940s, the 1970s were propitious for efforts by Congress to exert influence in this sphere. Its suspicions of the executive branch had been stirred by controversies over Vietnam and Watergate at the beginning of the decade; by the end of the decade, Congress was able to curtail the unrestrained freedom of the executive branch to carry out the vaguely stated policies of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Congressional nonproliferation interests were further amplified during the decade by pressures from the expanding environmental movement, which included a strong antinuclear plank. This was to bring down the powerful Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 abolished the AEC and divided its responsibilities between the new Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), later to become the Department of Energy (DOE), and the new Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Thai Electoral Campaigning: Vote-Canvassing Networks and Hybrid Voting

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anyarat Chattharakul

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Based on evidence gathered through participant observation, this article illuminates the nature of vote-canvassing, previously a black box in Thai electoral studies. Offering a close-up study of the internal mechanisms of an individual Thai election campaign, this article reveals that vote-canvasser networks are underpinned by long-term dyadic relationships, both hierarchical and horizontal, between the candidate, vote-canvassers and voters. These networks continue to be the most important factor in winning elections. This article documents how candidates draw up an election campaign map and identify voters along residential lines to maximise their vote-canvassing strategy. The findings of this article challenge Anek’s 1996 concept of “two democracies”, which argues that rural voters are influenced by money, local leaders, political factions and corrupt politicians while more well-educated, urban, middle-class voters are more oriented toward the alternative policies offered by competing parties. The case study of Kom’s election campaign showed that the role of the much-vaunted middle-class voters is not decisive, even in suburban areas of Bangkok. While political marketing has grown in importance in Thai elections, it has not displaced traditional electoral practices. Thai society is, in fact, deeply fragmented and diverse – too complex to be divided in such a simplistic manner. This article suggests that rather than undergoing a linear transformation, political hybridisation is a key trend in Thai election campaigns.

Voting frequentia as an indicator of political activity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

V. V. Kryvoshein

2017-07-01

Found that the amount of voting frequentia depends on the political regime, the form of government and the level elections. Determined that democracies characterized by an autonomous form of voting frequentia and for undemocratic – mobilizational form of voting frequentia. Followed that the highest rate of participation in voting observed in countries with a parliamentary form of government and proportional electoral system, more than 2/3 of the voting frequentia observed in countries with a parliamentary form of government and majoritarian electoral systems, lowest level of voting frequentia observed in countries with a presidential form of government. It also notes that increased voting frequentia observed in countries where compulsory voting is set. Observed trend of dependency and level elections: electoral activity of elections on the local, regional and supra-national representative authority is much lower than in the presidential and parliamentary elections. Attention is drawn to in explaining the voting frequentia considered rational and irrational factors, since voting is a two-tiered process: active, politically defined part of the voters voted party ideologically and politically unbiased – rationally.

Party brands and voting

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Sigge Winther; Larsen, Martin Vinæs

2014-01-01

heuristics and voting models. Next, the article measures the brand value of Danish parties by utilizing a representative association analysis. Finally, this measure is used to conduct the very first empirical analysis of a party brand's effect on voting behavior. Overall, the primary finding demonstrates...

7 CFR 1280.626 - Certification and voting procedures.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 1280.626 Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture (Continued) AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (MARKETING AGREEMENTS AND ORDERS; MISCELLANEOUS COMMODITIES), DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE LAMB... Internet during the voting period. A completed and signed form LS-86 and supporting documentation, such as...

One Share-One Vote

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Poulsen, Thomas; Eklund, Johan E.

Shares with more voting rights than cash flow rights provide their owners with a disproportional influence that is often found to destroy the value of outside equity. This is taken as evidence of discretionary use of power. However, concentration of power does not necessarily result from control...... enhancing mechanisms; it could also be that some shareholders retain a large block in a one share-one vote structure. In this paper, we develop a methodology to disentangle disproportionality, which allows us to test the effect of deviations from one share-one vote more precisely. Our empirical findings add...

Voting Systems for Environmental Decisions

Science.gov (United States)

BURGMAN, MARK A; REGAN, HELEN M; MAGUIRE, LYNN A; COLYVAN, MARK; JUSTUS, JAMES; MARTIN, TARA G; ROTHLEY, KRIS

2014-01-01

Voting systems aggregate preferences efficiently and are often used for deciding conservation priorities. Desirable characteristics of voting systems include transitivity, completeness, and Pareto optimality, among others. Voting systems that are common and potentially useful for environmental decision making include simple majority, approval, and preferential voting. Unfortunately, no voting system can guarantee an outcome, while also satisfying a range of very reasonable performance criteria. Furthermore, voting methods may be manipulated by decision makers and strategic voters if they have knowledge of the voting patterns and alliances of others in the voting populations. The difficult properties of voting systems arise in routine decision making when there are multiple criteria and management alternatives. Because each method has flaws, we do not endorse one method. Instead, we urge organizers to be transparent about the properties of proposed voting systems and to offer participants the opportunity to approve the voting system as part of the ground rules for operation of a group. Sistemas de Votación para Decisiones Ambientales Resumen Los sistemas de votación agregan preferencias eficientemente y muy seguido se usan para decidir prioridades de conservación. Las características deseables de un sistema de votación incluyen la transitividad, lo completo que sean y la optimalidad de Pareto, entre otras. Los sistemas de votación que son comunes y potencialmente útiles para la toma de decisiones ambientales incluyen simple mayoría, aprobación y votación preferencial. Desafortunadamente, ningún sistema de votación puede garantizar un resultado y a la vez satisfacer un rango de criterios de desempeño muy razonable. Además, los métodos de votación pueden manipularse por los que toman las decisiones y votantes estratégicos si tienen el conocimiento de los patrones de votación y de las alianzas entre miembros dentro de las poblaciones votantes. Las

One Share–One Vote

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Eklund, Johan Erik; Poulsen, Thomas

2014-01-01

Many European companies use some type of control-enhancing mechanism, such as dual class shares or a pyramid ownership structure. Such mechanisms cause deviations from the one share–one vote principle, allocating more voting rights than cash flow rights to some shares and, in turn, providing...

Parliament votes against building fifth power reactor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anon.

1993-01-01

After a heated three-day debate, Finland's parliament voted on September 24 to reject the proposal to build the country's fifth nuclear power reactor. As predicted, the vote was close: 107 voted against more nuclear power, 90 were in favor, two members of the 200-seat parliament were not present, and the speaker did not vote

Marijuana policy opinions in Washington state since legalization: Would voters vote the same way?

Science.gov (United States)

Subbaraman, Meenakshi Sabina; Kerr, William C

2016-12-01

In 2012, voters in Washington state approved Initiative 502 (I-502) which legalized recreational marijuana use at the state level. This study examines the relationship between demographics, marijuana and alcohol use, and voting outcomes, as well as how these variables relate to (i) whether voters would still vote the same way (a reflection of satisfaction with the new policy) and (ii) the likelihood of using marijuana purchased from legal retail stores. The sample consists of 2,007 adult Washington state residents recruited through Random Digit Dial between January and October 2014. Bivariate tests and multivariable regressions were used for analyses. Less than five percent of those who voted for marijuana legalization would change their votes, whereas 14% of those who voted against legalization would change their votes. In multivariable models controlling for demographics, substance use, and marijuana-related opinions, those who voted for legalization had half the odds of changing their votes than those who voted against it. Among past-year non-marijuana users, almost 10% were somewhat/very likely to use marijuana if they could buy it from a legal store. Past marijuana use, the belief that adults should be allowed to grow marijuana for personal use, and the belief that marijuana is not very risky for health were all related to increased likelihood of using marijuana purchased from legal stores. Since November 2012, support for marijuana legalization in Washington state has increased; accounting for the proportion of voters who would change their votes suggests that I-502 would pass today with even more votes in favor.

Cellular automata with voting rule

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Makowiec, D.

1996-01-01

The chosen local interaction - the voting (majority) rule applied to the square lattice is known to cause the non ergodic cellular automata behaviour. Presented computer simulation results verify two cases of non ergodicity. The first one is implicated by the noise introduced to the local interactions and the second one follows properties of the initial lattice configuration selected at random. For the simplified voting rule - non symmetric voting, the critical behaviour has been explained rigorously. (author)

The mathematics of elections and voting

CERN Document Server

Wallis, W D

2014-01-01

The Mathematics of Elections and Voting  takes an in-depth look at the mathematics in the context of voting and electoral systems, with focus on simple ballots, complex elections, fairness, approval voting, ties, fair and unfair voting, and manipulation techniques. The exposition opens with a sketch of the mathematics behind the various methods used in conducting elections. The reader is lead to a comprehensive picture of the theoretical background of mathematics and elections through an analysis of Condorcet’s Principle and Arrow’s Theorem of conditions in electoral fairness. Further detailed discussion of various related topics include: methods of manipulating the outcome of an election, amendments, and voting on small committees. In recent years, electoral theory has been introduced into lower-level mathematics courses, as a way to illustrate the role of mathematics in our everyday life.  Few books have studied voting and elections from a more formal mathematical viewpoint.  This text wi...

Moral Foundations and Voting Intention in Italy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Patrizia Milesi

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Based on the view of morality proposed by the Moral Foundations Theory, this paper investigates whether voting intention is associated with moral foundation endorsement in not perfectly bipolar electoral contexts. Three studies carried out in Italy from 2010 to 2013, showed that controlling for ideological orientation, moral foundation endorsement is associated with voting intention. In Study 1 and 3, in fictitious and real national elections, intention to vote for right-wing political groups rather than for left-wing rivals was associated with Sanctity, confirming previous results obtained in the U.S. Furthermore, as a function of the specific competing political groups in each of the examined contexts other moral foundations predicted voting intention. In Study 1, Care and Authority predicted voting intention for the major political groups rather than for an autonomist party that aimed at decreasing central government’s fiscal power in favor of fiscal regional autonomy. In Study 3, Loyalty predicted the intention to vote for the major parliamentarian parties rather than for a movement that aimed at capturing disaffection towards traditional politics. In Study 2, at real regional elections, Loyalty predicted voting intention for the incumbent right-wing governor rather than for the challengers and Fairness predicted voting intention for left-wing extra-parliamentarian political groups rather than for the major left-wing party. Thus multiple moral concerns can be associated with voting intention. In fragmented and unstable electoral contexts, at each election the context of the competing political groups may elicit specific moral concerns that can contribute to affect voting intention beyond ideological orientation.

The value of a freeze

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bethe, H.A.; Long, F.A.

1988-01-01

This paper reports on the rapid increase in public support for a nuclear-freeze agreement---that is, a mutual freeze on the testing, production and further deployment of nuclear weapons---which has been a remarkable political phenomenon. In less than a year, support has grown from a few volunteers collecting signatures on petitions to a congressional vote in which supporters of a freeze very nearly prevailed. This fall, eight states and the District of Columbia will vote on freeze referendums. Already Wisconsin voters have overwhelmingly voted yes in such a referendum. There are many reasons for this strong support for a freeze, including fear of nuclear war, resistance to high levels of military spending and opposition to particular military policies of the Reagan administration. But to most supporters, the chief purpose of a freeze is simple: it is to help stop an immense, continuing, dangerous and incredibly costly arms race between the two superpowers

12 CFR 7.2022 - Voting trusts.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... Practices § 7.2022 Voting trusts. The shareholders of a national bank may establish a voting trust under the applicable law of a state selected by the participants and designated in the trust agreement, provided the... 12 Banks and Banking 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Voting trusts. 7.2022 Section 7.2022 Banks and...

Underneath the culture of consensus: Transparency, credible commitments and voting in the Council of Ministers

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Finke, Daniel

2017-01-01

The Council of Ministers rarely records negative individual votes, much less rejected proposals. The literature explains this high level of support by the Council’s ’culture of consensus’ and the few negative votes are explained as signalling to the domestic audience. We introduce an alternative...

Workplace characteristics and working class vote for the old and new right

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Arndt, Christoph; Rennwald, Line

This paper focuses on the structural determinants of working class vote for new right and old right parties. We argue that the size of the company does matter in explaining the support of workers for these parties. In small-sized companies, there is greater proximity with the management than...... of old and new right parties - is strengthened. These arguments are tested through a set of multilevel models analysing the determinants of working class vote for new right parties in 16 European countries. Using data from the European Social Survey (2002-2010) and information on company size...... at the individual level, we find that workers in small companies are more right-wing and, consequently, vote for new and old right parties, whereas workers in larger companies are more likely to vote for social democrats indicating a continuation of the traditional working class milieu. This effect can be explained...

Voting in central banks: theory versus stylized facts

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Horváth, R.; Šmídková, K.; Zápal, Jan

2016-01-01

Roč. 16, č. 4 (2016), s. 1-62 ISSN 1935-1682 R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GBP402/12/G097 Institutional support: PRVOUK-P23 Keywords : monetary policy * voting record * collective decision-making Subject RIV: AH - Economics Impact factor: 0.252, year: 2016

Cognitive Properties of Approval Voting : an Experimental Approach

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Krzysztof Przybyszewski

2011-01-01

Full Text Available The paper summarizes two series of experiments demonstrating the cognitive properties of approval voting. The former series is devoted to mental processes induced in decision makers who use the method of approval voting. Based on cognitive effort, the use of choice strategies is presented in this paper. The observations of respondents show that most of them use relatively effortless strategy of eliminating alternatives and attributes. Few respondents use more sophisticated methods. The other series of experiments analyses the number of alternatives chosen in approval voting. It appears that the average number is not constant, even for similar votes but it depends on the subject of voting. The number of chosen alternatives and the subjective significance of the scope of voting are negatively or positively correlated in the case of special votes. The analyzed experiments show that the cognitive properties of approval voting have a diverse structure. (original abstract

Do Altruistic Preferences Matter for Voting Outcomes?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mahler, Daniel Gerszon

2017-01-01

and actual votes are analyzed by locating the Danish political parties in a political compass. Altruistic preferences are found to drive votes to the left and away from extreme candidates. A smaller U.S. survey on the 2016 presidential candidates (n = 400) yields similar results. The results suggest...... they would vote for if elections were held tomorrow, (2) the party they would vote for if they only were to consider what is best for themselves, and (3) the party they would vote for if they were to consider what is best for society as a whole. Differences in where individuals cast their altruistic, selsh...

Voting by older adults with cognitive impairments.

Science.gov (United States)

Karlawish, Jason

2008-02-01

This presidential election year reminds us of the importance of each vote and of the integrity of the electoral process. Recent elections have been decided by very narrow margins. In this context, the voting rights and capacity of persons with dementia warrant attention. About 4.5 million Americans currently live with dementia. Whether these citizens should vote raises a host of ethical, legal, and practical issues. At what point does someone lose the capacity to vote, and who decides? What kinds of assistance should these voters get, and who should provide it? And how can the voting rights of residents in long-term care facilities be protected?

On improving the efficiency of tensor voting

OpenAIRE

Moreno, Rodrigo; Garcia, Miguel Angel; Puig, Domenec; Pizarro, Luis; Burgeth, Bernhard; Weickert, Joachim

2011-01-01

This paper proposes two alternative formulations to reduce the high computational complexity of tensor voting, a robust perceptual grouping technique used to extract salient information from noisy data. The first scheme consists of numerical approximations of the votes, which have been derived from an in-depth analysis of the plate and ball voting processes. The second scheme simplifies the formulation while keeping the same perceptual meaning of the original tensor voting: The stick tensor v...

Accuracy gains of adding vote expectation surveys to a combined forecast of US presidential election outcomes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andreas Graefe

2015-02-01

Full Text Available In averaging forecasts within and across four-component methods (i.e. polls, prediction markets, expert judgment and quantitative models, the combined PollyVote provided highly accurate predictions for the US presidential elections from 1992 to 2012. This research note shows that the PollyVote would have also outperformed vote expectation surveys, which prior research identified as the most accurate individual forecasting method during that time period. Adding vote expectations to the PollyVote would have further increased the accuracy of the combined forecast. Across the last 90 days prior to the six elections, a five-component PollyVote (i.e. including vote expectations would have yielded a mean absolute error of 1.08 percentage points, which is 7% lower than the corresponding error of the original four-component PollyVote. This study thus provides empirical evidence in support of two major findings from forecasting research. First, combining forecasts provides highly accurate predictions, which are difficult to beat for even the most accurate individual forecasting method available. Second, the accuracy of a combined forecast can be improved by adding component forecasts that rely on different data and different methods than the forecasts already included in the combination.

Clientelism and vote buying in local elections: A case study of Kartu Bintan Sejahtera

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tri Samnuzulsari

2018-03-01

Full Text Available This study finds out clientelism and vote buying on Kartu Bintan Sejahtera (KBS in Bintan Regency, Riau Islands. The objective of this study is to understand the practices of clientelism and vote buying using KBS. This study based on case study research. The informants consist of General Election Commission of (KPUD Riau Islands, candidates of the governor of Riau Islands 2015-2020, candidates of Bintan Regent 2015-2020, along with their supporting parties and campaigning team, and bureaucracy of the implementation of KBS. The main findings of this study suggest that KBS is used as a clientelism and vote buying practices by the candidate of Riau Islands governor and Bintan Regent, 2015-2020 period. This study also finds that formal and informal political networks are utilized by the candidates as a clientelism and vote buying arenas. This study not only contributes to the literature of clientelism and vote buying, but also adds the literature of social policy in the context of Indonesian local politics setting. This study suggests that KBS is used as a media to obtain the support of the voters in the election of governor of Riau Islands and regent of Bintan 2015-2020. All candidates capitalize the issue of KBS to obtain the popularity. The patterns of the practice of clientelism and vote buying in KBS is by using various media campaigns to promote the success story of KBS. Not only in formal campaign but also in informal campaign, they always promote KBS as their success.

Vote Buying In Lampung Local Election

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Robi Cahyadi Kurniawan

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Vote buying in elections, both general elections and local elections is a phenomenon in Indonesian politics. Lampung Province has implemented direct elections simultaneously in December 2015 and February 2017. This study explains that vote buying can change voter choice in three regional head elections in Lampung Province. This study was conducted with the object of research residing in Way Kanan District on July 2014, Pringsewu District on February 2016 and Bandar Lampung City on November 2015. This study used a survey approach, using stratified random sampling method. The survey conducted on 662 respondents in each county or district and city object being studied. The results show that voters believe that vote buying will happen in local elections.Voters may be influenced their choice if given relief goods, gifts of money or the provision of project. The thesis in this study is vote buying can change voting choice of voters.

2008 Election Administration and Voting Survey

Data.gov (United States)

Election Assistance Commission — This dataset contains data about domestic absentee voting, provisional balloting, poll books, polling place, precincts, poll workers, and voting technology used in...

2010 Election Administration and Voting Survey

Data.gov (United States)

Election Assistance Commission — This dataset contains data about domestic absentee voting, provisional balloting, poll books, polling place, precincts, poll workers, and voting technology used in...

Tensor voting for robust color edge detection

OpenAIRE

Moreno, Rodrigo; García, Miguel Ángel; Puig, Domenec

2014-01-01

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7584-8_9 This chapter proposes two robust color edge detection methods based on tensor voting. The first method is a direct adaptation of the classical tensor voting to color images where tensors are initialized with either the gradient or the local color structure tensor. The second method is based on an extension of tensor voting in which the encoding and voting processes are specifically tailored to ...

The Relationship between Voting Knowledge and Voting Attitudes of Selected Ninth and Tenth Grade Students.

Science.gov (United States)

Golden, Kathleen

1985-01-01

A study showed that the acquisition of voting knowledge in a civics class positively influenced ninth- and tenth-grade students' attitudes toward voting. Teachers should give students a solid foundation concerning the electoral process and encourage students to participate in the political process. (RM)

A NOVEL APPROACH TO SUPPORT MAJORITY VOTING IN SPATIAL GROUP MCDM USING DENSITY INDUCED OWA OPERATOR FOR SEISMIC VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Moradi

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Being one of the most frightening disasters, earthquakes frequently cause huge damages to buildings, facilities and human beings. Although the prediction of characteristics of an earthquake seems to be impossible, its loss and damage is predictable in advance. Seismic loss estimation models tend to evaluate the extent to which the urban areas are vulnerable to earthquakes. Many factors contribute to the vulnerability of urban areas against earthquakes including age and height of buildings, the quality of the materials, the density of population and the location of flammable facilities. Therefore, seismic vulnerability assessment is a multi-criteria problem. A number of multi criteria decision making models have been proposed based on a single expert. The main objective of this paper is to propose a model which facilitates group multi criteria decision making based on the concept of majority voting. The main idea of majority voting is providing a computational tool to measure the degree to which different experts support each other’s opinions and make a decision regarding this measure. The applicability of this model is examined in Tehran metropolitan area which is located in a seismically active region. The results indicate that neglecting the experts which get lower degrees of support from others enables the decision makers to avoid the extreme strategies. Moreover, a computational method is proposed to calculate the degree of optimism in the experts’ opinions.

a Novel Approach to Support Majority Voting in Spatial Group Mcdm Using Density Induced Owa Operator for Seismic Vulnerability Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Moradi, M.; Delavar, M. R.; Moshiri, B.; Khamespanah, F.

2014-10-01

Being one of the most frightening disasters, earthquakes frequently cause huge damages to buildings, facilities and human beings. Although the prediction of characteristics of an earthquake seems to be impossible, its loss and damage is predictable in advance. Seismic loss estimation models tend to evaluate the extent to which the urban areas are vulnerable to earthquakes. Many factors contribute to the vulnerability of urban areas against earthquakes including age and height of buildings, the quality of the materials, the density of population and the location of flammable facilities. Therefore, seismic vulnerability assessment is a multi-criteria problem. A number of multi criteria decision making models have been proposed based on a single expert. The main objective of this paper is to propose a model which facilitates group multi criteria decision making based on the concept of majority voting. The main idea of majority voting is providing a computational tool to measure the degree to which different experts support each other's opinions and make a decision regarding this measure. The applicability of this model is examined in Tehran metropolitan area which is located in a seismically active region. The results indicate that neglecting the experts which get lower degrees of support from others enables the decision makers to avoid the extreme strategies. Moreover, a computational method is proposed to calculate the degree of optimism in the experts' opinions.

12 CFR 708a.13 - Voting guidelines.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 12 Banks and Banking 6 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Voting guidelines. 708a.13 Section 708a.13... INSURED CREDIT UNIONS TO MUTUAL SAVINGS BANKS § 708a.13 Voting guidelines. A converting credit union must conduct its member vote on conversion in a fair and legal manner. NCUA provides the following guidelines...

Defending majority voting systems against a strategic attacker

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Levitin, Gregory; Hausken, Kjell; Ben Haim, Hanoch

2013-01-01

Voting systems used in technical and tactical decision making in pattern recognition and target detection, data handling, signal processing, distributed and secure computing etc. are considered. A maxmin two period game is analyzed where the defender first protects and chooses units for participation in voting. The attacker thereafter attacks a subset of units. It is shown that when the defender protects all the voting units, the optimal number of units chosen for voting is either one or the maximal possible odd number. When the defender protects only the units chosen for voting, the optimal number of chosen units increases with the defender resource superiority (i.e., more resources than the attacker) and with probability of providing correct output by any unit. The system success probability always increases in the total number of voting units, the defender–attacker resource ratio, and the probability that each voting unit produces a correct output. The system success probability increases in the attacker–defender contest intensity if the defender achieves per-unit resource superiority, and otherwise decreases in the contest intensity. The presented model and enumerative algorithm allow obtaining optimal voting system defense strategy for any combination of parameters: total number of units, attack and defense resources, unit success probability and contest intensity.

Perceived health from biological motion predicts voting behaviour.

Science.gov (United States)

Kramer, Robin S S; Arend, Isabel; Ward, Robert

2010-04-01

Body motion signals socially relevant traits like the sex, age, and even the genetic quality of actors and may therefore facilitate various social judgements. By examining ratings and voting decisions based solely on body motion of political candidates, we considered how the candidates' motion affected people's judgements and voting behaviour. In two experiments, participants viewed stick figure motion displays made from videos of politicians in public debate. Participants rated the motion displays for a variety of social traits and then indicated their vote preference. In both experiments, perceived physical health was the single best predictor of vote choice, and no two-factor model produced significant improvement. Notably, although attractiveness and leadership correlated with voting behaviour, neither provided additional explanatory power to a single-factor model of health alone. Our results demonstrate for the first time that motion can produce systematic vote preferences.

Anonymous voting for multi-dimensional CV quantum system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shi Rong-Hua; Xiao Yi; Shi Jin-Jing; Guo Ying; Lee, Moon-Ho

2016-01-01

We investigate the design of anonymous voting protocols, CV-based binary-valued ballot and CV-based multi-valued ballot with continuous variables (CV) in a multi-dimensional quantum cryptosystem to ensure the security of voting procedure and data privacy. The quantum entangled states are employed in the continuous variable quantum system to carry the voting information and assist information transmission, which takes the advantage of the GHZ-like states in terms of improving the utilization of quantum states by decreasing the number of required quantum states. It provides a potential approach to achieve the efficient quantum anonymous voting with high transmission security, especially in large-scale votes. (paper)

Political Economy of Committee Voting and Its Application

OpenAIRE

Takagi, Yuki

2012-01-01

This dissertation consists of three essays on information aggregation in committees and its application. The first essay analyzes how the distribution of votes affects the accuracy of group decisions. In a weighted voting system, votes are typically assigned based on the criteria that are unrelated to the voters’ ability to make a correct judgment. I introduce an information aggregation model in which voters are identical except for voting shares. If the information is free, the optimal weigh...

[Voting by cognitively impaired persons: legal and ethical issues].

Science.gov (United States)

Bosquet, Antoine; Medjkane, Amar; Vinceneux, Philippe; Mahé, Isabelle

2010-03-01

In democratic countries, cognitively impaired persons are a substantial and growing group of citizens. Most of them are citizens with dementia. In dementia, cognitive impairment induces a loss of some capacities, resulting in vulnerability and increased need for assistance. Voting by cognitively impaired persons raises any questions about the integrity of the electoral process, the risk of fraud and the respect of their citizenship. In France, the law is not definite about the voting of cognitively impaired persons. An objective assessment for voting capacity may be useful both for professionals in charge of voting organisation and for guardianship judge in order to help him in his decision to remove or keep the voting right of persons placed under guardianship. Assessing the reality of voting by cognitively impaired citizens is necessary to advance respect for their right to vote.

Impartiality, Friendship-networks and Voting Behavior

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Charron, Nicholas

2013-01-01

What is the extent to which a country's political institutions impact aggregate voting behavior in a comparative perspective? More specifically, are citizens in some countries more inclined vote on the basis of ‘quality’ or ‘merit’ over ‘friendship’ or ‘loyalty’, and if so, why? This paper seeks...... impartial states than those with highly partial institutions. Using several measures of ‘friendship’, I find strong empirical evidence for this claim, even when controlling for myriad alternative factors and taking into account various voting regimes. The analysis gives us new insights on how political...

Sistem Pemungutan Suara Elektronik Menggunakan Model Poll Site E-Voting

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Haryati Haryati

2016-01-01

Full Text Available General elections is a regular agenda for a democtaric state, the applied paper based voting has several drawbacks, including spoiled ballots, inaccuracy in the counting of votes and reporting of election results which tends to be slow. Therefore , it needs to develop an electronic voting system that is user friendly for Indonesian people, which will reduce confusion from the previous system changes. Electronic voting aims at increasing participation, accuracy and efficiency of election results. Electrinoc voting has its own challenges to the implementation in Indonesia, ranging from the lack of legal protection, the heterogeneous level of education, culture, soceity and the digital gaps. The model developed in this thesis is the poll site e-voting, based on the rules of General Elections Commision (KPU as the organizer of the elections. In this model, people still go to the pools, using the ID number od ID card as a verification tool and voting at the voting booths provided. The system automatically stores the results in a database option, and after the spesified time will show both the results of the voting and other and other information required by the Commission. Voting system with a model of e-voting poll site is expected to have a good chance an a low level of risk to be applied in Indonesia.   Keywords : E-voting; Poll site; Rule based; Risk.

Senate Voting On the Strategic Defense Initiative: The Impact of the 1991 Gulf War

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

James F. Pasley

2012-04-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the effects of the success of the Patriot missile system in the 1991 Gulf War on Senate roll call votes for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI. Previous studies have shown that both Party Identification (PID and Ideology have had a significant effect on senators' votes on defense weapons systems. Using Logit regression techniques, this paper examines whether PID and Ideology, both of which are central to political identity, remained significant factors in three Senate votes on SDI; this paper is unique compare to previous studies of such matters in that it adds two additional explanatory variables to existing models: (1 the extent to which each state might benefit from SDI and (2 whether or not the senator from each state was up for re-election in 1992 It is hypothesized that the findings will suggest that external factors played a role in the SDI Senate votes in question. Specifically, it is hypothesized that the effects of the Gulf War Patriot missile successes led to greater legislative support (compared to support levels from previous years for the Strategic Defense Initiative among Democrats, those senators whose states would benefit from SDI funding, and those senators seeking re-election.

The calculus of get-out-the-vote in a high turnout setting

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bhatti, Yosef; Dahlgaard, Jens Olav; Hansen, Jonas Hedegaard

Through a get-out-the-vote experiment we study the effect of eight different statements related to ‘the calculus of voting’ and prospect theory on voter turnout in a high salience election with proportional representation of multiple parties. The treatments are randomly assigned to more than 60...... several arguments (ITT: 1.3 percentage points, std.error. 0.62). This supports the idea that citizens are more convinced when receiving multiple arguments. There is no evidence of difference between versions of the letters emphasizing individual elements of the calculus of voting or whether the decision...

Beyond Measure: New Approaches to Analyzing Congressional Oversight of Homeland Security

Science.gov (United States)

2015-03-01

published books and peer reviewed journal articles. The Congressional Research Service being the key source on congressional procedure and theory ...Transportation Committee 1 Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee 15 Senate Small Business & Entrepreneurship 1 Senate Special...military contracting procedures in a war zone are not necessarily oversight of national security functions, reviews of FEMA contracting practices

Poverty and vote buying: Survey-based evidence from Africa

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Peter Sandholt; Justesen, Mogens K.

2014-01-01

Alongside the spread of democracy in the developing world, vote buying has emerged as an integral part of election campaigns. Yet, we know little about the causes of vote buying in young democracies. In this paper, we analyse the sources of vote buying in sub-Saharan African. Using data from...... the Afrobarometer, we focus on the impact of poverty on vote buying at the individual- and country-level. Results from multilevel regressions show that poor voters are significantly more likely to be targets of vote buying than wealthier voters. This effect increases when elections are highly competitive. Thus......, micro-level poverty seems to be an important source of vote buying in Africa and has major implications for the way electoral democracy operates....

The Relationship between the Brexit Vote and Individual Predictors of Prejudice: Collective Narcissism, Right Wing Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation

Science.gov (United States)

Golec de Zavala, Agnieszka; Guerra, Rita; Simão, Cláudia

2017-01-01

The Leave campaign in the U.K., which advocated exiting the European Union, emphasized anxiety over immigration and the need to take control of the U.K.'s borders. Citizens who expressed concerns about immigration to the U.K. were more likely to vote to leave. Two correlational studies examined the previously unexplored question of whether the Brexit vote and support for the outcome of the E.U. referendum were linked to individual predictors of prejudice toward foreigners: British collective narcissism (a belief in national greatness), right wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation. The results converged to indicate that all three variables were independently related to the perceived threat of immigrants and, via this variable, to the Brexit vote and a support for the outcome of the E.U. referendum. These variables explained the variance in the perceived threat of immigrants and support for the Brexit vote over and above other previously examined predictors such as age, education, or ethnicity, as well as, national identification and national attachment. PMID:29230185

The Relationship between the Brexit Vote and Individual Predictors of Prejudice: Collective Narcissism, Right Wing Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Agnieszka Golec de Zavala

2017-11-01

Full Text Available The Leave campaign in the U.K., which advocated exiting the European Union, emphasized anxiety over immigration and the need to take control of the U.K.'s borders. Citizens who expressed concerns about immigration to the U.K. were more likely to vote to leave. Two correlational studies examined the previously unexplored question of whether the Brexit vote and support for the outcome of the E.U. referendum were linked to individual predictors of prejudice toward foreigners: British collective narcissism (a belief in national greatness, right wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation. The results converged to indicate that all three variables were independently related to the perceived threat of immigrants and, via this variable, to the Brexit vote and a support for the outcome of the E.U. referendum. These variables explained the variance in the perceived threat of immigrants and support for the Brexit vote over and above other previously examined predictors such as age, education, or ethnicity, as well as, national identification and national attachment.

Digital herders and phase transition in a voting model

Science.gov (United States)

Hisakado, M.; Mori, S.

2011-07-01

In this paper, we discuss a voting model with two candidates, C1 and C2. We set two types of voters—herders and independents. The voting of independent voters is based on their fundamental values; on the other hand, the voting of herders is based on the number of votes. Herders always select the majority of the previous r votes, which are visible to them. We call them digital herders. We can accurately calculate the distribution of votes for special cases. When r >= 3, we find that a phase transition occurs at the upper limit of t, where t is the discrete time (or number of votes). As the fraction of herders increases, the model features a phase transition beyond which a state where most voters make the correct choice coexists with one where most of them are wrong. On the other hand, when r independent voters. Finally, we recognize the behavior of human beings by conducting simple experiments.

Quantum anonymous voting with anonymity check

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Horoshko, Dmitri; Kilin, Sergei

2011-01-01

We propose a new protocol for quantum anonymous voting having serious advantages over the existing protocols: it protects both the voters from a curious tallyman and all the participants from a dishonest voter in unconditional way. The central idea of the protocol is that the ballots are given back to the voters after the voting process, which gives a possibility for two voters to check the anonymity of the vote counting process by preparing a special entangled state of two ballots. Any attempt of cheating from the side of the tallyman results in destroying the entanglement, which can be detected by the voters.

On Some Incompatible Properties of Voting Schemes

OpenAIRE

Chevallier-Mames , Benoît; Fouque , Pierre-Alain; Pointcheval , David; Stern , Julien; Traoré , Jacques

2010-01-01

In this paper, we study the problem of simultaneously achieving several security properties, for voting schemes, without non-standard assumptions. More specifically, we focus on the universal veriability of the computation of the tally, on the unconditional privacy/anonymity of the votes, and on the receipt-freeness properties, for the most classical election processes. Under usual assumptions and efficiency requirements, we show that a voting system that wants to publish the final list of th...

Verifiability of electronic voting: between confidence and trust

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pieters, Wolter; Gutwirth, Serge; Poullet, Yves; De Hert, Paul

2010-01-01

When computing scientists speak about electronic voting, it is often in terms of trust. But there are two contradictory statements. First, they argue that it should not be necessary to trust e-voting systems, which would be the case if they are provably secure. Second, for an e-voting system to be

Classroom Voting Questions to Stimulate Discussions in Precalculus

Science.gov (United States)

Cline, Kelly; Zullo, Holly; Huckaby, David A.; Storm, Christopher; Stewart, Ann

2018-01-01

Classroom voting can be an effective way to stimulate student discussions. In this pedagogy, the instructor poses a multiple-choice question to the class, and then allows a few minutes for consideration and small-group discussion before students vote, either with clickers, cell phones, or a non-electronic method. After the vote the instructor…

Voting Intention and Choices: Are Voters Always Rational and Deliberative?

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, I-Ching; Chen, Eva E; Tsai, Chia-Hung; Yen, Nai-Shing; Chen, Arbee L P; Lin, Wei-Chieh

2016-01-01

Human rationality--the ability to behave in order to maximize the achievement of their presumed goals (i.e., their optimal choices)--is the foundation for democracy. Research evidence has suggested that voters may not make decisions after exhaustively processing relevant information; instead, our decision-making capacity may be restricted by our own biases and the environment. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which humans in a democratic society can be rational when making decisions in a serious, complex situation-voting in a local political election. We believe examining human rationality in a political election is important, because a well-functioning democracy rests largely upon the rational choices of individual voters. Previous research has shown that explicit political attitudes predict voting intention and choices (i.e., actual votes) in democratic societies, indicating that people are able to reason comprehensively when making voting decisions. Other work, though, has demonstrated that the attitudes of which we may not be aware, such as our implicit (e.g., subconscious) preferences, can predict voting choices, which may question the well-functioning democracy. In this study, we systematically examined predictors on voting intention and choices in the 2014 mayoral election in Taipei, Taiwan. Results indicate that explicit political party preferences had the largest impact on voting intention and choices. Moreover, implicit political party preferences interacted with explicit political party preferences in accounting for voting intention, and in turn predicted voting choices. Ethnic identity and perceived voting intention of significant others were found to predict voting choices, but not voting intention. In sum, to the comfort of democracy, voters appeared to engage mainly explicit, controlled processes in making their decisions; but findings on ethnic identity and perceived voting intention of significant others may suggest otherwise.

Voting Intention and Choices: Are Voters Always Rational and Deliberative?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

I-Ching Lee

Full Text Available Human rationality--the ability to behave in order to maximize the achievement of their presumed goals (i.e., their optimal choices--is the foundation for democracy. Research evidence has suggested that voters may not make decisions after exhaustively processing relevant information; instead, our decision-making capacity may be restricted by our own biases and the environment. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which humans in a democratic society can be rational when making decisions in a serious, complex situation-voting in a local political election. We believe examining human rationality in a political election is important, because a well-functioning democracy rests largely upon the rational choices of individual voters. Previous research has shown that explicit political attitudes predict voting intention and choices (i.e., actual votes in democratic societies, indicating that people are able to reason comprehensively when making voting decisions. Other work, though, has demonstrated that the attitudes of which we may not be aware, such as our implicit (e.g., subconscious preferences, can predict voting choices, which may question the well-functioning democracy. In this study, we systematically examined predictors on voting intention and choices in the 2014 mayoral election in Taipei, Taiwan. Results indicate that explicit political party preferences had the largest impact on voting intention and choices. Moreover, implicit political party preferences interacted with explicit political party preferences in accounting for voting intention, and in turn predicted voting choices. Ethnic identity and perceived voting intention of significant others were found to predict voting choices, but not voting intention. In sum, to the comfort of democracy, voters appeared to engage mainly explicit, controlled processes in making their decisions; but findings on ethnic identity and perceived voting intention of significant others may suggest

Bandwagon voting or false-consensus effect in voting experiments? First results and methodological limits

OpenAIRE

Bischoff, Ivo; Egbert, Henrik

2008-01-01

In an experiment designed to test for expressive voting, Tyran (JPubEc 2004) found a strong positive correlation between the participants' approval to a proposal to donate money for charity and their expected approval rate for fellow voters. This phenomenon can be due to a bandwagon effect or a false consensus effect. Both effects have been reported for voting decisions in the social science literature. Redoing Tyran's experiment and adding new treatments, we provide evidence for a false cons...

Digital herders and phase transition in a voting model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hisakado, M [Standard and Poor' s, Marunouchi 1-6-5, Chiyoda ku, Tokyo 100-0005 (Japan); Mori, S, E-mail: masato_hisakado@standardandpoors.com, E-mail: mori@sci.kitasato-u.ac.jp [Department of Physics, School of Science, Kitasato University, Kitasato 1-15-1, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 228-8555 (Japan)

2011-07-08

In this paper, we discuss a voting model with two candidates, C{sub 1} and C{sub 2}. We set two types of voters-herders and independents. The voting of independent voters is based on their fundamental values; on the other hand, the voting of herders is based on the number of votes. Herders always select the majority of the previous r votes, which are visible to them. We call them digital herders. We can accurately calculate the distribution of votes for special cases. When r {>=} 3, we find that a phase transition occurs at the upper limit of t, where t is the discrete time (or number of votes). As the fraction of herders increases, the model features a phase transition beyond which a state where most voters make the correct choice coexists with one where most of them are wrong. On the other hand, when r < 3, there is no phase transition. In this case, the herders' performance is the same as that of the independent voters. Finally, we recognize the behavior of human beings by conducting simple experiments.

Digital herders and phase transition in a voting model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hisakado, M; Mori, S

2011-01-01

In this paper, we discuss a voting model with two candidates, C 1 and C 2 . We set two types of voters-herders and independents. The voting of independent voters is based on their fundamental values; on the other hand, the voting of herders is based on the number of votes. Herders always select the majority of the previous r votes, which are visible to them. We call them digital herders. We can accurately calculate the distribution of votes for special cases. When r ≥ 3, we find that a phase transition occurs at the upper limit of t, where t is the discrete time (or number of votes). As the fraction of herders increases, the model features a phase transition beyond which a state where most voters make the correct choice coexists with one where most of them are wrong. On the other hand, when r < 3, there is no phase transition. In this case, the herders' performance is the same as that of the independent voters. Finally, we recognize the behavior of human beings by conducting simple experiments.

25 CFR 217.6 - Method of casting votes.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 25 Indians 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Method of casting votes. 217.6 Section 217.6 Indians.... § 217.6 Method of casting votes. Within 30 days after an issue and any analysis provided for in §§ 217.4... superintendent in writing of the number of votes cast for and against the proposed or alternative solutions. If...

Towards quantum-based privacy and voting

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hillery, Mark; Ziman, Mario; Buzek, Vladimir; Bielikova, Martina

2006-01-01

The privacy of communicating participants is often of paramount importance, but in some situations it is an essential condition. A typical example is a fair (secret) voting. We analyze in detail communication privacy based on quantum resources, and we propose new quantum protocols. Possible generalizations that would lead to voting schemes are discussed

Canada Votes: How We Elect Our Government. Second Revised Edition.

Science.gov (United States)

Granfield, Linda

This information book provides a student text on voting procedures in Canada. The short sections provide easy reading on the federal electoral process in Canada. Students read about who can vote, how and when women and minorities won voting rights, the different parties, the voting process --both present and past, and election day happenings.…

Digital Voting Systems and Communication in Classroom Lectures

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mathiasen, Helle

2015-01-01

Studies on the use of digital voting systems in large group teaching situations have often focused on the ”non-anonymity” and control and testing functions that the technology provides. There has also been some interest in how students might use their votes tactically to gain “credits”. By focusing...... on an empirical study of students’ experiences with digital voting systems in lectures at two Danish universities, this study considers the premises and the contexts surrounding this technology. It will also aim to show that for both instructors and students, digital voting systems are a much broader resource...... than simply a device for facilitating ”non-anonymity”, test, control and allocation of credits. The case studies showed, for instance, that digital voting systems can be conducive to a more open approach in which the systems are used as communication tools and teaching resources in situations where...

Analysis of the Voting Method used in the European Central Bank

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Honorata Sosnowska

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Game theoreticians usually deal with standard voting methods such as plurality voting or approval voting. In reality however, some complicated non-standard voting methods are used. In this paper the voting method and rotation scheme have been presented used by the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB, as it enlarges to accommodate new members of the economic and monetary union. We present game theoretical approaches for analyzing this method and different methods of computing the Shapley value for games connected with voting under such rotation schemes. (original abstract

Electronic Universal Vote

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cristian USCATU

2008-01-01

Full Text Available In the days of informational society everything is going online. Most aspects of our lives have online components. Since democracy is a big issue, it could not escape this trend. Governments themselves are moving to the online environment for the purpose of improving their internal efficiency and their availability to the citizens, businesses and other parties interested. Since governments are the result of elections, elections have also been touched by the electronic fever. New electronic voting solutions arise and each one brings new debates with many arguments in their favor and against them. Accessibility and ease of use leads the arguments in favor of electronic voting over the internet, while fear of fraud is the main reason people are avoiding electronics and clinging on classic paper ballots.

Eos a Universal Verifiable and Coercion Resistant Voting Protocol

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Patachi, Stefan; Schürmann, Carsten

2017-01-01

Authority. Eos uses two mixing phases with the goal to break the connection between the voter and vote, not to preserve vote privacy (which is given already) but to guarantee coercion resistance by making it (nearly) impossible for a coercer to follow their vote through the bulletin board. Eos...

Two kinds of Phase transitions in a Voting model

OpenAIRE

Hisakado, Masato; Mori, Shintaro

2012-01-01

In this paper, we discuss a voting model with two candidates, C_0 and C_1. We consider two types of voters--herders and independents. The voting of independents is based on their fundamental values; on the other hand, the voting of herders is based on the number of previous votes. We can identify two kinds of phase transitions. One is an information cascade transition similar to a phase transition seen in Ising model. The other is a transition of super and normal diffusions. These phase trans...

Preserving anonymity in e-voting system using voter non-repudiation oriented scheme

Science.gov (United States)

Hamid, Isredza Rahmi A.; Radzi, Siti Nafishah Md; Rahman, Nurul Hidayah Ab; Wen, Chuah Chai; Abdullah, Nurul Azma

2017-10-01

The voting system has been developed from traditional paper ballot to electronic voting (e-voting). The e-voting system has high potential to be widely used in election event. However, the e-voting system still does not meet the most important security properties which are voter's authenticity and non-repudiation. This is because voters can simply vote again by entering other people's identification number. In this project, an electronic voting using voter non-repudiation oriented scheme will be developed. This system contains ten modules which are log in, vote session, voter, candidate, open session, voting results, user account, initial score, logs and reset vote count. In order to ensure there would be no non-repudiation issue, a voter non-repudiation oriented scheme concept will be adapted and implemented in the system. This system will be built using Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 which only can be accessed using personal computers at the voting center. This project will be beneficial for future use in order to overcome non-repudiation issue.

Atlantic Sharpnose and Blacknose Shark Congressional Supplemental Sampling

Data.gov (United States)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — Life history data were collected from Atlantic sharpnose and blacknose sharks during the Congressional Supplemental Program during 2011. Data collected include...

Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, Fiscal Year 2007

Science.gov (United States)

2008-02-01

is a non- voting member of the SERDP Council and a voting member of the EWG. Dr. Jeffrey Marqusee, the Environmental Security Technology... Tensor Gradiometer Receiver (MM- 1534), G&G Sciences SERDP 26 • Handheld Frequency Domain Vector EMI Sensing for UXO Discrimination (MM-1537...Sep-07 ● TOTALS $12,446 $6,409 $208 (1) Congressional Earmark. (2) Project update to Board; no vote on funding required. Figure III-2

The dissent voting behaviour of central bankers: what do we really know?

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Horváth, R.; Rusnák, M.; Šmídková, K.; Zápal, Jan

2014-01-01

Roč. 46, č. 4 (2014), s. 450-461 ISSN 0003-6846 Grant - others:UK(CZ) UNCE 204005/2012 Institutional support: PRVOUK-P23 Keywords : monetary policy * voting record * dissent Subject RIV: AH - Economics Impact factor: 0.613, year: 2014

Ailing voters advance attractive congressional candidates.

Science.gov (United States)

Zebrowitz, Leslie A; Franklin, Robert G; Palumbo, Rocco

2015-01-06

Among many benefits of facial attractiveness, there is evidence that more attractive politicians are more likely to be elected. Recent research found this effect to be most pronounced in congressional districts with high disease threat-a result attributed to an adaptive disease avoidance mechanism, whereby the association of low attractiveness with poor health is particularly worrisome to voters who feel vulnerable to disease. We provided a more direct test of this explanation by examining the effects of individuals' own health and age. Supporting a disease avoidance mechanism, less healthy participants showed a stronger preference for more attractive contenders in U.S. Senate races than their healthier peers, and this effect was stronger for older participants, who were generally less healthy than younger participants. Stronger effects of health for older participants partly reflected the absence of positive bias toward attractive candidates among the healthiest, suggesting that healthy older adults may be unconcerned about disease threat or sufficiently wise to ignore attractiveness.

Alternative majority-voting methods for real-time computing systems

Science.gov (United States)

Shin, Kang G.; Dolter, James W.

1989-01-01

Two techniques that provide a compromise between the high time overhead in maintaining synchronous voting and the difficulty of combining results in asynchronous voting are proposed. These techniques are specifically suited for real-time applications with a single-source/single-sink structure that need instantaneous error masking. They provide a compromise between a tightly synchronized system in which the synchronization overhead can be quite high, and an asynchronous system which lacks suitable algorithms for combining the output data. Both quorum-majority voting (QMV) and compare-majority voting (CMV) are most applicable to distributed real-time systems with single-source/single-sink tasks. All real-time systems eventually have to resolve their outputs into a single action at some stage. The development of the advanced information processing system (AIPS) and other similar systems serve to emphasize the importance of these techniques. Time bounds suggest that it is possible to reduce the overhead for quorum-majority voting to below that for synchronous voting. All the bounds assume that the computation phase is nonpreemptive and that there is no multitasking.

The Congressional response to oil spills

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Grumbles, B.H.

1990-01-01

March 24, 1989, ushered in a new era for oil spill reform legislation. Once the Exxon Valdez ran aground Bligh Reef and gusher over 11 million gallons of crude oil into pristine waters of Prince William Sound, Alaska, Congressional debate on comprehensive federal legislation would never be the same. Stalemate and frustration marked much of the B.V. (Before Valdez) period. Oil spill bills typically died quiet deaths at the end of each Congress. A flurry of legislation and debate has marked the new A.V. (After Valdez) era, however. Spurred by public outrage, members championed far-reaching proposals. For the first time in almost twenty years, both houses passed similar comprehensive reform bills. Some bills even reached the President's desk to become public law. This paper describes previous Congressional responses as well as the 101st Congress's ongoing efforts and highlights specific provisions, issues and recurring themes in proposed comprehensive legislation (S.686 and H.R. 1465). The paper concludes with general observations on the legislation's prospects and impacts

E-voting in Europe: divergent democratic practice

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Svensson, Jorgen S.; Leenes, R.E.

2003-01-01

Corresponding author Recent technological developments have opened up the possibility of electronic voting and this clearly provides some opportunities and threats. On the one hand, the new technology may help to make voting more cost effective and more convenient for the voter and may even increase

Internet voting: a conceptual challenge to democracy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Trauth, E.M.; Pieters, Wolter; Howcroft, D.; Butler, T.; Fitzgerald, B.; DeGross, J.I.

2006-01-01

In this paper, we discuss the implications for social inclusion of the advent of Internet voting. Although the issue of social exclusion or social inclusion with regard to technological developments in the voting process is often approached as a matter of either security or turnout, we will take a

Shareholders proposals, vote outcome, and board composition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amani Khaled Bouresli

2008-07-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the variables that affect vote outcome in shareholder proposals. We found that sponsor identity, proposal type, and board composition play a significant role in determining vote outcome. Furthermore, we found that the interaction between the prior performance with board composition is significant and has a negative coefficient. We conducted nonparametric tests to investigate changes in board’s major characteristics before and after targeting. The results indicate that some changes in management and boards occur after shareholder proposals. These changes, however, are unrelated to variables that impact vote outcome. We conclude that shareholders proposals are not effective at changing company behavior or corporate governance

Dimension, Egalitarianism and Decisiveness of European Voting Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Francesc Carreras

2016-01-01

Full Text Available An analysis of three major aspects has been carried out that may apply to any of the successive voting systems used for the European Union Council of Ministers, from the first one established in the Treaty of Rome in 1958 to the current one established in Lisbon. We mainly consider the voting systems designed for the enlarged European Union adopted in the Athens summit, held in April 2003 but this analysis can be applied to any other system. First, it is shown that the dimension of these voting systems does not, in general, reduce. Next, the egalitarian effects of superposing two or three weighted majority games (often by introducing additional consensus are considered. Finally, the decisiveness of these voting systems is evaluated and compared. (original abstract

Is the U.S. Fed voting record informative about future monetary policy?

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Horváth, R.; Šmídková, K.; Zápal, Jan

2012-01-01

Roč. 62, č. 6 (2012), s. 478-484 ISSN 0015-1920 Institutional support: PRVOUK-P23 Keywords : monetary policy * voting record * transparency Subject RIV: AH - Economics Impact factor: 0.340, year: 2012 http://journal.fsv.cuni.cz/storage/1259_478-484_---horvath.pdf

INCORPORATING MCDS AND VOTING INTO SWOT – BASIC IDEA AND EXPERIENCES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jyrki Kangas

2016-05-01

Full Text Available The idea in using Multiple Criteria Decision Support (MCDS and voting methods within a SWOT framework is to evaluate systematically the SWOT factors, and to assess them with respect to their priorities. The MCDS method applied initially, and most often, with SWOT has been the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP, and the hybrid AHP-SWOT approach has been called the A’WOT. Any MCDS method can, however, be applied; the choice of the method depending on the strategy process in question. In this article, experiences of using the A’WOT method with AHP, SMART and SMAA-O techniques is summarized. In addition, an illustrative example of making use of social choice theory within SWOT framework is presented. The hybrid MCDS-SWOT approach has gained growing popularity, and it has been applied in different fields world-widely. It may provide not only a solid decision support but also an effective framework for learning in strategic decision support, as well as for communication in strategy processes with multiple stakeholders. The Voting-SWOT approach (VotSWOT fits especially well with participatory strategy processes, as it reflects decision makers’ and stakeholders’ natural ways of communication.

Did Your Mailed Ballot Count: The Unrecognized Unreliability of Voting By Mail

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alec Yasinsac

2012-10-01

Full Text Available Voting By Mail (VBM was developed to support absentee voters. It was originally intended to handle canonical absentee voters who now fall under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Voting Act (UOCAVA and those with legally acceptable reasons for being unable to appear at the polls on Election Day. Its use slowly expanded to more casual justifications, such as those with planned Election Day travel. More recently, there has been a trend of further expansion to on-demand VBM in many states. As a result, the percentage of VBM ballots has skyrocketed, with little research regarding its impacts on security, privacy, reliability, and accuracy on U. S. elections. In virtually every close election, the outcome must await tabulation of VBM ballots. Yet, VBM may be the least reliable voting approach in wide spread use today. Vote By Mail fraud is recognized by some as possibly the single greatest security vulnerability in U. S. elections. The lack of in-person, at-the-polls accountability makes absentee ballots the tool of choice for those inclined to commit fraud," the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded in 1998, after a mayoral election in Miami was thrown out when officials learned that "vote brokers" had signed hundreds of phony absentee ballots.1 Conversely, others recognize theoretical weaknesses in VBM, but generally dismiss its practical impact [1, 2]. Others continue to promote VBM expansion [3, 4]. In this paper, we identify inherent, widespread vulnerability in VBM systems and illustrate their practical impact with numerous examples. We show specifically why VBM systems are not auditable and demonstrate how their unreliability can negatively impact real elections.

Security analysis of electronic voting and online banking systems

OpenAIRE

Tjøstheim, Thomas

2007-01-01

The main focus of this dissertation is on security analysis of electronic voting and online banking systems. Six papers form the basis of the thesis and include the following topics: a model for analysis of voting systems, a case study where we apply the proposed model, a new scheme for remote electronic voting, and three case studies of commercial online banking solutions in Norway.

User research of a voting machine: Preliminary findings and experiences

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Jong, Menno D.T.; van Hoof, Joris Jasper; Gosselt, Jordi Franciscus

2007-01-01

This paper describes a usability study of the Nedap voting machine in the Netherlands. On the day of the national elections, 566 voters participated in our study immediately after having cast their real vote. The research focused on the correspondence between voter intents and voting results,

Civitas: Toward a Secure Voting System

Science.gov (United States)

2008-05-01

voting, we believe that remote vot- ing is the right problem to solve. One of our goals was therefore to strike a reasonable compromise between enabling...versions of this work. References [1] Ben Adida . Advances in Cryptographic Voting Systems. PhD thesis, MIT, Aug. 2006. [2] Roberto Araújo, Sébastien...3] Association for Computing Machinery. SIG elections. http://www.acm.org/sigs/elections, 2007. [4] Jonathan Bannet, David W. Price , Algis Rudys

The wonders of CERN need your vote!

CERN Multimedia

2006-01-01

Two of CERN's creations were chosen by the US news group CNN as their 'seven wonders of the modern world'. The LHC and the World Wide Web are among the leading entries you can vote for to find the greatest wonder of all. Cast your vote at: http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2006/modern.wonders/

Tensor voting for image correction by global and local intensity alignment.

Science.gov (United States)

Jia, Jiaya; Tang, Chi-Keung

2005-01-01

This paper presents a voting method to perform image correction by global and local intensity alignment. The key to our modeless approach is the estimation of global and local replacement functions by reducing the complex estimation problem to the robust 2D tensor voting in the corresponding voting spaces. No complicated model for replacement function (curve) is assumed. Subject to the monotonic constraint only, we vote for an optimal replacement function by propagating the curve smoothness constraint using a dense tensor field. Our method effectively infers missing curve segments and rejects image outliers. Applications using our tensor voting approach are proposed and described. The first application consists of image mosaicking of static scenes, where the voted replacement functions are used in our iterative registration algorithm for computing the best warping matrix. In the presence of occlusion, our replacement function can be employed to construct a visually acceptable mosaic by detecting occlusion which has large and piecewise constant color. Furthermore, by the simultaneous consideration of color matches and spatial constraints in the voting space, we perform image intensity compensation and high contrast image correction using our voting framework, when only two defective input images are given.

Phase transition and information cascade in a voting model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hisakado, M [Standard and Poor' s, Marunouchi 1-6-5, Chiyoda ku, Tokyo 100-0005 (Japan); Mori, S, E-mail: masato_hisakado@standardandpoors.co, E-mail: mori@sci.kitasato-u.ac.j [Department of Physics, School of Science, Kitasato University, Kitasato 1-15-1, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 228-8555 (Japan)

2010-08-06

In this paper, we introduce a voting model that is similar to a Keynesian beauty contest and analyse it from a mathematical point of view. There are two types of voters-copycat and independent-and two candidates. Our voting model is a binomial distribution (independent voters) doped in a beta binomial distribution (copycat voters). We find that the phase transition in this system is at the upper limit of t, where t is the time (or the number of the votes). Our model contains three phases. If copycats constitute a majority or even half of the total voters, the voting rate converges more slowly than it would in a binomial distribution. If independents constitute the majority of voters, the voting rate converges at the same rate as it would in a binomial distribution. We also study why it is difficult to estimate the conclusion of a Keynesian beauty contest when there is an information cascade.

Phase transition and information cascade in a voting model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hisakado, M; Mori, S

2010-01-01

In this paper, we introduce a voting model that is similar to a Keynesian beauty contest and analyse it from a mathematical point of view. There are two types of voters-copycat and independent-and two candidates. Our voting model is a binomial distribution (independent voters) doped in a beta binomial distribution (copycat voters). We find that the phase transition in this system is at the upper limit of t, where t is the time (or the number of the votes). Our model contains three phases. If copycats constitute a majority or even half of the total voters, the voting rate converges more slowly than it would in a binomial distribution. If independents constitute the majority of voters, the voting rate converges at the same rate as it would in a binomial distribution. We also study why it is difficult to estimate the conclusion of a Keynesian beauty contest when there is an information cascade.

Phase transition and information cascade in a voting model

Science.gov (United States)

Hisakado, M.; Mori, S.

2010-08-01

In this paper, we introduce a voting model that is similar to a Keynesian beauty contest and analyse it from a mathematical point of view. There are two types of voters—copycat and independent—and two candidates. Our voting model is a binomial distribution (independent voters) doped in a beta binomial distribution (copycat voters). We find that the phase transition in this system is at the upper limit of t, where t is the time (or the number of the votes). Our model contains three phases. If copycats constitute a majority or even half of the total voters, the voting rate converges more slowly than it would in a binomial distribution. If independents constitute the majority of voters, the voting rate converges at the same rate as it would in a binomial distribution. We also study why it is difficult to estimate the conclusion of a Keynesian beauty contest when there is an information cascade.

Two kinds of phase transitions in a voting model

Science.gov (United States)

Hisakado, M.; Mori, S.

2012-08-01

In this paper, we discuss a voting model with two candidates, C0 and C1. We consider two types of voters—herders and independents. The voting of independents is based on their fundamental values, while the voting of herders is based on the number of previous votes. We can identify two kinds of phase transitions. One is an information cascade transition similar to a phase transition seen in the Ising model. The other is a transition of super and normal diffusions. These phase transitions coexist. We compared our results to the conclusions of experiments and identified the phase transitions in the upper limit of the time t by using the analysis of human behavior obtained from experiments.

Voting Experiences I

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jydebjerg, Camilla; Jakobsen, Tina Mou

From 2008 to 2010, an EU-project ''My opinion my vote – MOTE'' is implemented. The aim of the project is to increase the political participation among people with learning disabilities. A qualitative interview survey of three rounds among 20 persons with learning disabilities and professional...

39 CFR 6.6 - Quorum and voting.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 39 Postal Service 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Quorum and voting. 6.6 Section 6.6 Postal Service....6 Quorum and voting. As provided by 39 U.S.C. 205(c), the Board acts by resolution upon a majority... the compensation and benefits of the Postmaster General and Deputy Postmaster General, 39 U.S.C. 205(c...

Online Voting System Based on Image Steganography and Visual Cryptography

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Biju Issac

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This paper discusses the implementation of an online voting system based on image steganography and visual cryptography. The system was implemented in Java EE on a web-based interface, with MySQL database server and Glassfish application server as the backend. After considering the requirements of an online voting system, current technologies on electronic voting schemes in published literature were examined. Next, the cryptographic and steganography techniques best suited for the requirements of the voting system were chosen, and the software was implemented. We have incorporated in our system techniques like the password hashed based scheme, visual cryptography, F5 image steganography and threshold decryption cryptosystem. The analysis, design and implementation phase of the software development of the voting system is discussed in detail. We have also used a questionnaire survey and did the user acceptance testing of the system.

Voting based object boundary reconstruction

Science.gov (United States)

Tian, Qi; Zhang, Like; Ma, Jingsheng

2005-07-01

A voting-based object boundary reconstruction approach is proposed in this paper. Morphological technique was adopted in many applications for video object extraction to reconstruct the missing pixels. However, when the missing areas become large, the morphological processing cannot bring us good results. Recently, Tensor voting has attracted people"s attention, and it can be used for boundary estimation on curves or irregular trajectories. However, the complexity of saliency tensor creation limits its applications in real-time systems. An alternative approach based on tensor voting is introduced in this paper. Rather than creating saliency tensors, we use a "2-pass" method for orientation estimation. For the first pass, Sobel d*etector is applied on a coarse boundary image to get the gradient map. In the second pass, each pixel puts decreasing weights based on its gradient information, and the direction with maximum weights sum is selected as the correct orientation of the pixel. After the orientation map is obtained, pixels begin linking edges or intersections along their direction. The approach is applied to various video surveillance clips under different conditions, and the experimental results demonstrate significant improvement on the final extracted objects accuracy.

Do Implicit Attitudes Predict Actual Voting Behavior Particularly for Undecided Voters?

Science.gov (United States)

Friese, Malte; Smith, Colin Tucker; Plischke, Thomas; Bluemke, Matthias; Nosek, Brian A.

2012-01-01

The prediction of voting behavior of undecided voters poses a challenge to psychologists and pollsters. Recently, researchers argued that implicit attitudes would predict voting behavior particularly for undecided voters whereas explicit attitudes would predict voting behavior particularly for decided voters. We tested this assumption in two studies in two countries with distinct political systems in the context of real political elections. Results revealed that (a) explicit attitudes predicted voting behavior better than implicit attitudes for both decided and undecided voters, and (b) implicit attitudes predicted voting behavior better for decided than undecided voters. We propose that greater elaboration of attitudes produces stronger convergence between implicit and explicit attitudes resulting in better predictive validity of both, and less incremental validity of implicit over explicit attitudes for the prediction of voting behavior. However, greater incremental predictive validity of implicit over explicit attitudes may be associated with less elaboration. PMID:22952898

Tax Salience, Voting, and Deliberation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sausgruber, Rupert; Tyran, Jean-Robert

Tax incentives can be more or less salient, i.e. noticeable or cognitively easy to process. Our hypothesis is that taxes on consumers are more salient to consumers than equivalent taxes on sellers because consumers underestimate the extent of tax shifting in the market. We show that tax salience...... biases consumers' voting on tax regimes, and that experience is an effective de-biasing mechanism in the experimental laboratory. Pre-vote deliberation makes initially held opinions more extreme rather than correct and does not eliminate the bias in the typical committee. Yet, if voters can discuss...... their experience with the tax regimes they are less likely to be biased....

Acceptance of voting technology: between confidence and trust

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pieters, Wolter

2006-01-01

Social aspects of security of information systems are often discussed in terms of “actual security��? and “perceived security��?. This may lead to the hypothesis that e-voting is controversial because in paper voting, actual and perceived security coincide, whereas they do not in electronic systems.

Vote. Election Program.

Science.gov (United States)

Illinois State Board of Education, Springfield.

This election-education program is designed to help develop an informed electorate and to instill in future voters an appreciation of the importance of the right to vote. It provides a framework for discussions of the electoral process and gives students an opportunity to face the responsibilities and challenges associated with citizenship and…

Review of Congressional Issues. News from Capitol Hill.

Science.gov (United States)

Heinz, Ann Simeo

2002-01-01

Focuses on U.S. congressional issues in two categories: (1) enacted legislation, and (2) proposed legislation. Addresses topics such as the resolution related to Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security, Pledge of Allegiance, social security protection, elder justice, and women's rights. Includes learning activities. (CMK)

Vote Stuffing Control in IPTV-based Recommender Systems

Science.gov (United States)

Bhatt, Rajen

Vote stuffing is a general problem in the functioning of the content rating-based recommender systems. Currently IPTV viewers browse various contents based on the program ratings. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy clustering-based approach to remove the effects of vote stuffing and consider only the genuine ratings for the programs over multiple genres. The approach requires only one authentic rating, which is generally available from recommendation system administrators or program broadcasters. The entire process is automated using fuzzy c-means clustering. Computational experiments performed over one real-world program rating database shows that the proposed approach is very efficient for controlling vote stuffing.

Quantum voting and violation of Arrow's impossibility theorem

Science.gov (United States)

Bao, Ning; Yunger Halpern, Nicole

2017-06-01

We propose a quantum voting system in the spirit of quantum games such as the quantum prisoner's dilemma. Our scheme enables a constitution to violate a quantum analog of Arrow's impossibility theorem. Arrow's theorem is a claim proved deductively in economics: Every (classical) constitution endowed with three innocuous-seeming properties is a dictatorship. We construct quantum analogs of constitutions, of the properties, and of Arrow's theorem. A quantum version of majority rule, we show, violates this quantum Arrow conjecture. Our voting system allows for tactical-voting strategies reliant on entanglement, interference, and superpositions. This contribution to quantum game theory helps elucidate how quantum phenomena can be harnessed for strategic advantage.

Towards a Standard Architecture for Digital Voting Systems - Defining a Generalized Ballot Schema

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Cochran, Dermot Robert

2015-01-01

Many electoral jurisdictions have their own distinctive voting schemes. There is no clear consensus about the ideal voting scheme for fair elections. Various systems for electronic and online voting have been either proposed or developed, but these systems tend to be aimed at particular vote...... counting schemes e.g. plurality. This paper proposes a way to decouple the ballot casting process from the vote counting scheme, using a generalized ballot schema....

Gendering the vote for populist radical-right parties

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Spierings, N.; Zaslove, A.S.

2015-01-01

Why do more men than women vote for populist radical-right (PRR) parties? And do more men than women still vote for the PRR? Can attitudes regarding gender and gender equality explain these differences (if they exist)? These are the questions that Spierings and Zaslove explore in this article. They

Inference of segmented color and texture description by tensor voting.

Science.gov (United States)

Jia, Jiaya; Tang, Chi-Keung

2004-06-01

A robust synthesis method is proposed to automatically infer missing color and texture information from a damaged 2D image by (N)D tensor voting (N > 3). The same approach is generalized to range and 3D data in the presence of occlusion, missing data and noise. Our method translates texture information into an adaptive (N)D tensor, followed by a voting process that infers noniteratively the optimal color values in the (N)D texture space. A two-step method is proposed. First, we perform segmentation based on insufficient geometry, color, and texture information in the input, and extrapolate partitioning boundaries by either 2D or 3D tensor voting to generate a complete segmentation for the input. Missing colors are synthesized using (N)D tensor voting in each segment. Different feature scales in the input are automatically adapted by our tensor scale analysis. Results on a variety of difficult inputs demonstrate the effectiveness of our tensor voting approach.

Prediction of RNA-Binding Proteins by Voting Systems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

C. R. Peng

2011-01-01

Full Text Available It is important to identify which proteins can interact with RNA for the purpose of protein annotation, since interactions between RNA and proteins influence the structure of the ribosome and play important roles in gene expression. This paper tries to identify proteins that can interact with RNA using voting systems. Firstly through Weka, 34 learning algorithms are chosen for investigation. Then simple majority voting system (SMVS is used for the prediction of RNA-binding proteins, achieving average ACC (overall prediction accuracy value of 79.72% and MCC (Matthew’s correlation coefficient value of 59.77% for the independent testing dataset. Then mRMR (minimum redundancy maximum relevance strategy is used, which is transferred into algorithm selection. In addition, the MCC value of each classifier is assigned to be the weight of the classifier’s vote. As a result, best average MCC values are attained when 22 algorithms are selected and integrated through weighted votes, which are 64.70% for the independent testing dataset, and ACC value is 82.04% at this moment.

Implementation of Self-Bias Transistor on Voting Logic

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Harzawardi Hasim; Syirrazie Che Soh

2014-01-01

Study in the eld of digital integrated circuit (IC) already become common to the modern industrial. Day by day we have been introduced with new gadget that was developed based on transistor. This paper will study the implementation of self-bias transistor on voting logic. The self-bias transistor will connected both on pull-up network and pull-down network. On previous research, study on comparison of total number of transistors, time propagation delay, and frequency between NAND and NOR gate of voting logic. It's show, with the same number of transistor, NAND gate achieve high frequency and low time propagation delay compare to NOR gate. We extend this analysis by comparing the total number of transistor, time propagation delay, frequency and power dissipation between common NAND gate with self-bias NAND gate. Extensive LTSpice simulations were performed using IBM 90 nm CMOS(Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) process technology. The result show self-bias voting NAND gate consumes 54 % less power dissipation, 43% slow frequency and 43 % high time propagation delay compare to common voting NAND gate. (author)

So Close But So Far: Voting Propensity and Party Choice for Left-�Wing Parties

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bochsler, Daniel; Sciarini, Pascal

2010-01-01

While the bulk of the literature focuses on the vote for parties from different blocs, the purpose of our article is to study the vote for two parties that are ideologically very close to each other: The Social Democrats and the Greens in Switzerland. To that end, we develop a two-step model, where...... voters first make a selection of parties that are acceptable to them and then make their electoral choice out of this set of acceptable al- ternatives. We use voting propensities as a measure of the first, consideration step and we show that they strongly depend on the distance between voters and parties...... on the Left–Right scale. With regard to the second, choice stage of the electoral process we hypothesize about the factors that may account for the varying ability of the two par- ties to convert potential voters into real voters. Our empirical tests provide encourag- ing support for our hypotheses regarding...

Creating Discussions with Classroom Voting in Linear Algebra

Science.gov (United States)

Cline, Kelly; Zullo, Holly; Duncan, Jonathan; Stewart, Ann; Snipes, Marie

2013-01-01

We present a study of classroom voting in linear algebra, in which the instructors posed multiple-choice questions to the class and then allowed a few minutes for consideration and small-group discussion. After each student in the class voted on the correct answer using a classroom response system, a set of clickers, the instructor then guided a…

World Wide Web voted most wonderful wonder by web-wide world

CERN Multimedia

2007-01-01

The results are in, and the winner is...the World Wide Web! An online survey conducted by the CNN news group ranks the World Wide Web-invented at CERN--as the most wonderful of the seven modern wonders of the world. (See Bulletin No. 49/2006.) There is currently no speculation about whether they would have had the same results had they distributed the survey by post. The World Wide Web won with a whopping 50 per cent of the votes (3,665 votes). The runner up was CERN again, with 16 per cent of voters (1130 votes) casting the ballot in favour of the CERN particle accelerator. Stepping into place behind CERN and CERN is 'None of the Above' with 8 per cent of the votes (611 votes), followed by the development of Dubai (7%), the bionic arm (7%), China's Three Gorges Damn (5%), The Channel Tunnel (4%), and France's Millau viaduct (3%). Thanks to everyone from CERN who voted. You can view the results on http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2006/modern.wonders/

The design, purpose, and effects of voting advice applications

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rosema, Martin; Anderson, Joel; Walgrave, Stefaan

2014-01-01

In recent electoral politics, one of the most striking internet-related developments is the increasingly widespread use of Voting Advice Applications (VAAs). In this introduction to the symposium devoted to analysing the design, purpose, and effects of voting advice applications, we briefly discuss

Motion Detection in Ultrasound Image-Sequences Using Tensor Voting

Science.gov (United States)

Inba, Masafumi; Yanagida, Hirotaka; Tamura, Yasutaka

2008-05-01

Motion detection in ultrasound image sequences using tensor voting is described. We have been developing an ultrasound imaging system adopting a combination of coded excitation and synthetic aperture focusing techniques. In our method, frame rate of the system at distance of 150 mm reaches 5000 frame/s. Sparse array and short duration coded ultrasound signals are used for high-speed data acquisition. However, many artifacts appear in the reconstructed image sequences because of the incompleteness of the transmitted code. To reduce the artifacts, we have examined the application of tensor voting to the imaging method which adopts both coded excitation and synthetic aperture techniques. In this study, the basis of applying tensor voting and the motion detection method to ultrasound images is derived. It was confirmed that velocity detection and feature enhancement are possible using tensor voting in the time and space of simulated ultrasound three-dimensional image sequences.

29 CFR 1922.4 - Responsibilities of the Board; voting.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 29 Labor 7 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Responsibilities of the Board; voting. 1922.4 Section 1922.4 Labor Regulations Relating to Labor (Continued) OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION... WORKERS' COMPENSATION ACT § 1922.4 Responsibilities of the Board; voting. (a) Determinations and...

Voting pattern of mental patients in a community state hospital.

Science.gov (United States)

Klein, M M; Grossman, S A

1967-06-01

The voting pattern of mental patients in a community-based state hospital was studied. Patients were polled on the New York City mayoralty race. A comparison to the vote of the general population revealed that the hospital sample vote resembled most closely the election results of the hospital district. The results highlight the advantage of community-centered mental health facilities, which undertake the treatment and rehabilitation of mental patients under conditions that maintain ties with family and community.

Congressional Authority to Limit Military Operations

Science.gov (United States)

2013-02-19

corporals , thirty-two drums and fifes, and seven hundred and twenty privates....”33 Congress authorized the President to appoint certain other officers...U.S. Armed Forces to involvements abroad absent any congressional participation other than consultation and after-the-fact financing . In 1994, for...F.2d 1146, 1156-1157 (2nd Cir. 1973). 126 Fleming v. Mohawk Wrecking & Lumber Co., 331 U.S. 111, 116 (1947). See also Berk v. Laird 317 F. Supp. 715

Internet voting: a monstrous alliance between democracy and technology?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pieters, Wolter; Sudweeks, F.; Hrachovec, H.; Ess, C.

2006-01-01

In this paper, we aim at finding a cultural explanation of the controversy around the introduction of electronic voting, especially Internet voting. In her PhD thesis, Martijntje Smits (2002b) argues that controversies surrounding the introduction of new technologies can often be explained in terms

The theory of voting and equilibria in noncooperative games

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sloth, Birgitte

1993-01-01

We consider the problem of modeling voting situations, seeking models and equilibrium concepts which are easier to incorporate in large sequential decision games than the models and solution concepts used by the "theory of voting." It is demonstrated that one can avoid using very refined solution...

Linear Logical Voting Protocols

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

DeYoung, Henry; Schürmann, Carsten

2012-01-01

Current approaches to electronic implementations of voting protocols involve translating legal text to source code of an imperative programming language. Because the gap between legal text and source code is very large, it is difficult to trust that the program meets its legal specification. In r...

Statistical analysis of Nomao customer votes for spots of France

Science.gov (United States)

Pálovics, Róbert; Daróczy, Bálint; Benczúr, András; Pap, Julia; Ermann, Leonardo; Phan, Samuel; Chepelianskii, Alexei D.; Shepelyansky, Dima L.

2015-08-01

We investigate the statistical properties of votes of customers for spots of France collected by the startup company Nomao. The frequencies of votes per spot and per customer are characterized by a power law distribution which remains stable on a time scale of a decade when the number of votes is varied by almost two orders of magnitude. Using the computer science methods we explore the spectrum and the eigenvalues of a matrix containing user ratings to geolocalized items. Eigenvalues nicely map to large towns and regions but show certain level of instability as we modify the interpretation of the underlying matrix. We evaluate imputation strategies that provide improved prediction performance by reaching geographically smooth eigenvectors. We point on possible links between distribution of votes and the phenomenon of self-organized criticality.

Understanding Public Policy Making through the Work of Committees: Utilizing a Student-Led Congressional Hearing Simulation

Science.gov (United States)

Rinfret, Sara R.; Pautz, Michelle C.

2015-01-01

In an effort to help students better understand the complexity of making environmental policy and the role of policy actors in this process, we developed a mock congressional hearing simulation. In this congressional hearing, students in two environmental policy courses take on the roles of members of Congress and various interest groups to…

Comparing Youth Opinions toward Compulsory Voting across Five Countries

Science.gov (United States)

Pesek, Jessamay T.

2014-01-01

This study uses a comparative case study design to examine youth (ages 13-20) opinions toward compulsory voting across five democratic countries: Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and the United States. Youth responses toward compulsory voting demonstrate how youth come to learn about citizen rights and responsibilities with varied understandings…

Expressive voting and political ideology in a laboratory democracy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wiese, Rasmus; Jong-A-Pin, Richard

2017-01-01

We test the theory of expressive voting in relation to political ideology in a laboratory experiment. After deriving our hypotheses from a decision theoretic model, we examine voting decisions in an experiment in which we use the size of the electorate as the treatment variable. Using a Heckman

Affinity communities in United Nations voting: Implications for democracy, cooperation, and conflict

Science.gov (United States)

Pauls, Scott D.; Cranmer, Skyler J.

2017-10-01

A network oriented examination of the co-voting network of the United Nations (UN) provides powerful insights into the international alignment of states, as well as normatively important processes such as democracy, defensive cooperation, and armed conflict. Here, we investigate the UN co-voting network using the tools of community detection and inductively identify "affinity communities" in which states articulate similar policy preferences through their voting patterns. Analysis of these communities reveals that there is more information contained in UN voting and co-voting patterns than has previously been thought. Affinity communities have complex relationships with some of the most normatively important international outcomes: they reflect transitions to democracy, have a feedback loop with the formation of defensive alliances, and actively help states avoid armed conflict.

Vote choice and legacies of violence: evidence from the 2014 Colombian presidential elections

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michael Weintraub

2015-05-01

Full Text Available Elections are regularly held in countries facing ongoing civil conflicts, including in India, Iraq, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Ukraine. Citizens frequently go to the polls having endured years of violence between armed groups and governments. A growing literature questions how violence conditions voters’ support for incumbents versus challengers, and for hawks versus doves. We analyze this relationship in the context of the 2014 presidential election in Colombia, an election defined by candidates’ positions on negotiations with the country’s largest insurgent group, the FARC. Our results show an inverted-U relationship between past insurgent violence and vote share for President Juan Manuel Santos, the pro-peace candidate: he performed better in communities with moderate levels of insurgent violence and poorly in communities with both very high and very low violence. We also find that areas where the FARC originally mounted attacks 50 years ago more strongly supported Santos. The article concludes by comparing these results with past studies of violence and vote choice in Israel, Turkey, and Spain.

EU member states' voting for authorizing genetically engineered crops

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Smart, Richard D.; Blum, Matthias; Wesseler, Justus

2015-01-01

Several authors suggest a gridlock of the European Union's (EU's) approval process for genetically engineered (GE) crops. We analyse the voting behaviour of EU Member States (MSs) for voting results from 2003 to 2015 on the approval of GE crops to test for a gridlock; no reliable data are

The Relationship between the Brexit Vote and Individual Predictors of Prejudice: Collective Narcissism, Right Wing Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation

OpenAIRE

Golec de Zavala, Agnieszka; Guerra, Rita; Simão, Cláudia

2017-01-01

The Leave campaign in the U.K., which advocated exiting the European Union, emphasized anxiety over immigration and the need to take control of the U.K.'s borders. Citizens who expressed concerns about immigration to the U.K. were more likely to vote to leave. Two correlational studies examined the previously unexplored question of whether the Brexit vote and support for the outcome of the E.U. referendum were linked to individual predictors of prejudice toward foreigners: British collective ...

Push button parliament–why India needs a non-partisan, recorded vote system

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shalaka Patil

2011-12-01

Full Text Available Decisions of national importance are made by Parliamentary voting. Yet Indian Members of Parliament (MPs vote with a remarkable lack of freedom and accountability. The introduction of the Tenth Schedule in the Constitution has crippled free expression, since it provides that MPs voting against ‘any direction’ of their Party are liable to disqualification from the legislature In addition, except for Constitutional amendments, Indian Parliamentary Procedure Rules do not require votes of MPs to be recorded unless the Speaker’s decision is contested in the House. The result is that voting in the House has become mechanical, controlled by Party politics and devoid of responsibility. This paper comments on a general theory of democratic accountability through the lens of Parliamentary voting. It suggests that the voting system adopted in the Parliament is an effective indicator to measure the level of accountability of its Members. In the context of India, this paper argues that the level of accountability will increase to a desirable extent only when there is adoption of a recorded system for every important House vote. Upon examination of India’s record thus far (through the sample of the 14th Lok Sabha it becomes evident that the level of divisions (recorded votes is substantially lower than other countries. This leads the paper to probe, as to why that might be the case. Part II of the paper answers that question by examining the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution. The paper scrutinizes the disproportionate influence of the Party in decision making in the Parliament. Apart from dealing with the inherent problem of the Tenth Schedule, this paper suggests two procedural changes to make parliamentary expression more meaningful. Firstly, the recording of all important votes within the Parliament and secondly, registering Party whips with the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs so that the voter knows the clear stand of every Parliamentary

Push button parliament–why India needs a non-partisan, recorded vote system

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shalaka Patil

2011-12-01

Full Text Available Decisions of national importance are made by Parliamentary voting. Yet Indian Members of Parliament (MPs vote with a remarkable lack of freedom and accountability. The introduction of the Tenth Schedule in the Constitution has crippled free expression, since it provides that MPs voting against ‘any direction’ of their Party are liable to disqualification from the legislature  In addition, except for Constitutional amendments, Indian Parliamentary Procedure Rules do not require votes of MPs to be recorded unless the Speaker’s decision is contested in the House. The result is that voting in the House has become mechanical, controlled by Party politics and devoid of responsibility. This paper comments on a general theory of democratic accountability through the lens of Parliamentary voting. It suggests that the voting system adopted in the Parliament is an effective indicator to measure the level of accountability of its Members. In the context of India, this paper argues that the level of accountability will increase to a desirable extent only when there is adoption of a recorded system for every important House vote. Upon examination of India’s record thus far (through the sample of the 14th Lok Sabha it becomes evident that the level of divisions (recorded votes is substantially lower than other countries. This leads the paper to probe, as to why that might be the case. Part II of the paper answers that question by examining the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution. The paper scrutinizes the disproportionate influence of the Party in decision making in the Parliament. Apart from dealing with the inherent problem of the Tenth Schedule, this paper suggests two procedural changes to make parliamentary expression more meaningful. Firstly, the recording of all important votes within the Parliament and secondly, registering Party whips with the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs so that the voter knows the clear stand of every Parliamentary

Commentary on Fiester's "Ill-placed democracy: ethics consultations and the moral status of voting".

Science.gov (United States)

Dubler, Nancy Neveloff

2011-01-01

Autumn Fiester identifies an important element in clinical ethics consultation (CEC) that she labels, from the Greek, aporia, "state of perplexity," evidenced in CEC as ethical ambiguity. Fiester argues that the inherent difficulties of cases so characterized render them inappropriate for voting and more amenable to mediation and the search for consensus. This commentary supports Fiester's analysis and adds additional reasons for rejecting voting as a process for resolving disputes in CEC including: it distorts the analysis by empowering individual voters preferences and biases rather than focusing on the interests and wishes of the patient and family; it offers an insufficiently sensitive model for resolving the awesome, nuanced, conflicted, and ethically complex issues surrounding life and death; it marginalizes minority opinions that may have moral validity.

'It's The Sun Wot Won It': Evidence of media influence on political attitudes and voting from a UK quasi-natural experiment.

Science.gov (United States)

Reeves, Aaron; McKee, Martin; Stuckler, David

2016-03-01

Do print media significantly impact political attitudes and party identification? To examine this question, we draw on a rare quasi-natural experiment that occurred when The Sun, a right-leaning UK tabloid, shifted its support to the Labour party in 1997 and back to the Conservative party in 2010. We compared changes in party identification and political attitudes among Sun readers with non-readers and other newspaper readerships. We find that The Sun's endorsements were associated with a significant increase in readers' support for Labour in 1997, approximately 525,000 votes, and its switch back was associated with about 550,000 extra votes for the Conservatives in 2010. Although we observed changes in readers' party preference, there was no effect on underlying political preferences. The magnitude of these changes, about 2% of the popular vote, would have been unable to alter the outcome of the 1997 General Election, but may have affected the 2010 Election. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Voting patterns and alliance formation in the European Parliament.

Science.gov (United States)

Hix, Simon; Noury, Abdul; Roland, Gérard

2009-03-27

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have voluntarily formed transnational political groups and invariably follow the voting instructions of these groups. This is intriguing as there are few obvious incentives for doing so. Unlike national parties, for example, the political groups in the European Parliament are not punished by the electorate if they are divided on key issues, as citizens know very little about what goes on inside the European Parliament. This paper pieces together an explanation of why the European political groups exist and why they have become so powerful by looking at the determinants of group cohesion and by undertaking a spatial analysis of voting in the European Parliament. MEPs who share preferences on a range of issues on the European Union policy agenda have an incentive to establish a division-of-labour contract and to share the costs of collecting information. Once internal party policy specialization and agenda setting has been established, MEPs have incentives to follow the voting instructions of their group owing to the advantages of cohesion in a context of repeated voting.

Electoral system, pesonal votes, and party choice

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thomsen, Søren Risbjerg

Using local elections in Denmark as an example this paper shows that individual party choice is influenced both by individual level, municipality level, and national level characteristics. Some hypotheses about the effects of the electoral system on personal votes derived from a theory by Carey...... & Shugart (1995) are first tested using a fixed-effects model. The effect of the personal reputation of the candidates, measured by personal votes, on party choice is then tested using a multilevel multinomial logit model suggested by Rabe-Hesketh and Skrondal (2008). The paper shows that both the electoral...

Do Online Voting Patterns Reflect Evolved Features of Human Cognition? An Exploratory Empirical Investigation.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maria Priestley

Full Text Available Online votes or ratings can assist internet users in evaluating the credibility and appeal of the information which they encounter. For example, aggregator websites such as Reddit allow users to up-vote submitted content to make it more prominent, and down-vote content to make it less prominent. Here we argue that decisions over what to up- or down-vote may be guided by evolved features of human cognition. We predict that internet users should be more likely to up-vote content that others have also up-voted (social influence, content that has been submitted by particularly liked or respected users (model-based bias, content that constitutes evolutionarily salient or relevant information (content bias, and content that follows group norms and, in particular, prosocial norms. 489 respondents from the online social voting community Reddit rated the extent to which they felt different traits influenced their voting. Statistical analyses confirmed that norm-following and prosociality, as well as various content biases such as emotional content and originality, were rated as important motivators of voting. Social influence had a smaller effect than expected, while attitudes towards the submitter had little effect. This exploratory empirical investigation suggests that online voting communities can provide an important test-bed for evolutionary theories of human social information use, and that evolved features of human cognition may guide online behaviour just as it guides behaviour in the offline world.

Do Online Voting Patterns Reflect Evolved Features of Human Cognition? An Exploratory Empirical Investigation.

Science.gov (United States)

Priestley, Maria; Mesoudi, Alex

2015-01-01

Online votes or ratings can assist internet users in evaluating the credibility and appeal of the information which they encounter. For example, aggregator websites such as Reddit allow users to up-vote submitted content to make it more prominent, and down-vote content to make it less prominent. Here we argue that decisions over what to up- or down-vote may be guided by evolved features of human cognition. We predict that internet users should be more likely to up-vote content that others have also up-voted (social influence), content that has been submitted by particularly liked or respected users (model-based bias), content that constitutes evolutionarily salient or relevant information (content bias), and content that follows group norms and, in particular, prosocial norms. 489 respondents from the online social voting community Reddit rated the extent to which they felt different traits influenced their voting. Statistical analyses confirmed that norm-following and prosociality, as well as various content biases such as emotional content and originality, were rated as important motivators of voting. Social influence had a smaller effect than expected, while attitudes towards the submitter had little effect. This exploratory empirical investigation suggests that online voting communities can provide an important test-bed for evolutionary theories of human social information use, and that evolved features of human cognition may guide online behaviour just as it guides behaviour in the offline world.

Design and Implementation of a Mobile Voting System Using a Novel Oblivious and Proxy Signature

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shin-Yan Chiou

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Electronic voting systems can make the voting process much more convenient. However, in such systems, if a server signs blank votes before users vote, it may cause undue multivoting. Furthermore, if users vote before the signing of the server, voting information will be leaked to the server and may be compromised. Blind signatures could be used to prevent leaking voting information from the server; however, malicious users could produce noncandidate signatures for illegal usage at that time or in the future. To overcome these problems, this paper proposes a novel oblivious signature scheme with a proxy signature function to satisfy security requirements such as information protection, personal privacy, and message verification and to ensure that no one can cheat other users (including the server. We propose an electronic voting system based on the proposed oblivious and proxy signature scheme and implement this scheme in a smartphone application to allow users to vote securely and conveniently. Security analyses and performance comparisons are provided to show the capability and efficiency of the proposed scheme.

Indigenous Adoption of Internet Voting: A Case Study of Whitefish River First Nation

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Chelsea Gabel

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Indigenous communities and organizations are increasingly using digital technologies to build community capacity, strengthen community consultation, and improve political participation. In particular, Internet voting is a type of technology to which First Nations have been drawn. This article explores Whitefish River First Nation's (WRFN experience introducing Internet voting in the course of ratifying a new matrimonial real property law (MRP. Specifically, we examine the implications of Internet voting for political participation and electoral administration at the community level. Although community members’ uptake of Internet voting was very modest, we find the experience of adoption had other subtle impacts on community capacity, specifically in terms of empowering the community to pass its own laws and connecting youth and elders. With respect to administration, Internet voting provided an opportunity to connect with community members using technology, to modernize voting processes, and to better accommodate community members needs.

Voting Behaviour in the 2009 South African Election

OpenAIRE

Norbert Kersting

2010-01-01

This article analyses voting behaviour in the South African election of 2009 and draws conclusions regarding the significance of party affiliation and issue-based voting in South Africa. It demonstrates the low level of voter registration and voter turnout. In the 2009 election the Independent Electoral Commission had problems with electoral management for the first time; however, it was able to prevent electoral violence. During the campaign the newly founded COPE focused on institutional re...

Voting behaviour in the 2009 South African election

OpenAIRE

Kersting, Norbert

2009-01-01

This article analyses voting behaviour in the South African election of 2009 and draws conclusions regarding the significance of party affiliation and issue-based voting in South Africa. It demonstrates the low level of voter registration and voter turnout. In the 2009 election the Independent Electoral Commission had problems with electoral management for the first time; however, it was able to prevent electoral violence. During the campaign the newly founded COPE focused on institutional re...

The congressional viewpoint: Deficit reduction and risk legislation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Chakoff, H.E.

1995-12-31

This presentation will provide a current congressional status of legislation related to low-level waste and DOE cleanup. Key legislation discussed will include S. 755 for Privatization of the Uranium Enrichment Corporation and the markup of H.R. 1020, the Nuclear Waste Legislation. In addition, the session will include a discussion of legislation related to the approval of the Texas compact.

The congressional viewpoint: Deficit reduction and risk legislation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chakoff, H.E.

1995-01-01

This presentation will provide a current congressional status of legislation related to low-level waste and DOE cleanup. Key legislation discussed will include S. 755 for Privatization of the Uranium Enrichment Corporation and the markup of H.R. 1020, the Nuclear Waste Legislation. In addition, the session will include a discussion of legislation related to the approval of the Texas compact

Ill-placed democracy: ethics consultations and the moral status of voting.

Science.gov (United States)

Fiester, Autumn M

2011-01-01

As groups around the country begin to craft standards for clinical ethics consultations, one focus of that work is the proper procedure for conducting ethics consults. From a recent empirical look into the workings of ethics consult services (ECSs), one worrisome finding is that some ECSs rely on a committee vote when making a recommendation. This article examines the practice of voting and its moral standing as a procedural strategy for arriving at a clinical ethics recommendation. I focus here on the type of clinical ethics conflicts that are most likely to lead an ECS to vote, namely, conflicts involving ethical uncertainty--or, in the Greek, aporia. I argue that in cases of aporia, voting on an ethics conflict is not a morally justifiable procedure. Then on the same grounds that I use to show that voting is ethically problematic, I raise broader concerns about the common practice of making recommendations by other procedures. In contrast to the standard approach of adjudicating between moral claims, I argue that ECSs can best resolve aporetic conflict through the process of clinical ethics mediation.

Voting Behavior in Parliamentary Elections in Slovakia

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Řádek Miroslav

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Department of Political Science at Alexander Dubcek University in Trencin prepared its own exit poll during election day on March 5, 2016. The survey asked seven questions that were aimed at determining the preferences of the respondents concerning not only the current but also past general elections. Interviewers surveyed the choice of political party or movement in parliamentary elections in 2016 as well as preferences in past elections. Followed by questions concerning motivation to vote - when did the respondents decide to go to vote and what or who inspired this decision. The survey also tried to found out how many preferential votes did the voters give to the candidates of political parties and movements. Final question asked about expectations for the future of individual respondents. This article is the information output of the survey. The interviewers were 124 university students and its return was 1,612 sheets. The aim of this paper is to communicate the findings of this unique survey, which is unprecedented in the Slovak political science.

Challenges amp Solutions Of Adoption In Regards To Phone-Based Remote E-Voting

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Hermann Ken Jamnadas

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Abstract Remote Voting Systems has not been universally adopted by most countries for their elections such as in the case of Fiji. Although mobile phones are quite prevalent around the world and the amount of smart phones sold is increasing at a rapid rate there have not been many elections which have capitalized on the use of Mobile Phones as a remote voting tool. This paper is a limited review of previous papers on remote voting systems. The aim was to study challenges of adoption of remote e-voting systems such as through a mobile phone and suggest innovative solutions to those challenges. As such we propose a combination of new policy solutions and technical solutions such as the use of QR code and checksum for vote verification the use of real time facial recognition systems and the leveraging of existing mobile hardware to ensure a secure anonymous and trustworthy remote voting system like it has never been before.

Periodic Discordance Between Vote Equality and Representational Equality in the United States

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Sarah K. Cowan

2015-08-01

Full Text Available American democracy has two central values that are often in tension: vote equality, that each vote has equal influence, and representational equality, that each elected official represents equal numbers of people. The electoral standard of “one person, one vote” ensures representational equality, and that often ensures vote equality. This relationship fails, however, under certain demographic conditions, namely, when a large, non-enfranchised population resides unevenly across jurisdictions. Then, representational equality is preserved and vote equality is violated. Prior to women’s suffrage, for example, western states had relatively fewer women than the remainder of the country, contributing to gross vote inequality, though rectified through extension of the franchise. Given recent high rates of immigration to some states, I ask whether the two values are in tension. I find that they are, and quantify the electoral consequences of this disjuncture at 13 House seats in 2010.

Analyzing the behavior and reliability of voting systems comprising tri-state units using enumerated simulation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yacoub, Sherif

2003-01-01

Voting is a common technique used in combining results from peer experts, for multiple purposes, and in a variety of domains. In distributed decision making systems, voting mechanisms are used to obtain a decision by incorporating the opinion of multiple units. Voting systems have many applications in fault tolerant systems, mutual exclusion in distributed systems, and replicated databases. We are specifically interested in voting systems as used in decision-making applications. In this paper, we describe a synthetic experimental procedure to study the behavior of a variety of voting system configurations using a simulator to: analyze the state of each expert, apply a voting mechanism, and analyze the voting results. We introduce an enumerated-simulation approach and compare it to existing mathematical approaches. The paper studies the following behaviors of a voting system: (1) the reliability of the voting system, R; (2) the probability of reaching a consensus, P c ; (3) certainty index, T; and (4) the confidence index, C. The configuration parameters controlling the analysis are: (1) the number of participating experts, N, (2) the possible output states of an expert, and (3) the probability distribution of each expert states. We illustrate the application of this approach to a voting system that consists of N units, each has three states: correct (success), wrong (failed), and abstain (did not produce an output). The final output of the decision-making (voting) system is correct if a consensus is reached on a correct unit output, abstain if all units abstain from voting, and wrong otherwise. We will show that using the proposed approach, we can easily conduct studies to unleash several behaviors of a decision-making system with tri-state experts

A Theory of Strategic Voting in Runoff Elections

OpenAIRE

Laurent Bouton

2013-01-01

This paper analyzes the properties of runoff electoral systems when voters are strategic. A model of three-candidate runoff elections is presented, and two new features are included: the risk of upset victory in the second round is endogenous, and many types of runoff systems are considered. Three main results emerge. First, runoff elections produce equilibria in which only two candidates receive a positive fraction of the votes. Second, a sincere voting equilibrium does not always exist. Fin...

The fluctuating female vote: politics, religion, and the ovulatory cycle.

Science.gov (United States)

Durante, Kristina M; Rae, Ashley; Griskevicius, Vladas

2013-06-01

Each month, many women experience an ovulatory cycle that regulates fertility. Although research has found that this cycle influences women's mating preferences, we proposed that it might also change women's political and religious views. Building on theory suggesting that political and religious orientation are linked to reproductive goals, we tested how fertility influenced women's politics, religiosity, and voting in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. In two studies with large and diverse samples, ovulation had drastically different effects on single women and women in committed relationships. Ovulation led single women to become more liberal, less religious, and more likely to vote for Barack Obama. In contrast, ovulation led women in committed relationships to become more conservative, more religious, and more likely to vote for Mitt Romney. In addition, ovulation-induced changes in political orientation mediated women's voting behavior. Overall, the ovulatory cycle not only influences women's politics but also appears to do so differently for single women than for women in relationships.

Analyzing the determinants of the voting behavior using a genetic algorithm

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Marcos Vizcaíno-González

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Using data about votes emitted by funds in meetings held by United States banks from 2003 to 2013, we apply a genetic algorithm to a set of financial variables in order to detect the determinants of the vote direction. Our findings indicate that there are three main explanatory factors: the market value of the firm, the shareholder activism measured as the total number of funds voting, and the temporal context, which reflects the influence of recent critical events affecting the banking industry, including bankruptcies, reputational failures, and mergers and acquisitions. As a result, considering that voting behavior has been empirically linked to reputational harms, these findings can be considered as a useful insight about the keys that should be taken into account in order to achieve an effective reputational risk management strategy.

The strategic effect of the plurality vote at the district level

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bochsler, Daniel

2017-01-01

The plurality vote (first-past-the-post) is one of the most restrictive electoral systems used for parliamentary elections. Empirically, its deterring effect on small political parties has been widely studied at the national level, while theoretical arguments highlight its strategic effect...... at the district level. This paper argues that the strategic effect, reducing the votes expressed for minor parties in plurality vote systems, is uneven across districts. The strongest strategic effect is expected in very competitive constituencies, where the two strongest candidates are in close competition...... with each other. The paper estimates the effect empirically, based on electoral results for minor political parties from six parliamentary democracies using the plurality vote. The methodology proposed in this paper allows me to separate sociological or geographical factors from strategic factors affecting...

Voting suffrage and the political budget cycle: Evidence from the London Metropolitan Boroughs 1902-1937.

Science.gov (United States)

Aidt, Toke S; Mooney, Graham

2014-04-01

We study the opportunistic political budget cycle in the London Metropolitan Boroughs between 1902 and 1937 under two different suffrage regimes: taxpayer suffrage (1902-1914) and universal suffrage (1921-1937). We argue and find supporting evidence that the political budget cycle operates differently under the two types of suffrage. Taxpayer suffrage, where the right to vote and the obligation to pay local taxes are linked, encourages demands for retrenchment and the political budget cycle manifests itself in election year tax cuts and savings on administration costs. Universal suffrage, where all adult residents can vote irrespective of their taxpayer status, creates demands for productive public services and the political budget cycle manifests itself in election year hikes in capital spending and a reduction in current spending.

A Grey Area: Congressional Oversight of the Middle Ground Between Title 10 and Title 50

Science.gov (United States)

2012-06-01

1950’s, just a few short years after the Agency’s creation.1 With Watergate fresh on the country’s mind having just witnessed President Nixon’s...3 Congressional Oversight Legislative Overview Congressional oversight is not a result of modern scandals as one might think; it is as old as the...President Reagan’s tenure, however, members of Congress believed that he had overstepped his authority in the so-called “Iran-Contra affair.” The scandal

The Political Gender Gap: Gender Bias in Facial Inferences that Predict Voting Behavior

Science.gov (United States)

Chiao, Joan Y.; Bowman, Nicholas E.; Gill, Harleen

2008-01-01

Background Throughout human history, a disproportionate degree of political power around the world has been held by men. Even in democracies where the opportunity to serve in top political positions is available to any individual elected by the majority of their constituents, most of the highest political offices are occupied by male leaders. What psychological factors underlie this political gender gap? Contrary to the notion that people use deliberate, rational strategies when deciding whom to vote for in major political elections, research indicates that people use shallow decision heuristics, such as impressions of competence solely from a candidate's facial appearance, when deciding whom to vote for. Because gender has previously been shown to affect a number of inferences made from the face, here we investigated the hypothesis that gender of both voter and candidate affects the kinds of facial impressions that predict voting behavior. Methodology/Principal Finding Male and female voters judged a series of male and female political candidates on how competent, dominant, attractive and approachable they seemed based on their facial appearance. Then they saw a series of pairs of political candidates and decided which politician they would vote for in a hypothetical election for President of the United States. Results indicate that both gender of voter and candidate affect the kinds of facial impressions that predict voting behavior. All voters are likely to vote for candidates who appear more competent. However, male candidates that appear more approachable and female candidates who appear more attractive are more likely to win votes. In particular, men are more likely to vote for attractive female candidates whereas women are more likely to vote for approachable male candidates. Conclusions/Significance Here we reveal gender biases in the intuitive heuristics that voters use when deciding whom to vote for in major political elections. Our findings underscore

The political gender gap: gender bias in facial inferences that predict voting behavior.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Joan Y Chiao

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Throughout human history, a disproportionate degree of political power around the world has been held by men. Even in democracies where the opportunity to serve in top political positions is available to any individual elected by the majority of their constituents, most of the highest political offices are occupied by male leaders. What psychological factors underlie this political gender gap? Contrary to the notion that people use deliberate, rational strategies when deciding whom to vote for in major political elections, research indicates that people use shallow decision heuristics, such as impressions of competence solely from a candidate's facial appearance, when deciding whom to vote for. Because gender has previously been shown to affect a number of inferences made from the face, here we investigated the hypothesis that gender of both voter and candidate affects the kinds of facial impressions that predict voting behavior. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDING: Male and female voters judged a series of male and female political candidates on how competent, dominant, attractive and approachable they seemed based on their facial appearance. Then they saw a series of pairs of political candidates and decided which politician they would vote for in a hypothetical election for President of the United States. Results indicate that both gender of voter and candidate affect the kinds of facial impressions that predict voting behavior. All voters are likely to vote for candidates who appear more competent. However, male candidates that appear more approachable and female candidates who appear more attractive are more likely to win votes. In particular, men are more likely to vote for attractive female candidates whereas women are more likely to vote for approachable male candidates. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Here we reveal gender biases in the intuitive heuristics that voters use when deciding whom to vote for in major political elections. Our

A triangle voting algorithm based on double feature constraints for star sensors

Science.gov (United States)

Fan, Qiaoyun; Zhong, Xuyang

2018-02-01

A novel autonomous star identification algorithm is presented in this study. In the proposed algorithm, each sensor star constructs multi-triangle with its bright neighbor stars and obtains its candidates by triangle voting process, in which the triangle is considered as the basic voting element. In order to accelerate the speed of this algorithm and reduce the required memory for star database, feature extraction is carried out to reduce the dimension of triangles and each triangle is described by its base and height. During the identification period, the voting scheme based on double feature constraints is proposed to implement triangle voting. This scheme guarantees that only the catalog star satisfying two features can vote for the sensor star, which improves the robustness towards false stars. The simulation and real star image test demonstrate that compared with the other two algorithms, the proposed algorithm is more robust towards position noise, magnitude noise and false stars.

Truthful approximations to range voting

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Filos-Ratsika, Aris; Miltersen, Peter Bro

We consider the fundamental mechanism design problem of approximate social welfare maximization under general cardinal preferences on a finite number of alternatives and without money. The well-known range voting scheme can be thought of as a non-truthful mechanism for exact social welfare...

Analysis of Spatial Voting Patterns: An Approach in Political Socialization

Science.gov (United States)

Klimasewski, Ted

1973-01-01

Passage of the 26th Amendment gave young adults the right to vote. This study attempts to further student understanding of the electoral process by presenting a method for analyzing spatial voting patterns. The spatial emphasis adds another dimension to the temporal and behavioral-structural approaches in studying the American electoral system.…

Vote Counting as Mathematical Proof

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schürmann, Carsten; Pattinson, Dirk

2015-01-01

then consists of a sequence (or tree) of rule applications and provides an independently checkable certificate of the validity of the result. This reduces the need to trust, or otherwise verify, the correctness of the vote counting software once the certificate has been validated. Using a rule...

Satellite Fault Diagnosis Using Support Vector Machines Based on a Hybrid Voting Mechanism

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Shuqiang; Zhu, Xiaoqian; Jin, Songchang; Wang, Xiang

2014-01-01

The satellite fault diagnosis has an important role in enhancing the safety, reliability, and availability of the satellite system. However, the problem of enormous parameters and multiple faults makes a challenge to the satellite fault diagnosis. The interactions between parameters and misclassifications from multiple faults will increase the false alarm rate and the false negative rate. On the other hand, for each satellite fault, there is not enough fault data for training. To most of the classification algorithms, it will degrade the performance of model. In this paper, we proposed an improving SVM based on a hybrid voting mechanism (HVM-SVM) to deal with the problem of enormous parameters, multiple faults, and small samples. Many experimental results show that the accuracy of fault diagnosis using HVM-SVM is improved. PMID:25215324

Satellite Fault Diagnosis Using Support Vector Machines Based on a Hybrid Voting Mechanism

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hong Yin

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The satellite fault diagnosis has an important role in enhancing the safety, reliability, and availability of the satellite system. However, the problem of enormous parameters and multiple faults makes a challenge to the satellite fault diagnosis. The interactions between parameters and misclassifications from multiple faults will increase the false alarm rate and the false negative rate. On the other hand, for each satellite fault, there is not enough fault data for training. To most of the classification algorithms, it will degrade the performance of model. In this paper, we proposed an improving SVM based on a hybrid voting mechanism (HVM-SVM to deal with the problem of enormous parameters, multiple faults, and small samples. Many experimental results show that the accuracy of fault diagnosis using HVM-SVM is improved.

Trustworthy Voting: From Machine to System

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Paul, N.; Tanenbaum, A.S.

2009-01-01

The authors describe an electronic voting approach that takes a system view, incorporating a trustworthy process based on open source software, simplified procedures, and built-in redundant safeguards that prevent tampering. © 2009 IEEE.

Congressional Influence as a Determinant of Subprime Lending

OpenAIRE

Stuart A. Gabriel; Matthew E. Kahn; Ryan K. Vaughn

2013-01-01

We apply unique loan level data from New Century Financial Corporation, a major subprime lender, to assess whether attributes of Congressional Representatives were associated with access to and pricing of subprime mortgage credit. Research findings indicate higher likelihoods of subprime loan origination and lower mortgage pricing among borrowers represented by the Republican and Democratic leadership of Congress. Black borrowers also benefitted from significantly larger loan amounts in those...

Decisions among the undecided: implicit attitudes predict future voting behavior of undecided voters.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kristjen B Lundberg

Full Text Available Implicit attitudes have been suggested as a key to unlock the hidden preferences of undecided voters. Past research, however, offered mixed support for this hypothesis. The present research used a large nationally representative sample and a longitudinal design to examine the predictive utility of implicit and explicit attitude measures in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. In our analyses, explicit attitudes toward candidates predicted voting better for decided than undecided voters, but implicit candidate attitudes were predictive of voting for both decided and undecided voters. Extending our examination to implicit and explicit racial attitudes, we found the same pattern. Taken together, these results provide convergent evidence that implicit attitudes predict voting about as well for undecided as for decided voters. We also assessed a novel explanation for these effects by evaluating whether implicit attitudes may predict the choices of undecided voters, in part, because they are neglected when people introspect about their confidence. Consistent with this idea, we found that the extremity of explicit but not implicit attitudes was associated with greater confidence. These analyses shed new light on the utility of implicit measures in predicting future behavior among individuals who feel undecided. Considering the prior studies together with this new evidence, the data seem to be consistent that implicit attitudes may be successful in predicting the behavior of undecided voters.

Justice blocks and predictability of U.S. Supreme Court votes.

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Roger Guimerà

Full Text Available Successful attempts to predict judges' votes shed light into how legal decisions are made and, ultimately, into the behavior and evolution of the judiciary. Here, we investigate to what extent it is possible to make predictions of a justice's vote based on the other justices' votes in the same case. For our predictions, we use models and methods that have been developed to uncover hidden associations between actors in complex social networks. We show that these methods are more accurate at predicting justice's votes than forecasts made by legal experts and by algorithms that take into consideration the content of the cases. We argue that, within our framework, high predictability is a quantitative proxy for stable justice (and case blocks, which probably reflect stable a priori attitudes toward the law. We find that U.S. Supreme Court justice votes are more predictable than one would expect from an ideal court composed of perfectly independent justices. Deviations from ideal behavior are most apparent in divided 5-4 decisions, where justice blocks seem to be most stable. Moreover, we find evidence that justice predictability decreased during the 50-year period spanning from the Warren Court to the Rehnquist Court, and that aggregate court predictability has been significantly lower during Democratic presidencies. More broadly, our results show that it is possible to use methods developed for the analysis of complex social networks to quantitatively investigate historical questions related to political decision-making.

RIES: Internet voting in action

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hubbers, E.M.G.M.; Jacobs, B.P.F.; Pieters, Wolter

2004-01-01

RIES stands for Rijnland Internet Election System. It is an online voting system that was developed by one of the Dutch local authorities on water management. The system has been used twice in the fall of 2004 for in total approximately two million potential voters. In this paper we describe how

Elections: DOD Needs More Comprehensive Planning to Address Military and Overseas Absentee Voting Challenges

Science.gov (United States)

2016-04-01

Acknowledgments Contact Acknowledgments Related GAO Products Page 75 GAO-16-378 DOD Overseas Absentee Voting U.S. Postal Service: Actions... Products Page 76 GAO-16-378 DOD Overseas Absentee Voting Election Reform: Nine States’ Experiences Implementing Federal Requirements for...ELECTIONS DOD Needs More Comprehensive Planning to Address Military and Overseas Absentee Voting Challenges

Forecasting the Senate vote on the Supreme Court vacancy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Scott J. Basinger

2016-07-01

Full Text Available This paper forecasts current senators’ votes on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, in the unlikely case that a vote actually takes place. The forecasts are necessarily conditional, awaiting measurement of the nominee’s characteristics. Nonetheless, a model that combines parameters estimated from existing data with values of some measurable characteristics of senators—particularly their party affiliations, party loyalty levels, and ideological positions—is sufficient to identify potential swing voters in the Senate. By accounting for a more nuanced and refined understanding of the confirmation process, our model reveals that if President Obama were to nominate almost any nominee (conservative or liberal today, that nominee would be rejected if a vote was allowed to take place. So why nominate anyone at all? Obama’s hope for a successful confirmation must come from the stochastic component, that is, from outside the traditional decision-making calculus.

Ideology, Party Systems and Corruption Voting in European Democracies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Charron, Nicholas; Bågenholm, Andreas

2016-01-01

What is the impact of corruption on citizens' voting behavior? There is a growing literature on an increasingly ubiquitous puzzle in many democratic countries: that corrupt officials continue to be re-elected by voters. In this study we address this issue with a novel theory and newly collected...... original survey data for 24 European countries. The crux of the argument is that voters' ideology is a salient factor in explaining why citizens would continue voting for their preferred party despite the fact that it has been involved in a corruption scandal. Developing a theory of supply (number...... of effective parties) and demand (voters must have acceptable ideological alternatives to their preferred party), we posit that there is a U-shaped relationship between the likelihood of corruption voting and where voters place themselves on the left/right spectrum. The further to the fringes, the more likely...

Mental illness and the right to vote: a review of legislation across the world.

Science.gov (United States)

Bhugra, Dinesh; Pathare, Soumitra; Gosavi, Chetna; Ventriglio, Antonio; Torales, Julio; Castaldelli-Maia, João; Tolentino, Edgardo Juan L; Ng, Roger

2016-08-01

The right to vote is an important right signifying freedom of thought as well as full citizenship in any setting. Right to vote is enshrined and protected by international human rights treaties. The right of 'everyone' to take part in the political process and elections is based on universal and equal suffrage. Although these International Conventions have been ratified by the large majority of United Nations Member States, their application across the globe is by no means universal. This study sets out to examine the domestic laws of UN Member States in order to explore whether individuals with mental health problems have the right to vote in actuality and, thu,s can participate in political life. Through various searches, electoral laws and Constitutions of 193 Member States of the United Nations were studied. The authors were able to find legislation and/or Constitutional provisions in 167 of the 193 Member States. Twenty-one countries (11%) only placed no restrictions on the right to vote by persons with mental health problems. Over one third of the countries (36%) deny all persons with any mental health problems a right to vote without any qualifier. Some of these discriminatory attitudes are reflected in the multiplicity of terms used to describe persons with mental health problems. Another 21 countries (11%) denied the right to vote to detained persons; of these, nine Member States specifically denied the right to vote to persons who were detained under the mental health law, while the remainder denied the right to vote to all those who were interdicted or judicially interdicted. It would appear that in many countries the denial of voting rights is attributed to a lack of ability to consent by the individuals with mental illness. Further exploration of explanation is required to understand these variations, which exist in spite of international treaties.

RIES: Internet voting in action

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hubbers, E.M.G.M.; Jacobs, B.P.F.; Pieters, Wolter

2005-01-01

RIES stands for Rijnland Internet Election System. It is an online voting system that has been used twice in the fall of 2004 for in total over two million potential voters. In this paper we describe how this system works. Furthermore we describe how the system allowed us to independently verify the

Congressional-executive interaction and the nuclear waste repository site selection process

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Thurber, J.A.; Evanson, T.C.

1993-01-01

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) (P.L. 97-425) and the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987 (NWPAA) (Title V of P.L. 100-203) provide the framework for the DOE Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) to find a permanent means for disposing of high-level nuclear waste in the US. The focus of this study is the congressional decision-making process associated with passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987. The passage of NWPAA was a direct result of the failure of the policy adopted in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. This study analyzes the nature of congressional nuclear waste policy-making through the lens of subsystems theory. The data analysis is primarily based on confidential interviews with over fifty key actors in the nuclear waste policy subsystem as well as an analysis of primary source documents

Cortisol and politics: variance in voting behavior is predicted by baseline cortisol levels.

Science.gov (United States)

French, Jeffrey A; Smith, Kevin B; Alford, John R; Guck, Adam; Birnie, Andrew K; Hibbing, John R

2014-06-22

Participation in electoral politics is affected by a host of social and demographics variables, but there is growing evidence that biological predispositions may also play a role in behavior related to political involvement. We examined the role of individual variation in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress axis parameters in explaining differences in self-reported and actual participation in political activities. Self-reported political activity, religious participation, and verified voting activity in U.S. national elections were collected from 105 participants, who were subsequently exposed to a standardized (nonpolitical) psychosocial stressor. We demonstrated that lower baseline salivary cortisol in the late afternoon was significantly associated with increased actual voting frequency in six national elections, but not with self-reported non-voting political activity. Baseline cortisol predicted significant variation in voting behavior above and beyond variation accounted for by traditional demographic variables (particularly age of participant in our sample). Participation in religious activity was weakly (and negatively) associated with baseline cortisol. Our results suggest that HPA-mediated characteristics of social, cognitive, and emotional processes may exert an influence on a trait as complex as voting behavior, and that cortisol is a better predictor of actual voting behavior, as opposed to self-reported political activity. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cortisol and Politics: Variance in Voting Behavior is Predicted by Baseline Cortisol Levels

Science.gov (United States)

French, Jeffrey A.; Smith, Kevin B.; Alford, John R.; Guck, Adam; Birnie, Andrew K.; Hibbing, John R.

2014-01-01

Participation in electoral politics is affected by a host of social and demographics variables, but there is growing evidence that biological predispositions may also play a role in behavior related to political involvement. We examined the role of individual variation in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress axis parameters in explaining differences in self-reported and actual participation in political activities. Self-reported political activity, religious participation, and verified voting activity in U.S. national elections were collected from 105 participants, who were subsequently exposed to a standardized (nonpolitical) psychosocial stressor. We demonstrated that lower baseline salivary cortisol in the late afternoon was significantly associated with increased actual voting frequency in six national elections, but not with self-reported non-voting political activity. Baseline cortisol predicted significant variation in voting behavior above and beyond variation accounted for by traditional demographic variables (particularly age of participant in our sample). Participation in religious activity was weakly (and negatively) associated with baseline cortisol. Our results suggest that HPA-mediated characteristics of social, cognitive, and emotional processes may exert an influence on a trait as complex as voting behavior, and that cortisol is a better predictor of actual voting behavior, as opposed to self-reported political activity. PMID:24835544

Clickers and Classroom Voting in a Transition to Advanced Mathematics Course

Science.gov (United States)

Lockard, Shannon R.; Metcalf, Rebecca C.

2015-01-01

Clickers and classroom voting are used across a number of disciplines in a variety of institutions. There are several papers that describe the use of clickers in mathematics classrooms such as precalculus, calculus, statistics, and even differential equations. This paper describes a method of incorporating clickers and classroom voting in a…

THE UNINOMINAL VOTE AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE ROMANIAN ELECTORAL SYSTEM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

PORUMBACEAN CLAUDIU

2011-04-01

Full Text Available Since 1990, after the first democratic elections inRomania, before each election, there were debates about the technical way inwhich elections should be conducted. If, as of May 20th 1990 and till the autumnof 2004, parliamentary elections held in Romania were conducted in the form ofproportional representation, by voting on political party lists, in electoraldistricts strictly drawn by type and capital district, after the 2004 electiondebates around the modification of the voting system were approached withincreased interest and very intense discussions at the decision – making levelswere initiated.Thus, after lengthy debates in parliament and inside the civil society, and alsofollowing the referendum on 25th of November 2007, initiated by the Presidentunder the Constitution of Romania (in consultation with the Parliament, it wasdecided that the Romanian electoral system would be modified from theproportional party lists voting method into the uninominal majority vote inelectoral constituencies and uninominal colleges (districts.The decision being thus taken by the voters, the Parliament started to discuss thesuggested bills and finally Law no. 35/2008 was passed in March 2008, this lawbeing known as the "law of the single vote".Law no. 35/2008 confirms the modification of the Romanian electoral systemand the November 2008 parliamentary elections were held under itsprerogatives. The consequences of the electoral changes are still commentedupon by the most prominent public life players in Romania.

Electronic voting systems for defending free will and resisting bribery and coercion based on ring anonymous signcryption scheme

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tsung-Chih Hsiao

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Vote by ballot is the feature in a democratic society and the process of decision-making, tending to achieve the philosophy of democratic politics by having the public who are eligible to vote for competent candidates or leaders. With the rapid development of technologies and network applications, electronization has been actively promoted globally during the social transformation period that the concept of electronic voting is further derived. The major advantages of electronic voting, comparing with traditional voting, lie in the mobility strength of electronic voting, reducing a large amount of election costs and enhancing the convenience for the public. Electronic voting allows voters completing voting on the Internet that not only are climate and location restrictions overcome, but the voter turnout is also increased and the voting time is reduced for the public. With the development in the past three decades, electronic voting presents outstanding performance theoretically and practically. Nevertheless, it is regrettable that electronic voting schemes still cannot be completely open because of lures by money and threats. People to lure by money and threats would confirm the voters following their instructions through various methods that more factors would appear on election results, affecting the quality and fairness of the election. In this study, this project aims to design an electronic voting scheme which could actually defend voters’ free will so that lure of money and threats would fail. Furthermore, an electronic voting system based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography is proposed to ensure the efficiency and security, and Ring Signature and Signcryption are applied to reducing the computing costs. Moreover, this project also focuses on applying voting system to mobile devices. As the system efficiency and security are emphasized, voters do not need to participate in the election, but simply complete voting with smart phones, i

Does Economic Education Make a Difference in Congress? How Economics Majors Vote on Trade

Science.gov (United States)

O'Roark, J. Brian

2012-01-01

The author of this article expands the background theory of voting to incorporate the undergraduate majors of members of Congress. Examining nine votes on trade across the 109th and 110th Congresses reveals that economics majors are the only category of college major to vote in favor of free trade in a predictable way. Controls for a variety of…

Voting for the populist radical right in Switzerland: A panel data analysis

OpenAIRE

Orsholits, Dan

2017-01-01

Working-class voters no longer systematically support left-wing political parties. This finding was initially viewed as signalling the end of class voting and the decline of the class cleavage's salience. Yet, in Western Europe, it would seem to be turning to a new party family: the populist radical right. This realignment is thought to be linked to globalization and the societal and economic changes that it brings. Populist radical right parties are thought to channel the frustrations of wor...

Voting suffrage and the political budget cycle: Evidence from the London Metropolitan Boroughs 1902–1937

Science.gov (United States)

Aidt, Toke S.; Mooney, Graham

2014-01-01

We study the opportunistic political budget cycle in the London Metropolitan Boroughs between 1902 and 1937 under two different suffrage regimes: taxpayer suffrage (1902–1914) and universal suffrage (1921–1937). We argue and find supporting evidence that the political budget cycle operates differently under the two types of suffrage. Taxpayer suffrage, where the right to vote and the obligation to pay local taxes are linked, encourages demands for retrenchment and the political budget cycle manifests itself in election year tax cuts and savings on administration costs. Universal suffrage, where all adult residents can vote irrespective of their taxpayer status, creates demands for productive public services and the political budget cycle manifests itself in election year hikes in capital spending and a reduction in current spending. PMID:25843984

Vote. Speak Out. 3-6.

Science.gov (United States)

Illinois State Board of Education, Springfield.

The purpose of this election-education program is to help develop an informed electorate and to instill in future voters an appreciation of the importance of the right to vote. It provides a framework for discussions of the electoral process and gives students in grades three through six an opportunity to face the responsibilities and challenges…

Iterative tensor voting for perceptual grouping of ill-defined curvilinear structures.

Science.gov (United States)

Loss, Leandro A; Bebis, George; Parvin, Bahram

2011-08-01

In this paper, a novel approach is proposed for perceptual grouping and localization of ill-defined curvilinear structures. Our approach builds upon the tensor voting and the iterative voting frameworks. Its efficacy lies on iterative refinements of curvilinear structures by gradually shifting from an exploratory to an exploitative mode. Such a mode shifting is achieved by reducing the aperture of the tensor voting fields, which is shown to improve curve grouping and inference by enhancing the concentration of the votes over promising, salient structures. The proposed technique is validated on delineating adherens junctions that are imaged through fluorescence microscopy. However, the method is also applicable for screening other organisms based on characteristics of their cell wall structures. Adherens junctions maintain tissue structural integrity and cell-cell interactions. Visually, they exhibit fibrous patterns that may be diffused, heterogeneous in fluorescence intensity, or punctate and frequently perceptual. Besides the application to real data, the proposed method is compared to prior methods on synthetic and annotated real data, showing high precision rates.

County community health associations of net voting shift in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jason H Wasfy

Full Text Available In the U.S. presidential election of 2016, substantial shift in voting patterns occurred relative to previous elections. Although this shift has been associated with both education and race, the extent to which this shift was related to public health status is unclear.To determine the extent to which county community health was associated with changes in voting between the presidential elections of 2016 and 2012.Ecological study with principal component analysis (PCA using principal axis method to extract the components, then generalized linear regression.General community.All counties in the United States.Physically unhealthy days, mentally unhealthy days, percent food insecure, teen birth rate, primary care physician visit rate, age-adjusted mortality rate, violent crime rate, average health care costs, percent diabetic, and percent overweight or obese.The percentage of Donald Trump votes in 2016 minus percentage of Mitt Romney votes in 2012 ("net voting shift".Complete public health data was available for 3,009 counties which were included in the analysis. The mean net voting shift was 5.4% (+/- 5.8%. Of these 3,009 counties, 2,641 (87.8% had positive net voting shift (shifted towards Trump and 368 counties (12.2% had negative net voting shift (shifted away from Trump. The first principal component ("unhealthy score" accounted for 68% of the total variance in the data. The unhealthy score included all health variables except primary care physician rate, violent crime rate, and health care costs. The mean unhealthy score for counties was 0.39 (SD 0.16. Higher normalized unhealthy score was associated with positive net voting shift (22.1% shift per unit unhealthy, p < 0.0001. This association was stronger in states that switched Electoral College votes from 2012 to 2016 than in other states (5.9% per unit unhealthy, p <0.0001.Substantial association exists between a shift toward voting for Donald Trump in 2016 relative to Mitt Romney in 2012

A New Proxy Electronic Voting Scheme Achieved by Six-Particle Entangled States

Science.gov (United States)

Cao, Hai-Jing; Ding, Li-Yuan; Jiang, Xiu-Li; Li, Peng-Fei

2018-03-01

In this paper, we use quantum proxy signature to construct a new secret electronic voting scheme. In our scheme, six particles entangled states function as quantum channels. The voter Alice, the Vote Management Center Bob, the scrutineer Charlie only perform two particles measurements on the Bell bases to realize the electronic voting process. So the scheme reduces the technical difficulty and increases operation efficiency. We use quantum key distribution and one-time pad to guarantee its unconditional security. The significant advantage of our scheme is that transmitted information capacity is twice as much as the capacity of other schemes.

Weighted voting-based consensus clustering for chemical structure databases

Science.gov (United States)

Saeed, Faisal; Ahmed, Ali; Shamsir, Mohd Shahir; Salim, Naomie

2014-06-01

The cluster-based compound selection is used in the lead identification process of drug discovery and design. Many clustering methods have been used for chemical databases, but there is no clustering method that can obtain the best results under all circumstances. However, little attention has been focused on the use of combination methods for chemical structure clustering, which is known as consensus clustering. Recently, consensus clustering has been used in many areas including bioinformatics, machine learning and information theory. This process can improve the robustness, stability, consistency and novelty of clustering. For chemical databases, different consensus clustering methods have been used including the co-association matrix-based, graph-based, hypergraph-based and voting-based methods. In this paper, a weighted cumulative voting-based aggregation algorithm (W-CVAA) was developed. The MDL Drug Data Report (MDDR) benchmark chemical dataset was used in the experiments and represented by the AlogP and ECPF_4 descriptors. The results from the clustering methods were evaluated by the ability of the clustering to separate biologically active molecules in each cluster from inactive ones using different criteria, and the effectiveness of the consensus clustering was compared to that of Ward's method, which is the current standard clustering method in chemoinformatics. This study indicated that weighted voting-based consensus clustering can overcome the limitations of the existing voting-based methods and improve the effectiveness of combining multiple clusterings of chemical structures.

Capacity to Vote in Persons with Dementia and the Elderly

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luis Javier Irastorza

2011-01-01

Full Text Available The capacity to vote in patients with mental illness is increasingly questioned. The objective of this study is to evaluate this capacity in a group of subjects with dementia (Alzheimer's disease and other elderly subjects without dementia. With a sample of 68 subjects with dementia and 25 controls living in a senior residence, a transversal study was carried out over 4 months. Subjects were evaluated with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE and the Competence Assessment Tool for voting (CAT-V. The results were more positive for the Doe criteria (as part of the CAT-V, and a correlation was found with the MMSE in subjects with dementia and, to a lesser degree, in the controls. We conclude that the capacity to vote is related to cognitive deterioration and, within that, is more related to understanding and appreciation.

A Voting TOPSIS Approach for Determining the Priorities of Areas Damaged in Disasters

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yanjin He

2018-05-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we investigate the priority determination problem for areas that have been damaged during disasters. Relief distribution should be planned while considering the priorities of the damaged areas. To determine the priorities of the damaged areas, we first define four criteria and then propose a voting TOPSIS (technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution that utilizes the fuzzy pair-wise comparison, data envelopment analysis, and TOPSIS. Since the voting TOPSIS is based on the voting results of multiple experts, it can be applied to urgent situations quickly, regardless of the consistency of comparison, the number of alternatives, and the number of participating experts. The proposed approach is validated using a real-world case, and this case analysis shows that the voting TOPSIS is viable.

Normal estimation for pointcloud using GPU based sparse tensor voting

OpenAIRE

Liu , Ming; Pomerleau , François; Colas , Francis; Siegwart , Roland

2012-01-01

International audience; Normal estimation is the basis for most applications using pointcloud, such as segmentation. However, it is still a challenging problem regarding computational complexity and observation noise. In this paper, we propose a normal estimation method for pointcloud using results from tensor voting. Comparing with other approaches, we show it has smaller estimation error. Moreover, by varying the voting kernel size, we find it is a flexible approach for structure extraction...

Retiring from Voting

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bhatti, Yosef; Hansen, Kasper Møller

2012-01-01

elections, we show how turnout for seniors falls more than 30 percentage points between ages 60 and 90. Though declining health matters, it is far from the entire story. Much of the turnout decline can be explained by the disruption of social ties. Withdrawing from the labour market demobilizes people....... Seniors also tend to live alone more often than the general population, meaning that they receive less social encouragement to vote. We also look into why turnout drops faster for women than for men. Women lose their social network earlier than men. They are on average widowed and live alone at an earlier...

Estimating the Preferences of Central Bankers : An Analysis of Four Voting Records

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Eijffinger, S.C.W.; Mahieu, R.J.; Raes, L.B.D.

2013-01-01

Abstract: This paper analyzes the voting records of four central banks (Sweden, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic) with spatial models of voting. We infer the policy preferences of the monetary policy committee members and use these to analyze the evolution in preferences over time and the

Geography, culture, and religion: Explaining the bias in Eurovision song contest voting

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Spierdijk, L.; Vellekoop, M.H.

This paper analyses votes cast in the Eurovision Song Contest in the period 1975 - 2003. We test whether accusations of 'political' voting among participants can be substantiated by looking at geographical influences. Our approach differs in two ways from earlier studies. First, we take into account

Comments on "A Closed-Form Solution to Tensor Voting: Theory and Applications".

Science.gov (United States)

Maggiori, Emmanuel; Lotito, Pablo; Manterola, Hugo Luis; del Fresno, Mariana

2014-12-01

We comment on a paper that describes a closed-form formulation to Tensor Voting, a technique to perceptually group clouds of points, usually applied to infer features in images. The authors proved an analytic solution to the technique, a highly relevant contribution considering that the original formulation required numerical integration, a time-consuming task. Their work constitutes the first closed-form expression for the Tensor Voting framework. In this work we first observe that the proposed formulation leads to unexpected results which do not satisfy the constraints for a Tensor Voting output, hence they cannot be interpreted. Given that the closed-form expression is said to be an analytic equivalent solution, unexpected outputs should not be encountered unless there are flaws in the proof. We analyzed the underlying math to find which were the causes of these unexpected results. In this commentary we show that their proposal does not in fact provide a proper analytic solution to Tensor Voting and we indicate the flaws in the proof.

County community health associations of net voting shift in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Science.gov (United States)

Wasfy, Jason H; Stewart, Charles; Bhambhani, Vijeta

2017-01-01

In the U.S. presidential election of 2016, substantial shift in voting patterns occurred relative to previous elections. Although this shift has been associated with both education and race, the extent to which this shift was related to public health status is unclear. To determine the extent to which county community health was associated with changes in voting between the presidential elections of 2016 and 2012. Ecological study with principal component analysis (PCA) using principal axis method to extract the components, then generalized linear regression. General community. All counties in the United States. Physically unhealthy days, mentally unhealthy days, percent food insecure, teen birth rate, primary care physician visit rate, age-adjusted mortality rate, violent crime rate, average health care costs, percent diabetic, and percent overweight or obese. The percentage of Donald Trump votes in 2016 minus percentage of Mitt Romney votes in 2012 ("net voting shift"). Complete public health data was available for 3,009 counties which were included in the analysis. The mean net voting shift was 5.4% (+/- 5.8%). Of these 3,009 counties, 2,641 (87.8%) had positive net voting shift (shifted towards Trump) and 368 counties (12.2%) had negative net voting shift (shifted away from Trump). The first principal component ("unhealthy score") accounted for 68% of the total variance in the data. The unhealthy score included all health variables except primary care physician rate, violent crime rate, and health care costs. The mean unhealthy score for counties was 0.39 (SD 0.16). Higher normalized unhealthy score was associated with positive net voting shift (22.1% shift per unit unhealthy, p Donald Trump in 2016 relative to Mitt Romney in 2012 and measures of poor public health. Although these results do not demonstrate causality, these results suggest a possible role for health status in political choices.

Allegheny County Voting District (2016) Web Map

Data.gov (United States)

Allegheny County / City of Pittsburgh / Western PA Regional Data Center — This webmap demarcates municipal voting districts in Allegheny County. If viewing this description on the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center’s open data...

Allegheny County Voting District (2015) Web Map

Data.gov (United States)

Allegheny County / City of Pittsburgh / Western PA Regional Data Center — This webmap demarcates municipal voting districts in Allegheny County. If viewing this description on the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center’s open data...

Electronic Voting Protocol Using Identity-Based Cryptography

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gina Gallegos-Garcia

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Electronic voting protocols proposed to date meet their properties based on Public Key Cryptography (PKC, which offers high flexibility through key agreement protocols and authentication mechanisms. However, when PKC is used, it is necessary to implement Certification Authority (CA to provide certificates which bind public keys to entities and enable verification of such public key bindings. Consequently, the components of the protocol increase notably. An alternative is to use Identity-Based Encryption (IBE. With this kind of cryptography, it is possible to have all the benefits offered by PKC, without neither the need of certificates nor all the core components of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI. Considering the aforementioned, in this paper we propose an electronic voting protocol, which meets the privacy and robustness properties by using bilinear maps.

Electronic Voting Protocol Using Identity-Based Cryptography.

Science.gov (United States)

Gallegos-Garcia, Gina; Tapia-Recillas, Horacio

2015-01-01

Electronic voting protocols proposed to date meet their properties based on Public Key Cryptography (PKC), which offers high flexibility through key agreement protocols and authentication mechanisms. However, when PKC is used, it is necessary to implement Certification Authority (CA) to provide certificates which bind public keys to entities and enable verification of such public key bindings. Consequently, the components of the protocol increase notably. An alternative is to use Identity-Based Encryption (IBE). With this kind of cryptography, it is possible to have all the benefits offered by PKC, without neither the need of certificates nor all the core components of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Considering the aforementioned, in this paper we propose an electronic voting protocol, which meets the privacy and robustness properties by using bilinear maps.

On Adapting the Tensor Voting Framework to Robust Color Image Denoising

Science.gov (United States)

Moreno, Rodrigo; Garcia, Miguel Angel; Puig, Domenec; Julià, Carme

This paper presents an adaptation of the tensor voting framework for color image denoising, while preserving edges. Tensors are used in order to encode the CIELAB color channels, the uniformity and the edginess of image pixels. A specific voting process is proposed in order to propagate color from a pixel to its neighbors by considering the distance between pixels, the perceptual color difference (by using an optimized version of CIEDE2000), a uniformity measurement and the likelihood of the pixels being impulse noise. The original colors are corrected with those encoded by the tensors obtained after the voting process. Peak to noise ratios and visual inspection show that the proposed methodology has a better performance than state-of-the-art techniques.

Class voting in Western industrialized countries, 1945-1990: Systematizing and testing explanations

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Nieuwbeerta, P.; Ultee, W.C.

1999-01-01

Analyzing data obtained from the literature and our own calculations, significant differences were found among countries in their levels of class voting. The Scandinavian countries had the highest and Canada and the USA the lowest levels of class voting. Since the 1950s, there was a decline in

Estimating the preferences of central bankers : an analysis of four voting records

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Eijffinger, S.C.W.; Mahieu, R.J.; Raes, L.

2013-01-01

This paper analyzes the voting records of four central banks (Sweden, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic) with spatial models of voting. We infer the policy preferences of the monetary policy committee members and use these to analyze the evolution in preferences over time and the differences in

A Closed-Form Solution to Tensor Voting: Theory and Applications

OpenAIRE

Wu, Tai-Pang; Yeung, Sai-Kit; Jia, Jiaya; Tang, Chi-Keung; Medioni, Gerard

2016-01-01

We prove a closed-form solution to tensor voting (CFTV): given a point set in any dimensions, our closed-form solution provides an exact, continuous and efficient algorithm for computing a structure-aware tensor that simultaneously achieves salient structure detection and outlier attenuation. Using CFTV, we prove the convergence of tensor voting on a Markov random field (MRF), thus termed as MRFTV, where the structure-aware tensor at each input site reaches a stationary state upon convergence...

Inequality Aversion and Voting on Redistribution

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Höchtl, Wolfgang; Sausgruber, Rupert; Tyran, Jean-Robert

of income classes. We experimentally study voting on redistribution between two income classes and show that the effect of inequality aversion is asymmetric. Inequality aversion is more likely to matter if the “rich” are in majority. With a “poor” majority, we find that redistribution outcomes look...

Inequality aversion and voting on redistribution

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Höchtl, Wolfgang; Sausgruber, Rupert; Tyran, Jean-Robert Karl

2012-01-01

of income classes. We experimentally study voting on redistribution between two income classes and show that the effect of inequality aversion is asymmetric. Inequality aversion is more likely to matter if the “rich” are in majority. With a “poor” majority, we find that redistribution outcomes look...

Brief implicit association test: Validity and utility in prediction of voting behavior

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pavlović Maša D.

2013-01-01

Full Text Available We employed the Brief Implicit Association Test (a recently developed short version of IAT to measure implicit political attitudes toward four political parties running for Serbian parliament. To test its criterion validity, we measured voting intention and actual voting behavior. In addition, we introduced political involvement as a potential moderator of the BIAT’s predictive and incremental validity. The BIAT demonstrated good internal and predictive validity, but lacked incremental validity over self-report measures. Predictive power of the BIAT was moderated by political involvement - the BIAT scores were stronger predictors of voting intention and behavior among voters highly involved in politics. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179018

Frugal Bribery in Voting

OpenAIRE

Dey, Palash; Misra, Neeldhara; Narahari, Y.

2015-01-01

Bribery in elections is an important problem in computational social choice theory. However, bribery with money is often illegal in elections. Motivated by this, we introduce the notion of frugal bribery and formulate two new pertinent computational problems which we call Frugal-bribery and Frugal- $bribery to capture bribery without money in elections. In the proposed model, the briber is frugal in nature and this is captured by her inability to bribe votes of a certain kind, namely, non-vul...

Law as Treaties?: The Constitutionality of Congressional-Executive Agreements

OpenAIRE

Yoo, John C.

2000-01-01

This article seeks to resolve the debate over the use of a statutory method for approving international agreements in place of the supermajority process required by the Constitution's Treaty Clause. These "congressional-executive agreements," which require only simple majorities in Congress and presidential signature, have become the instrument of choice for entry into some of the nation's most significant international obligations, such as the WTO and NAFTA. Some, such as Bruce Ackerman and ...

Strategic Voting in Heterogeneous Electorates: An Experimental Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marcelo Tyszler

2013-11-01

Full Text Available We study strategic voting in a setting where voters choose from three options and Condorcet cycles may occur. We introduce in the electorate heterogeneity in preference intensity by allowing voters to differ in the extent to which they value the three options. Three information conditions are tested: uninformed, in which voters know only their own preference ordering and the own benefits from each option; aggregate information, in which in addition they know the aggregate realized distribution of the preference orderings and full information, in which they also know how the relative importance attributed to the options are distributed within the electorate. As a general result, heterogeneity seems to decrease the level of strategic voting in our experiment compared to the homogenous preference case that we study in a companion paper. Both theoretically and empirically (with data collected in a laboratory experiment, the main comparative static results obtained for the homogenous case carry over to the present setting with preference heterogeneity. Moreover, information about the realized aggregate distribution of preferences seems to be the element that best explains observed differences in voting behavior. Additional information about the realized distribution of preference intensity does not yield significant further changes.

Policy voting, projection, and persuasion: an application of balance theory to electoral behavior

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Visser, Max; Visser, Max

1994-01-01

In this article differences between rational, policy-based, and rationalized voting are discussed, and it is argued that these forms of electoral decision making are not properly analyzed in existing electoral studies. Policy voting, persuasion, and projection are then redefined as three possible

A generalization of Paillier's public-key system with applications to electronic voting

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Jurik, Mads Johan; Nielsen, Jesper Buus

2010-01-01

schemes. We show how the basic scheme for a yes/no vote can be easily adapted to casting a vote for up to t out of L candidates. The same basic building blocks can also be adapted to provide receipt-free elections, under appropriate physical assumptions. The scheme for 1 out of L elections can...

Framing Electoral Transparency: A comparative analysis of three e-votes counting ceremonies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schürmann, Carsten; Markussen, Randi; Bélanger, Olivier

2016-01-01

in the field of e-voting has been proved to be di cult to tackle practically as well as analytically. In this paper we introduce the notion of ‘frames of transparency’ and deploy it to conduct a comparative analysis of three e-votes counting ceremonies in Norway, Estonia and Australia. We ask the question...

Political Broadcast Advertising and Primary Election Voting

Science.gov (United States)

Wanat, John

1974-01-01

Results of a research project which hypothisized that: Other things being equal, the heavier a candidate's usage of broadcast advertising in a primary election campaign, the greater will be his share of the votes in the election. (Author/HB)

Voting Patterns on Hungarian Parliamentary Elections in 2002–2006

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Barnabás Rácz

2009-01-01

Full Text Available In the post–communist transitional era, Hungarian elections show diverse results among various areas, raising the question if there are firmly embedded differences between some parts of the country. In the light of the election returns between 1985–2006, it appears that there is a more or less definite pattern. This study will examine the 2006 legislative returns and compare the results with the previous trends and especially the 2002 data, testing the validity of the findings indicating the presence of some fairly constant regional standards of voting. As a main indicator of past trends we use mostly the territorial (party lists which provide more accurate picture of voting preferences that individual districts which in runoffs carry an indirect distortion of voters’ primary preferences by other considerations.2 For a deeper analysis of the recent 2002 and 2006 elections, we will compare the first run individual district voting outcomes, as they give the more accurate picture of the voters’ real preferences.

Ethics of e-voting: an essay on requirements and values in Internet elections

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pieters, Wolter; Becker, M.J.; Mishra, S.S.

2008-01-01

In this paper, we investigate ethical issues involved in the development and implementation of Internet voting technology. From a phenomenological perspective, we describe how voting via the Internet mediates the relation between people and democracy. In this relation, trust plays a major role. The

Ethics of e-voting: an essay on requirements and values in Internet elections

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pieters, Wolter; Brey, P.A.E.; Becker, M.J.; Grodzinsky, F.S.; Introna, L.D.

2005-01-01

In this paper, we investigate ethical issues involved in the development and implementation of Internet voting technology. From a phenomenological perspective, we describe how voting via the Internet mediates the relation between people and democracy. In this relation, trust plays a major role. The

Why Czech Parliamentary party Groups Vote less Unitedly. The Role of Frequent Voting and Big Majorities in Passing Bills

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Linek, Lukáš; Rakušanová, Petra

2005-01-01

Roč. 41, č. 3 (2005), s. 423-442 ISSN 0038-0288 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z70280505 Keywords : parliamentary party groups * Czech political parties * voting Subject RIV: AO - Sociology, Demography Impact factor: 0.113, year: 2005

Vote!

CERN Multimedia

Association du personnel

2006-01-01

This bulletin comes out at the same time as the public meetings end. The attendance at these meeting encourages us to believe that you feel more and more concerned by your employment conditions and by the Management's decisions in this area. We now must consolidate this interest with a vote. It is essential that you take a few minutes of your time to express your opinion in an electronic poll. Now is the time to seize the opportunity you have been given to influence your employment conditions for the coming five years. We will ask you to give your opinion on two packages, the first concerning the future salary level, the second concerning other employment conditions. In both cases, your participation and replies will determine what the Staff Association should do next and will be carefully watched by our negotiation partners*. We will also ask you to tell us to what extent you would be willing to take action in the event that you disagree with the proposals made by the Management. The Staff Association needs ...

Government instability shifts skin tone representations of and intentions to vote for political candidates.

Science.gov (United States)

Stern, Chadly; Balcetis, Emily; Cole, Shana; West, Tessa V; Caruso, Eugene M

2016-01-01

Does government stability shift the way White and Black Americans represent and make voting decisions about political candidates? Participants judged how representative lightened, darkened, and unaltered photographs were of a racially ambiguous candidate ostensibly running for political office (Studies 1-3). When the governmental system was presented as stable, White participants who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a lightened photo as more representative of the candidate, and Black participants who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a darkened photo as more representative (Studies 1-3). However, under conditions of instability, both Whites and Blacks who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a lightened photo as more representative (Study 3). Representations of (Studies 2 and 3) and actual differences in (Studies 4a and 4b) skin tone predicted intentions to vote for candidates, as a function of government stability and participants' race. Further evidence suggested that system stability shifted the motivations that guided voting decisions (Study 4a and 4b). When the system was stable, the motivation to enhance one's group predicted greater intentions to vote for lighter skinned candidates among Whites, and greater intentions to vote for darker skinned candidates among Blacks. When the system was unstable, however, lacking confidence in the sociopolitical system predicted intentions to vote for lighter skinned candidates among both Whites and Blacks. Implications for political leadership and social perception are discussed. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Personality and Attitude Determinants of Voting Behavior

Science.gov (United States)

Brigham, John C.; Severy, Lawrence J.

1976-01-01

Measures of racial attitude, conceptual style, commitment to candidate and electoral process, social-political evaluation, and voting intentions, were administered to white college students (N=320) before the 1972 Presidential election. Prediction of behavioral intentions becomes more powerful as attitudinal measures are made more directly…

Social influence and political mobilization: Further evidence from a randomized experiment in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jason J Jones

Full Text Available A large-scale experiment during the 2010 U.S. Congressional Election demonstrated a positive effect of an online get-out-the-vote message on real world voting behavior. Here, we report results from a replication of the experiment conducted during the U.S. Presidential Election in 2012. In spite of the fact that get-out-the-vote messages typically yield smaller effects during high-stakes elections due to saturation of mobilization efforts from many sources, a significant increase in voting was again observed. Voting also increased significantly among the close friends of those who received the message to go to the polls, and the total effect on the friends was likely larger than the direct effect, suggesting that understanding social influence effects is potentially even more important than understanding the direct effects of messaging. These results replicate earlier work and they add to growing evidence that online social networks can be instrumental for spreading offline behaviors.

Social influence and political mobilization: Further evidence from a randomized experiment in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, Jason J; Bond, Robert M; Bakshy, Eytan; Eckles, Dean; Fowler, James H

2017-01-01

A large-scale experiment during the 2010 U.S. Congressional Election demonstrated a positive effect of an online get-out-the-vote message on real world voting behavior. Here, we report results from a replication of the experiment conducted during the U.S. Presidential Election in 2012. In spite of the fact that get-out-the-vote messages typically yield smaller effects during high-stakes elections due to saturation of mobilization efforts from many sources, a significant increase in voting was again observed. Voting also increased significantly among the close friends of those who received the message to go to the polls, and the total effect on the friends was likely larger than the direct effect, suggesting that understanding social influence effects is potentially even more important than understanding the direct effects of messaging. These results replicate earlier work and they add to growing evidence that online social networks can be instrumental for spreading offline behaviors.

Allegheny County Voting District Boundaries (Spring 2017 - present)

Data.gov (United States)

Allegheny County / City of Pittsburgh / Western PA Regional Data Center — This dataset demarcates municipal voting districts in Allegheny County.If viewing this description on the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center’s open data...

Mobile phone voting for participation and engagement in a large compulsory law course

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chad Habel

2014-04-01

Full Text Available This article reports on an action-research project designed to investigate the effect of a technological intervention on the complex interactions between student engagement, participation, attendance and preparation in a large lecture delivered as part of a compulsory first-year law course, a discipline which has not been the focus of any previous study. The technology used was VotApedia, a form of mobile phone voting, and it was implemented in tandem with constructivist pedagogies such as explicit pre-reading and a prior context of interactive lecturing. Data were collected through observation, via mobile phone voting in class and by an online survey designed to specifically explore the relationship between attendance at VotApedia lectures and factors such as self-reported engagement, attendance and preparation. The findings indicated that student response systems (SRSs are just as applicable to more Humanities-style disciplines which require divergent questioning, and supported complex interactions between engagement, attendance and preparation. Preliminary findings indicated that, although more work needs to be done, especially on the types of students who prefer to use these systems, there is a clear potential to increase student engagement in large law lectures through the use of SRSs.

7 CFR 900.304 - Who may vote.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... Conduct of Referenda To Determine Producer Approval of Milk Marketing Orders To Be Made Effective Pursuant to Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, as Amended § 900.304 Who may vote. (a) Each producer... Regulations of the Department of Agriculture (Continued) AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Marketing Agreements...

7 CFR 900.307 - Time for voting.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... Conduct of Referenda To Determine Producer Approval of Milk Marketing Orders To Be Made Effective Pursuant to Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, as Amended § 900.307 Time for voting. There shall be... Regulations of the Department of Agriculture (Continued) AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Marketing Agreements...

From stochastic completion fields to tensor voting

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Almsick, van M.A.; Duits, R.; Franken, E.M.; Haar Romenij, ter B.M.; Olsen, O.F.; Florack, L.M.J.; Kuijper, A.

2005-01-01

Several image processing algorithms imitate the lateral interaction of neurons in the visual striate cortex V1 to account for the correlations along contours and lines. Here we focus on two methodologies: tensor voting by Guy and Medioni, and stochastic completion fields by Mumford, Williams and

a technological framework for transparent e-voting solution

African Journals Online (AJOL)

user

Brazil, India, Kazakhstan, Peru, Russia, USA, UAE, and. Venezuela are legally ..... The wireless technology however, must be secure .... upon the reception of GSM network signal during its .... Wallach, “Analysis of an Electronic Voting System”,.

Report to the Congressional Defense Committees: Status of the Department of Defense's Business Transformation Efforts

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

2008-01-01

...). It directs the Secretary of Defense to provide the Congressional Defense Committees with an annual report on the Department's business transformation efforts and compliance with the requirements of the law...

A networked voting rule for democratic representation

Science.gov (United States)

Hernández, Alexis R.; Gracia-Lázaro, Carlos; Brigatti, Edgardo; Moreno, Yamir

2018-03-01

We introduce a general framework for exploring the problem of selecting a committee of representatives with the aim of studying a networked voting rule based on a decentralized large-scale platform, which can assure a strong accountability of the elected. The results of our simulations suggest that this algorithm-based approach is able to obtain a high representativeness for relatively small committees, performing even better than a classical voting rule based on a closed list of candidates. We show that a general relation between committee size and representatives exists in the form of an inverse square root law and that the normalized committee size approximately scales with the inverse of the community size, allowing the scalability to very large populations. These findings are not strongly influenced by the different networks used to describe the individuals' interactions, except for the presence of few individuals with very high connectivity which can have a marginal negative effect in the committee selection process.

A networked voting rule for democratic representation

Science.gov (United States)

Brigatti, Edgardo; Moreno, Yamir

2018-01-01

We introduce a general framework for exploring the problem of selecting a committee of representatives with the aim of studying a networked voting rule based on a decentralized large-scale platform, which can assure a strong accountability of the elected. The results of our simulations suggest that this algorithm-based approach is able to obtain a high representativeness for relatively small committees, performing even better than a classical voting rule based on a closed list of candidates. We show that a general relation between committee size and representatives exists in the form of an inverse square root law and that the normalized committee size approximately scales with the inverse of the community size, allowing the scalability to very large populations. These findings are not strongly influenced by the different networks used to describe the individuals’ interactions, except for the presence of few individuals with very high connectivity which can have a marginal negative effect in the committee selection process. PMID:29657817

Addressing the ethical, legal, and social issues raised by voting by persons with dementia.

Science.gov (United States)

Karlawish, Jason H; Bonnie, Richard J; Appelbaum, Paul S; Lyketsos, Constantine; James, Bryan; Knopman, David; Patusky, Christopher; Kane, Rosalie A; Karlan, Pamela S

2004-09-15

This article addresses an emerging policy problem in the United States participation in the electoral process by citizens with dementia. At present, health care professionals, family caregivers, and long-term care staff lack adequate guidance to decide whether individuals with dementia should be precluded from or assisted in casting a ballot. Voting by persons with dementia raises a series of important questions about the autonomy of individuals with dementia, the integrity of the electoral process, and the prevention of fraud. Three subsidiary issues warrant special attention: development of a method to assess capacity to vote; identification of appropriate kinds of assistance to enable persons with cognitive impairment to vote; and formulation of uniform and workable policies for voting in long-term care settings. In some instances, extrapolation from existing policies and research permits reasonable recommendations to guide policy and practice. However, in other instances, additional research is necessary.

Cohesion and Coalition Formation in the European Parliament: Roll-Call Votes and Twitter Activities.

Science.gov (United States)

Cherepnalkoski, Darko; Karpf, Andreas; Mozetič, Igor; Grčar, Miha

2016-01-01

We study the cohesion within and the coalitions between political groups in the Eighth European Parliament (2014-2019) by analyzing two entirely different aspects of the behavior of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in the policy-making processes. On one hand, we analyze their co-voting patterns and, on the other, their retweeting behavior. We make use of two diverse datasets in the analysis. The first one is the roll-call vote dataset, where cohesion is regarded as the tendency to co-vote within a group, and a coalition is formed when the members of several groups exhibit a high degree of co-voting agreement on a subject. The second dataset comes from Twitter; it captures the retweeting (i.e., endorsing) behavior of the MEPs and implies cohesion (retweets within the same group) and coalitions (retweets between groups) from a completely different perspective. We employ two different methodologies to analyze the cohesion and coalitions. The first one is based on Krippendorff's Alpha reliability, used to measure the agreement between raters in data-analysis scenarios, and the second one is based on Exponential Random Graph Models, often used in social-network analysis. We give general insights into the cohesion of political groups in the European Parliament, explore whether coalitions are formed in the same way for different policy areas, and examine to what degree the retweeting behavior of MEPs corresponds to their co-voting patterns. A novel and interesting aspect of our work is the relationship between the co-voting and retweeting patterns.

Multi-Task Vehicle Detection with Region-of-Interest Voting.

Science.gov (United States)

Chu, Wenqing; Liu, Yao; Shen, Chen; Cai, Deng; Hua, Xian-Sheng

2017-10-12

Vehicle detection is a challenging problem in autonomous driving systems, due to its large structural and appearance variations. In this paper, we propose a novel vehicle detection scheme based on multi-task deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) and region-of-interest (RoI) voting. In the design of CNN architecture, we enrich the supervised information with subcategory, region overlap, bounding-box regression and category of each training RoI as a multi-task learning framework. This design allows the CNN model to share visual knowledge among different vehicle attributes simultaneously, thus detection robustness can be effectively improved. In addition, most existing methods consider each RoI independently, ignoring the clues from its neighboring RoIs. In our approach, we utilize the CNN model to predict the offset direction of each RoI boundary towards the corresponding ground truth. Then each RoI can vote those suitable adjacent bounding boxes which are consistent with this additional information. The voting results are combined with the score of each RoI itself to find a more accurate location from a large number of candidates. Experimental results on the real-world computer vision benchmarks KITTI and the PASCAL2007 vehicle dataset show that our approach achieves superior performance in vehicle detection compared with other existing published works.

75 FR 1525 - Walnuts Grown in California; Changes to Regulations Governing Voting Procedures

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-12

...;Prices of new books are listed in the first FEDERAL REGISTER issue of each #0;week. #0; #0; #0; #0;#0... for voting by mail or telegram to include voting by e-mail and facsimile. In addition, reference to... U.S.C. 601-612), the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has considered the economic impact of this...

El perfil del votante anulista en la elección federal de 2009 en México: independencia partidista y movilidad cognitiva

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gerardo Isaac Cisneros

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The 2009 midterm federal congressional election in Mexico showed an unprecedented phenomenon in the country, since there was a substantial increase in the percentage of null votes. Unlike other research at the aggregate level, this study focuses on the individual analysis of the voters and shows a profile of the voter who annulled his or her vote in that election. The article emphasizes the fact that the main characteristics of anulling voters are their independence of political parties and their high level of cognitive mobility. It also evaluates the differentiated effect of the latter variable on the electoral behavior of independent voters, and concludes by arguing for the need to include independence from political parties and cognitive mobility in the analysis of voting behavior.

Analysing Vote Counting Algorithms Via Logic - And its Application to the CADE Election Scheme

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schürmann, Carsten; Beckert, Bernhard; Gore, Rejeev

2013-01-01

We present a method for using first-order logic to specify the semantics of preferences as used in common vote counting algorithms. We also present a corresponding system that uses Celf linear-logic programs to describe voting algorithms and which generates explicit examples when the algorithm de...

Temptations of turnout and modernisation: e-voting discourses in the UK and the Netherlands

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pieters, Wolter; van Haren, R.

2007-01-01

Purpose – The aim of the research described was to identify reasons for differences between discourses on electronic voting in the UK and The Netherlands, from a qualitative point of view. Design/methodology/approach – From both countries, eight e-voting experts were interviewed on their

2008 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act Survey

Data.gov (United States)

Election Assistance Commission — This dataset contains data about military and overseas voting for the 2008 election cycle. The dataset and corresponding report address ballot transmissions to, and...

2010 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act Survey

Data.gov (United States)

Election Assistance Commission — This dataset contains data about military and overseas voting for the 2010 election cycle. The dataset and corresponding report address ballot transmissions to, and...

Robustness of public choice models of voting behavior

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mihai UNGUREANU

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Modern economics modeling practice involves highly unrealistic assumptions. Since testing such models is not always an easy enterprise, researchers face the problem of determining whether a result is dependent (or not on the unrealistic details of the model. A solution for this problem is conducting robustness analysis. In its classical form, robustness analysis is a non-empirical method of confirmation – it raises our trust in a given result by implying it with from several different models. In this paper I argue that robustness analysis could be thought as a method of post-empirical failure. This form of robustness analysis involves assigning guilt for the empirical failure to a certain part of the model. Starting from this notion of robustness, I analyze a case of empirical failure from public choice theory or the economic approach of politics. Using the fundamental methodological principles of neoclassical economics, the first model of voting behavior implied that almost no one would vote. This was clearly an empirical failure. Public choice scholars faced the problem of either restraining the domain of their discipline or giving up to some of their neoclassical methodological features. The second solution was chosen and several different models of voting behavior were built. I will treat these models as a case for performing robustness analysis and I will determine which assumption from the original model is guilty for the empirical failure.

Gender, populist attitudes, and voting: Explaining the gender gap in voting for populist radical right and populist radical left parties

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Spierings, N.; Zaslove, A.S.

2017-01-01

Empirical studies have demonstrated that compared to almost all other parties, populist radical right (PRR) parties draw more votes from men than from women. However, the two dominant explanations that are generally advanced to explain this disparity - gender differences regarding socio-economic

Congressional Record of Employment Discrimination Against LGBT Public Employees. 1994-2007.

OpenAIRE

Sears, Brad; Mallory, Christy; Hunter, Nan D.

2009-01-01

In considering versions of ENDA from 1994 to 2007, Congress has specifically considered unconstitutional discrimination by state, local, and federal employers against LGBT people. Direct victims of such discrimination have testified at Congressional hearings; legal scholars have presented specific cases as well as scholarship on the history and continuing legacy of such discrimination; social scientists have presented survey data and other studies documenting such discrimination; LGBT rights ...

7 CFR 1230.631 - Challenge of votes.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... the voting period, the ballots of producers may be challenged at the FSA county office. (b) Who can... in-person ballot or an absentee ballot whose name is posted on the In-Person Voter Registration List... notify all challenged persons that documentation such as sales documents, tax records, or other similar...

The 'Snap Vote' of 462/1 BCE

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thomsen, Christian Ammitzbøll

2014-01-01

still holds that the absence of 4,000 politically conservative hoplites under the leadership of Kimon paved the way for radical democratic reform - championed by Ephialtes and voted through the Athenian assembly in a ‘snap vote’ by the mass of democratic rowers who remained in the city. This note re...

Can Governments Use Get Out the Vote Letters to Solve Europe’s Turnout Crisis?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bhatti, Yosef; Dahlgaard, Jens Olav; Hansen, Jonas Hedegaard

2018-01-01

to vote in an upcoming Danish election is delivered to more than 60,000 first-time voters using direct personal letters. Eight different letters are designed, based on the calculus of voting and prospect theory. The sample is randomly divided into treatment groups or the control group. Using validated...

How Voting and Consensus Created the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III).

Science.gov (United States)

Davies, James

2017-04-01

This paper examines how Task Force votes were central to the development of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III and DSM-III-R). Data were obtained through a literature review, investigation of DSM archival material housed at the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and interviews with key Task Force members of DSM-III and DSM-III-R. Such data indicate that Task Force votes played a central role in the making of DSM-III, from establishing diagnostic criteria and diagnostic definitions to settling questions about the inclusion or removal of diagnostic categories. The paper concludes that while the APA represented DSM-III, and the return to descriptive psychiatry it inaugurated, as a triumph of empirically based decision-making, the evidence presented here fails to support that view. Since the DSM is a cumulative project, and as DSM-III lives on through subsequent editions, this paper calls for a more socio-historically informed understanding of DSM's construction to be deployed in how the DSM is taught and implemented in training and clinical settings.

Congressional Award Foundation: Management Action Still Needed to Establish and Document Control Requirements and Related Procedures

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Calbom, Linda

2000-01-01

In May 2000, we issued a report' expressing our opinion on the Congressional Award Foundation's fiscal year 1999 financial statements and on management's assertions regarding the Foundation's system...

The role of remote voting in encouraging return

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Djordje Stefanovic

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Once there is a genuine possibility of going home, what influences a forced migrant’s decision to return to a pre-conflict residence, often in the face of very difficult conditions? What role can remote voting play?

Violencia y comportamiento electoral: el caso del Estado de México / Violence and Voting Behavior: The Case of the State of Mexico

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amalia Pulido Gómez

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Este trabajo analiza el impacto de la violencia en el comportamiento electoral de los ciudadanos del Estado de México en el nivel municipal. Nuestro argumento principal es que la violencia afectará el comportamiento electoral de los ciudadanos en las elecciones municipales, sin embargo, este efecto será diferente para los tres partidos mayoritarios del Estado de México: el Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, el Partido Acción Nacional (PAN y el Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD. Con información de resultados electorales, indicadores socioeconómicos y de la dinámica de la violencia para los procesos electorales de 2006, 2009, 2012 y 2015, presentamos evidencia empírica que respalda el argumento de que la violencia afecta negativamente al PRI y al PAN, pero no al PRD. Nuestros resultados sugieren que la violencia tiene un efecto significativo en las preferencias electorales de los mexiquenses. / This paper analyzes to what extent violence impacts voting behavior in the State of Mexico at the municipal level. The authors argue that violence will affect voting behavior in the municipal elections, but the effect will be different across the three major parties: the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the National Action Party and the Party of the Democratic Revolution. Using electoral data for the 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015 municipal elections as well as demographic data, the authors present empirical support for the argument that high level of violence decreases vote share for the PRI and the PAN, but increases vote share for the PRD. Their findings suggest that violence has significant effects on voters’ party preference in their vote choices.

Violencia y comportamiento electoral: el caso del Estado de México / Violence and Voting Behavior: The Case of the State of Mexico

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amalia Pulido Gómez

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Este trabajo analiza el impacto de la violencia en el comportamiento electoral de los ciudadanos del Estado de México en el nivel municipal. Nuestro argumento principal es que la violencia afectará el comportamiento electoral de los ciudadanos en las elecciones municipales, sin embargo, este efecto será diferente para los tres partidos mayoritarios del Estado de México: el Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, el Partido Acción Nacional (PAN y el Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD. Con información de resultados electorales, indicadores socioeconómicos y de la dinámica de la violencia para los procesos electorales de 2006, 2009, 2012 y 2015, presentamos evidencia empírica que respalda el argumento de que la violencia afecta negativamente al PRI y al PAN, pero no al PRD. Nuestros resultados sugieren que la violencia tiene un efecto significativo en las preferencias electorales de los mexiquenses. / This paper analyzes to what extent violence impacts voting behavior in the State of Mexico at the municipal level. The authors argue that violence will affect voting behavior in the municipal elections, but the effect will be different across the three major parties: the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the National Action Party and the Party of the Democratic Revolution. Using electoral data for the 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015 municipal elections as well as demographic data, the authors present empirical support for the argument that high level of violence decreases vote share for the PRI and the PAN, but increases vote share for the PRD. Their findings suggest that violence has significant effects on voters’ party preference in their vote choices.

Cognitive ability rivals the effect of political sophistication on ideological voting

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hebbelstrup Rye Rasmussen, Stig

2016-01-01

This article examines the impact of cognitive ability on ideological voting. We find, using a US sample and a Danish sample, that the effect of cognitive ability rivals the effect of the traditionally strongest predicter of ideological voting political sophistication. Furthermore, the results...... are consistent with the effect of cognitive ability being partly mediated by political sophistication. Much of the effect of cognitive ability remains however and is not explained by differences in education or Openness to experience either. The implications of these results for democratic theory are discussed....

United States Congressional Districts from LEGIS source data, Geographic NAD83, LOSCO (2004) [us_congress_LEGIS_2001

Data.gov (United States)

Louisiana Geographic Information Center — United States Congressional Districts. The district boundaries are the result of legislative acts and redistricting. Reapportionment (redistricting) occurs during...

Indicators of deprivation, voting patterns, and health status at area level in the Republic of Ireland.

Science.gov (United States)

Kelleher, C; Timoney, A; Friel, S; McKeown, D

2002-01-01

To determine what relation, if any, exists between mortality patterns, indicators of deprivation, general lifestyle and social attitudes, as exemplified by general election voting pattern, in the Republic of Ireland. A relation has been demonstrated previously between voting and mortality patterns in the United Kingdom. Cross sectional ecological study using three data sources. Standardised mortality ratios (SMR) were based on mortality rates at county level and 1996 census data from the Central Statistics Office, 1997 general election first preference voting data in all 41 constituencies were aggregated to county level. Selected reported measures of health status, lifestyle and social circumstances are from the first ever National survey on lifestyles, attitudes and nutrition (SLAN). This study comprised adults over 18 years sampled by post using the electoral register from 273 representative district electoral divisions. Univariate inter-relations were examined at individual level for the dataset as a whole, adjusting for age and at aggregated level for 26 county borough areas, which included the two largest cities and for 22 county areas, which afforded correlation with voting pattern, using the method of Pearson's correlation coefficient. 1,806,932 votes were cast nationally at the 1997 general election, representing a voter turnout of 65.92 %. There was an overall response rate of 62% to SLAN comprising 6539 adults (47% male). The demographic pattern of survey respondents was consistent with that of the general population over 18 years. At individual level there was a large number of highly significant inter-relations between indicators of deprivation, various measures of self rated health status and lifestyle factors. Aggregated at 26 county level percentage unemployed (r=0.408, p=0.038), and level of education (r=0.475, p=0.014) related significantly to SMR and inversely to both fruit and vegetable consumption (r= -0.672, p=0.001) and excess alcohol

Imagining class: A study into material social class position, subjective identification, and voting behavior across Europe.

Science.gov (United States)

D'Hooge, Lorenzo; Achterberg, Peter; Reeskens, Tim

2018-02-01

The traditional approach to class voting has largely ignored the question whether material class positions coincide with subjective class identification. Following Sosnaud et al. (2013), this study evaluates party preferences when Europeans' material and subjective social class do not coincide. Seminal studies on voting behavior have suggested that members of lower classes are more likely to vote for the economic left and cultural right and that higher classes demonstrate the opposite pattern. Yet, these studies have on the one hand overlooked the possibility that there is a mismatch between the material class people can be classified in and the class they think they are part of, and on the other hand the consequences of this discordant class identification on voting behavior. Analyzing the 2009 wave of the European Elections Study, we find that the majority of the Europeans discordantly identify with the middle class, whereas only a minority of the lower and higher classes concordantly identify with their material social class. Further, material class only seems to predict economic voting behavior when it coincides with subjective class; for instance, individuals who have an inflated class identification are more likely to vote for the economic left, even when they materially can be classified as middle or high class. We conclude this paper with a discussion on scholarly debates concerning class and politics. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Public Choice and Private Interest: Explaining the Vote for Property Tax Classification in Massachusetts.

Science.gov (United States)

Bloom, Howard S.

1979-01-01

Argues that citizens' perceptions of their monetary self-interest can markedly influence their votes and that such self-interested voting requires clear definition of the alternatives, widespread publicity about the issues, and a simple presentation of what each alternative implies. Available from NTA-TIA, 21 East State Street, Columbus, OH 43215.…

Psychosocial Correlates as Predictors of Voting Behaviour in Ogun ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

. ... The study examines the influence of some psychosocial factors (age, gender, perceived benefit, self-esteem, personality, and personal attributes of the candidate, religious and ethnic affiliation) on the voting behaviour of Nigerians.

Comments on "A closed-form solution to Tensor voting: theory and applications"

OpenAIRE

Maggiori, Emmanuel; Lotito, Pablo Andres; Manterola, Hugo Luis; del Fresno, Mariana

2017-01-01

We comment on a paper that describes a closed-form formulation to Tensor Voting, a technique to perceptually group clouds of points, usually applied to infer features in images. The authors proved an analytic solution to the technique, a highly relevant contribution considering that the original formulation required numerical integration, a time-consuming task. Their work constitutes the first closed-form expression for the Tensor Voting framework. In this work we first observe that the propo...

How are Voters Influenced by Opinion Polls? The Effect of Polls on Voting Behavior and Party Sympathy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dahlgaard, Jens Olav; Hansen, Jonas Hedegaard; Hansen, Kasper Møller

2016-01-01

Similar to all other types of information, public opinion polls can influence public opinion. We present two hypotheses to understand how polls affect public opinion: the bandwagon and the underdog effect. The bandwagon effect claims that voters "jump on the bandwagon," which means that if a party...... hypotheses. We find evidence of the bandwagon effect, and the effect is strongest in the positive direction. When voters learn that a party is gaining in the polls, voters will be more likely to vote for it. There is also some evidence for the negative bandwagon effect. We find no evidence for the underdog...... is gaining in the polls, the party will gain additional support from the voters, and vice versa if the party is losing in the polls. The underdog effect suggests that if a party is losing in the polls, the party will gain some sympathy votes to offset this loss. We use a survey experiment to test the two...

Iterative Tensor Voting for Perceptual Grouping of Ill-Defined Curvilinear Structures: Application to Adherens Junctions

Science.gov (United States)

Loss, Leandro A.; Bebis, George; Parvin, Bahram

2012-01-01

In this paper, a novel approach is proposed for perceptual grouping and localization of ill-defined curvilinear structures. Our approach builds upon the tensor voting and the iterative voting frameworks. Its efficacy lies on iterative refinements of curvilinear structures by gradually shifting from an exploratory to an exploitative mode. Such a mode shifting is achieved by reducing the aperture of the tensor voting fields, which is shown to improve curve grouping and inference by enhancing the concentration of the votes over promising, salient structures. The proposed technique is applied to delineation of adherens junctions imaged through fluorescence microscopy. This class of membrane-bound macromolecules maintains tissue structural integrity and cell-cell interactions. Visually, it exhibits fibrous patterns that may be diffused, punctate and frequently perceptual. Besides the application to real data, the proposed method is compared to prior methods on synthetic and annotated real data, showing high precision rates. PMID:21421432

Voting-based Classification for E-mail Spam Detection

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bashar Awad Al-Shboul

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The problem of spam e-mail has gained a tremendous amount of attention. Although entities tend to use e-mail spam filter applications to filter out received spam e-mails, marketing companies still tend to send unsolicited e-mails in bulk and users still receive a reasonable amount of spam e-mail despite those filtering applications. This work proposes a new method for classifying e-mails into spam and non-spam. First, several e-mail content features are extracted and then those features are used for classifying each e-mail individually. The classification results of three different classifiers (i.e. Decision Trees, Random Forests and k-Nearest Neighbor are combined in various voting schemes (i.e. majority vote, average probability, product of probabilities, minimum probability and maximum probability for making the final decision. To validate our method, two different spam e-mail collections were used.

Using the SIRDE model of social change to examine the vote of Scottish teenagers in the 2014 independence referendum.

Science.gov (United States)

Grant, Peter R; Bennett, Mark; Abrams, Dominic

2017-09-01

Five hundred and seventy-three Scottish high school students were surveyed in the 2 months following the 2014 referendum on Scotland's independence. We used the Social Identity, Relative Deprivation, collective Efficacy (SIRDE) model of social change to examine the social psychological factors that should have influenced the voting choices of these teenagers. Structural equation modelling indicated that the SIRDE model fit the data and largely supported four sets of hypotheses derived from the model. Specifically, (1) those with a stronger Scottish identity, (2) those who felt frustrated and angry that Scottish people are discriminated against in British society, and (3) those who believed that Scottish people are not able to improve their relatively poor social conditions within the United Kingdom (a lack of collective efficacy) were more likely to hold separatist beliefs. Further, the relationships between identity, relative deprivation, and collective efficacy, on the one hand, and voting for Scotland's independence, on the other, were fully mediated by separatist social change beliefs. Consistent with the specificity of the model, neither political engagement nor personal relative deprivation were associated with voting choice, whereas the latter was associated with lower life satisfaction. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

VT Data - Voting Tabulation Areas per Decennial Redistricting 2012

Data.gov (United States)

Vermont Center for Geographic Information — (Link to Metadata) This layer represents the smallest voting tabulation area. In some cases, the geographic extent is a municipality, in other cases it is a section...

75 FR 1614 - Submission for OMB Review-2010 Election Administration and Voting Survey; Comment Request

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-12

... ballots cast; voter registration; overseas and military voting; Election Day activities; voting technology... FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Ms. Karen Lynn-Dyson or Ms. Shelly Anderson at (202) 566-3100. SUPPLEMENTARY... transmitted, returned and submitted for counting (cast), and counted; (b) Total number of UOCAVA absentee...

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication

Science.gov (United States)

Johann, David; Königslöw, Katharina Kleinen-von; Kritzinger, Sylvia; Thomas, Kathrin

2018-01-01

An increasing number of citizens change and adapt their party preferences during the electoral campaign. We analyze which short-term factors explain intra-campaign changes in voting preferences, focusing on the visibility and tone of news media reporting and party canvassing. Our analyses rely on an integrative data approach, linking data from media content analysis to public opinion data. This enables us to investigate the relative impact of news media reporting as well as party communication. Inherently, we overcome previously identified methodological problems in the study of communication effects on voting behavior. Our findings reveal that campaigns matter: Especially interpersonal party canvassing increases voters’ likelihood to change their voting preferences in favor of the respective party, whereas media effects are limited to quality news outlets and depend on individual voters’ party ambivalence.

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication.

Science.gov (United States)

Johann, David; Königslöw, Katharina Kleinen-von; Kritzinger, Sylvia; Thomas, Kathrin

2018-01-01

An increasing number of citizens change and adapt their party preferences during the electoral campaign. We analyze which short-term factors explain intra-campaign changes in voting preferences, focusing on the visibility and tone of news media reporting and party canvassing. Our analyses rely on an integrative data approach, linking data from media content analysis to public opinion data. This enables us to investigate the relative impact of news media reporting as well as party communication. Inherently, we overcome previously identified methodological problems in the study of communication effects on voting behavior. Our findings reveal that campaigns matter: Especially interpersonal party canvassing increases voters' likelihood to change their voting preferences in favor of the respective party, whereas media effects are limited to quality news outlets and depend on individual voters' party ambivalence.

IMPORTANT COMMUNICATION: Pension Fund elections - Cancellation of the current voting procedure

CERN Multimedia

2004-01-01

As you are aware, voting is currently under way for the election of two members and two alternates to the Governing Board of the Pension Fund. To this end, all members of the Pension Fund have recently received ballot papers. To ensure fair process, the Regulations for elections of the Pension Fund prescribe that all candidates standing for election must be given an equal amount of publicity space in the Weekly Bulletin to introduce themselves. Accordingly, as on previous occasions, each of the four candidates for this year's elections was granted a slot in the Weekly Bulletins of 11 October and 1 November 2004. While voting was already in process, a flash was published by the Staff Association, endorsing one of the four candidates and inviting members to vote for that particular person only. Thus, one candidate received substantial additional publicity compared to the other three candidates. The matter was raised at the meeting of the Governing Board of 2 November and the Board decided that the ...

7 CFR 900.302 - Associations eligible to vote.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... Conduct of Referenda To Determine Producer Approval of Milk Marketing Orders To Be Made Effective Pursuant to Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, as Amended § 900.302 Associations eligible to vote... Agriculture Regulations of the Department of Agriculture (Continued) AGRICULTURAL MARKETING SERVICE (Marketing...

Sophisticated approval voting, ignorance priors, and plurality heuristics: a behavioral social choice analysis in a Thurstonian framework.

Science.gov (United States)

Regenwetter, Michel; Ho, Moon-Ho R; Tsetlin, Ilia

2007-10-01

This project reconciles historically distinct paradigms at the interface between individual and social choice theory, as well as between rational and behavioral decision theory. The authors combine a utility-maximizing prescriptive rule for sophisticated approval voting with the ignorance prior heuristic from behavioral decision research and two types of plurality heuristics to model approval voting behavior. When using a sincere plurality heuristic, voters simplify their decision process by voting for their single favorite candidate. When using a strategic plurality heuristic, voters strategically focus their attention on the 2 front-runners and vote for their preferred candidate among these 2. Using a hierarchy of Thurstonian random utility models, the authors implemented these different decision rules and tested them statistically on 7 real world approval voting elections. They cross-validated their key findings via a psychological Internet experiment. Although a substantial number of voters used the plurality heuristic in the real elections, they did so sincerely, not strategically. Moreover, even though Thurstonian models do not force such agreement, the results show, in contrast to common wisdom about social choice rules, that the sincere social orders by Condorcet, Borda, plurality, and approval voting are identical in all 7 elections and in the Internet experiment. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved.

Allegheny County Voting District Boundaries (Spring 2015 - Spring 2016)

Data.gov (United States)

Allegheny County / City of Pittsburgh / Western PA Regional Data Center — This dataset demarcates municipal voting districts in Allegheny County. If viewing this description on the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center’s open data...

Allegheny County Voting District Boundaries (Fall 2016 - Spring 2017)

Data.gov (United States)

Allegheny County / City of Pittsburgh / Western PA Regional Data Center — This dataset demarcates municipal voting districts in Allegheny County. If viewing this description on the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center’s open data...

Price-Anderson Act: Congressional review begins

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anon.

1984-01-01

Every 10 years Congress reviews, amends, and extends the Price-Anderson Act of 1957, which was designed to encourage the new nuclear industry by guaranteeing insurance beyond the level provided by private insurers. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is recommending five congressional actions for the 1987 extension: reauthorization, replacement of the absolute insurance limitation with an annual limitation of liability, raising the retrospective premium per reactor per incident from $5 million to $10 million, raising the statute of limitations on claims for 20 to 30 years, and retaining current language dealing with extraordinary events. Two bills, H.R. 421 and H.R. 3277, were introduced with provisions that broaden the opportunity for victims compensation and eliminate the subsidy aspect. Hearings began in July, with reactions from the National Taxpayers Union and Nuclear insurance underwriters in conflict over the limitations on liability. DOE and DOE contractors urge continuation of the Price-Anderson limitation

An adaptive tensor voting algorithm combined with texture spectrum

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Gang; Su, Qing-tang; Lü, Gao-huan; Zhang, Xiao-feng; Liu, Yu-huan; He, An-zhi

2015-01-01

An adaptive tensor voting algorithm combined with texture spectrum is proposed. The image texture spectrum is used to get the adaptive scale parameter of voting field. Then the texture information modifies both the attenuation coefficient and the attenuation field so that we can use this algorithm to create more significant and correct structures in the original image according to the human visual perception. At the same time, the proposed method can improve the edge extraction quality, which includes decreasing the flocculent region efficiently and making image clear. In the experiment for extracting pavement cracks, the original pavement image is processed by the proposed method which is combined with the significant curve feature threshold procedure, and the resulted image displays the faint crack signals submerged in the complicated background efficiently and clearly.

75 FR 52318 - Presidential Academies for American History and Civics Education; Congressional Academies for...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-08-25

... preparation for, teaching these subjects. The Congressional Academies for Students of American History and... in historical methodology or the teaching of history. We published a notice of proposed waiver and... or the teaching of history. The Secretary certifies that the waiver and extension of project period...

Voting rights for older children and civic education

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Merry, Michael; Schinkel, Anders

2016-01-01

The issue of voting rights for older children has been high on the political and philosophical agenda for quite some time now, and not without reason. Aside from principled moral and philosophical reasons why it is an important matter, many economic, environmental, and political issues are currently

The reconstruction of revocation againts the rights to vote or to be voted in public post for those who are found guilty in corruption case in Indonesia from a progressive legal perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Tinambunan, HSR.; Widodo, H.; Ahmad, GA.

2018-01-01

Revocation of the right to vote and elected in public office for corruption convicted by the court is absolutely necessary, but in view of the limitations amongst them, the judge shall state how long the right is revoked, and provide a detailed reason why the relevant person shall be subject to an additional penalty of revocation, the non-regulation of the criteria of corruption convicts as to which additional crimes of impunity may be imposed and elected in public office in law. The removal of the right to vote and to be elected in public post is coherent with the progressive law conception that promotes the integration of law and the values of justice in society. The progressive step by the judge in the revocation of the right to vote and elected to the corruption convicts is absolutely necessary, with the legal pluralism approach to encourage pro justice and progressive law enforcement. Revision to the Criminal Code and Law no. 31 of 1999, especially regarding the criteria of what corruption convicts who can be sentenced to additional revocation of the right to vote and be elected is a necessity.

Optimistic Selection Rule Better Than Majority Voting System

Science.gov (United States)

Sugiyama, Takuya; Obata, Takuya; Hoki, Kunihito; Ito, Takeshi

A recently proposed ensemble approach to game-tree search has attracted a great deal of attention. The ensemble system consists of M computer players, where each player uses a different series of pseudo-random numbers. A combination of multiple players under the majority voting system would improve the performance of a Shogi-playing computer. We present a new strategy of move selection based on the search values of a number of players. The move decision is made by selecting one player from all M players. Each move is selected by referring to the evaluation value of the tree search of each player. The performance and mechanism of the strategy are examined. We show that the optimistic selection rule, which selects the player that yields the highest evaluation value, outperforms the majority voting system. By grouping 16 or more computer players straightforwardly, the winning rates of the strongest Shogi programs increase from 50 to 60% or even higher.

The costs of no – a two-dimensional issue-voting model of voter behavior in EU referendums

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Beach, Derek

) (Svensson 1994, 2002)? The argument in this paper is that issue-voting is increasingly becoming the prevalent dynamic in EU referendums as voters become increasingly knowledgeable about EU affairs and believe that referendums are important questions worthy of the investment of significant time and effort...... in understanding the issues. However, in contrast to existing issue-voting arguments, I argue that the calculation of the utility of voting yes/no by voters has two distinct dimensions. Existing models are based upon the idea that voters undertake a utility calculation of the benefits of ratifying an EU treaty (or...... removing an opt-out), but this does not capture the separate reasoning of voters regarding what happens in the event that the country votes no....

Legality, separation of powers, stability of electoral law: The impact of new voting technologies

OpenAIRE

Driza Maurer, Ardita

2016-01-01

Legality, separation of powers and stability of electoral law are some of the principles of the European constitutional heritage. They should be respected and implemented throughout the electoral process, including when new voting technologies are used. This paper discusses e-voting specific implementations of the principles or challenges to it. Ongoing and proposed improvements in legislation or practice are pinpointed.

Entitlement to vote in the Canton of Geneva and entitlement to vote and eligibility for election in the Canton of Vaud

CERN Multimedia

DG Unit

2011-01-01

You are reminded that, at commune level, certain international civil servants and their family members: are entitled to vote in the Canton of Geneva are entitled to vote and are eligible for election in the Canton of Vaud. For further information, in particular regarding the special procedure to be followed to apply to exercise these entitlements, you are invited to consult the information published, in French only, on the Swiss Mission’s website (topic « Privileges and immunities (Manual) » : http://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/fr/home/topics/intorg/un/unge/gepri/manvot/manvt1.html (for the Canton of Geneva), http://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/fr/home/topics/intorg/un/unge/gepri/manvot/manvt2.html (for the Canton of Vaud). The dates of the forthcoming ballots are available on the official websites of the cantonal administrative authorities : for Geneva: http://www.ge.ch/votations-elections/prochains-scrutins/; for Vaud: http://www.vd.ch/fr/themes/etat-droit-financ...

Entitlement to vote in the Canton of Geneva and entitlement to vote and eligibility for election in the Canton of Vaud

CERN Multimedia

DG Unit

2009-01-01

You are reminded that, at commune level, certain international civil servants and their family members: are entitled to vote in the Canton of Geneva are entitled to vote and are eligible for election in the Canton of Vaud. For further information, in particular regarding the special procedure to be followed to apply to exercise these entitlements, you are invited to consult the information published, in French only, on the Swiss Mission’s website: for the Canton of Genevafor the Canton of VaudThe dates of the forthcoming ballots are available on the official websites of the cantonal administrative authorities: for Geneva: referendum and forthcoming ballots ; for Vaud: forthcoming ballots In this context, please note, especially with regard to eligibility for election, that: in accordance with Articles S I 3.05 and I 3.06 of the Staff Rules "Members of the personnel wishing to take part in the public and political life of a State shall comply with the relevant legislat...

The Theory and Implementation of Electronic Voting Systems

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Groth, Jens; Salomonsen, Gorm

2002-01-01

scheme shorter and easier to compute and verify, for voters as well as authorities, than in currently known schemes. Finally, we discuss various issues connected with the security of a practical implementation of the scheme for on-line voting. Notably, this includes minimizing risks that are beyond what...

The 26th Amendment and Youth Voting Rights.

Science.gov (United States)

Schamel, Wynell

1996-01-01

Describes learning activities to be used in conjunction with a facsimile of the 92nd Congress's joint resolution passing the 26th Amendment extending the voting franchise to 18-year-olds. These activities include document analysis, time lines, class discussions, and storytelling. Briefly reviews the amendment process. (MJP)

Voting strategy for artifact reduction in digital breast tomosynthesis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wu Tao; Moore, Richard H.; Kopans, Daniel B.

2006-01-01

Artifacts are observed in digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) reconstructions due to the small number of projections and the narrow angular range that are typically employed in tomosynthesis imaging. In this work, we investigate the reconstruction artifacts that are caused by high-attenuation features in breast and develop several artifact reduction methods based on a 'voting strategy'. The voting strategy identifies the projection(s) that would introduce artifacts to a voxel and rejects the projection(s) when reconstructing the voxel. Four approaches to the voting strategy were compared, including projection segmentation, maximum contribution deduction, one-step classification, and iterative classification. The projection segmentation method, based on segmentation of high-attenuation features from the projections, effectively reduces artifacts caused by metal and large calcifications that can be reliably detected and segmented from projections. The other three methods are based on the observation that contributions from artifact-inducing projections have higher value than those from normal projections. These methods attempt to identify the projection(s) that would cause artifacts by comparing contributions from different projections. Among the three methods, the iterative classification method provides the best artifact reduction; however, it can generate many false positive classifications that degrade the image quality. The maximum contribution deduction method and one-step classification method both reduce artifacts well from small calcifications, although the performance of artifact reduction is slightly better with the one-step classification. The combination of one-step classification and projection segmentation removes artifacts from both large and small calcifications

Reliability and considerations of electronic voting, a global vision

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jussibeth Tatiana Places Chungata

2017-03-01

Full Text Available This article is intended to perform an analysis of all the aspects that comprise and revolve around the use or implementation of new technologies in election processes such as automation of democracy; this is done through the collection of bibliographic information from articles, books, and other sources on concepts, differences, comparisons, methodology of citizen participation, experiences, among others. With the purpose of establishing the utility or inconveniences that may present this electronic voting system to use it in real elections. There are realized general descriptions of every topic, where little by little possible factors of adoption are explored or I reject to this new technology, clarifying in the functionality, used elements and factors to comply. As a result, it reflects on the positive and negative impact that have these systems in society, giving points to consider about this Automation at different stages which comprise the electoral processes, from the construction, configuration, storage up to the transmission and consolidation of results. Is leaves clear them criteria that is should evaluate a system of vote electronic that van from reliability to effectiveness in their processes, to determine the need and relationship of costs - benefits. Without leaving of side our country, there is described the current condition that has the system of electronic vote in our electoral processes, which until now has not been implemented, only has performed testing of printing in our community.

Celebrity Politics: Correlates of Voting for Celebrities in Philippine Presidential Elections

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Clarissa C. David

2015-12-01

Full Text Available It is common in the Philippines for celebrities in entertainment, news, and sports to run for public office and win, even with little experience in political life and limited education. The preponderance of celebrities in politics is often identif ied in the public discourse as a problem with important implications on national policy. This paper examines empirical correlates of voter preference for celebrity Presidential candidates with data from a nationally-representative survey. It finds support for the hypotheses that the likelihood of voting for celebrity candidates for President and Vice President is associated with education, television exposure, and residence in the capital city. The findings are discussed in the context of political knowledge and its role in shaping voter preferences.

Mechanisms for efficient voting with private information about preferences

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Engelmann, Dirk; Grimm, V.

2012-01-01

Roč. 122, č. 563 (2012), s. 1010-1041 ISSN 0013-0133 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z70850503 Keywords : simple voting game * linking decisions * successful cooperation Subject RIV: AH - Economics Impact factor: 2.118, year: 2012

Voting on pensions: sex and marriage

OpenAIRE

Leroux, Marie-Louise; Pestieau, Pierre; Racionero, Maria

2009-01-01

Existing political economy models of pensions focus on age and productivity. In this paper we incorporate two additional individual characteristics: sex and marital status. We ignore the role of age, by assuming that people vote at the start of their life, and characterize the preferred rate of taxation that finances a Beveridgean pension scheme when individuals differ in wage, sex and marital status. We allow for two types of couples: one-breadwinner and two-breadwinner couples. Marriage poo...

Voting-based consensus clustering for combining multiple clusterings of chemical structures

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Saeed Faisal

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Although many consensus clustering methods have been successfully used for combining multiple classifiers in many areas such as machine learning, applied statistics, pattern recognition and bioinformatics, few consensus clustering methods have been applied for combining multiple clusterings of chemical structures. It is known that any individual clustering method will not always give the best results for all types of applications. So, in this paper, three voting and graph-based consensus clusterings were used for combining multiple clusterings of chemical structures to enhance the ability of separating biologically active molecules from inactive ones in each cluster. Results The cumulative voting-based aggregation algorithm (CVAA, cluster-based similarity partitioning algorithm (CSPA and hyper-graph partitioning algorithm (HGPA were examined. The F-measure and Quality Partition Index method (QPI were used to evaluate the clusterings and the results were compared to the Ward’s clustering method. The MDL Drug Data Report (MDDR dataset was used for experiments and was represented by two 2D fingerprints, ALOGP and ECFP_4. The performance of voting-based consensus clustering method outperformed the Ward’s method using F-measure and QPI method for both ALOGP and ECFP_4 fingerprints, while the graph-based consensus clustering methods outperformed the Ward’s method only for ALOGP using QPI. The Jaccard and Euclidean distance measures were the methods of choice to generate the ensembles, which give the highest values for both criteria. Conclusions The results of the experiments show that consensus clustering methods can improve the effectiveness of chemical structures clusterings. The cumulative voting-based aggregation algorithm (CVAA was the method of choice among consensus clustering methods.

Performance of the majority voting rule in solving the density classification problem in high dimensions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gomez Soto, Jose Manuel [Unidad Academica de Matematicas, Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, Calzada Solidaridad entronque Paseo a la Bufa, Zacatecas, Zac. (Mexico); Fuks, Henryk, E-mail: jmgomezgoo@gmail.com, E-mail: hfuks@brocku.ca [Department of Mathematics, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON (Canada)

2011-11-04

The density classification problem (DCP) is one of the most widely studied problems in the theory of cellular automata. After it was shown that the DCP cannot be solved perfectly, the research in this area has been focused on finding better rules that could solve the DCP approximately. In this paper, we argue that the majority voting rule in high dimensions can achieve high performance in solving the DCP, and that its performance increases with dimension. We support this conjecture with arguments based on the mean-field approximation and direct computer simulations. (paper)

Performance of the majority voting rule in solving the density classification problem in high dimensions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gomez Soto, Jose Manuel; Fuks, Henryk

2011-01-01

The density classification problem (DCP) is one of the most widely studied problems in the theory of cellular automata. After it was shown that the DCP cannot be solved perfectly, the research in this area has been focused on finding better rules that could solve the DCP approximately. In this paper, we argue that the majority voting rule in high dimensions can achieve high performance in solving the DCP, and that its performance increases with dimension. We support this conjecture with arguments based on the mean-field approximation and direct computer simulations. (paper)

Method for secure electronic voting system: face recognition based approach

Science.gov (United States)

Alim, M. Affan; Baig, Misbah M.; Mehboob, Shahzain; Naseem, Imran

2017-06-01

In this paper, we propose a framework for low cost secure electronic voting system based on face recognition. Essentially Local Binary Pattern (LBP) is used for face feature characterization in texture format followed by chi-square distribution is used for image classification. Two parallel systems are developed based on smart phone and web applications for face learning and verification modules. The proposed system has two tire security levels by using person ID followed by face verification. Essentially class specific threshold is associated for controlling the security level of face verification. Our system is evaluated three standard databases and one real home based database and achieve the satisfactory recognition accuracies. Consequently our propose system provides secure, hassle free voting system and less intrusive compare with other biometrics.

Adoption of E-Voting System to Enhance the Electoral Process in Developing Countries

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Agbesi, Samuel

2018-01-01

The literature reviewed confirm challenges in the electoral process in developing countries like Ghana. These challenges are mainly Institutional and Technical Challenges. The Institutional challenges come from the electoral commission, security agencies such as the Police, and civil society groups...... that are not well equipped to lend their full support to the electoral process, and also electoral challenges can be identified in three stages, pre-election, during an election, and after the election. And it is assumed that e-voting system when adopted will resolve this electoral challenges, but the system design...... should be approached from the Socio-technical perspective so that the system will not fail after implementation....

Voting Power and Shareholder Activism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Strand, Therese; Poulsen, Thomas; Thomsen, Steen

2010-01-01

The article discusses the development of a voting power theory that is applied to a unique data set on Swedish shareholder meetings. The authors hypothesize that there is a positive relationship between shareholder activism and the largest shareholder's sensitivity to greater participation by small...... shareholders. It is shown that firms' amenability to small shareholder influence results in more proposals by nomination committees that are dominated by large shareholders, but fewer proposals by other shareholders. The importance of local institutions are highlighted and a call for more research regarding...... shareholder activism in alternative institutional settings is mad...

Teaching Case: Analysis of an Electronic Voting System

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, Nik; Toohey, Danny

2014-01-01

This teaching case discusses the analysis of an electronic voting system. The development of the case was motivated by research into information security and management, but as it includes procedural aspects, organizational structure and personnel, it is a suitable basis for all aspects of systems analysis, planning and design tasks. The material…

The Paradox of the American Popular Vote in the 2016 Elections: The Failure of the New "Epistocratic Democracy?"

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Brîndușa Palade

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This paper argues for the formation, during the U.S. presidential elections in 2016, of a hybrid „epistocratic democracy” sustained by politically competent elites who defend the interests of the most disadvantaged groups. The winning of the popular vote by the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton supports the hypothesis that if the populist and illiberal political rhetoric gained electoral support and led to Donald Trump’s election, this process has triggered, at the same time, the reactive emergence of an „epistocratic democracy” which gets stronger through the democratic protests against Trump’s policies and their racist undertones.

How campaigns enhance European issues voting during European Parliament elections

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Beach, Derek; Møller Hansen, Kasper; Larsen, Martin Vinæs

2017-01-01

Based on findings from the literature on campaign effects on the one hand, and the literature on European Parliament elections on the other, we propose a model of European Parliamentary elections in which the campaign shift the calculus of electoral support, making differences in national political...... allegiances less important and attitudes about the European project more important by informing voters of and getting them interested in European politics. In effect, we argue that the political campaign leading up to the election makes European Parliament elections less second-order. While previous studies...... have demonstrated that EU attitudes can matter for voting behavior in European Parliament elections, existing research has drawn on post-election surveys that do not enable us to capture campaign effects. Our contribution is to assess the impact of a campaign by utilizing a rolling cross sectional...

E-Voting Solutions for Digital Democracy in Knowledge Society

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marian STOICA

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Emergent technologies specific to current information and knowledge society, and social networks influence every aspect of our existence, from lucrative activities to recreational ones. There is no part of our life that is not influenced by the explosive development of general information and communication technologies. We witness a spectacular and until recently unimagined metamorphoses of work nature, business process reengineering, controversial evolution of social networks and new directions of electronic government. Over this background of changes, we take on the tasks of deepening the understanding of field that is largely unexplored, namely the electronic vote in digital democracy, without taking any side, pro or against this type of casting our electoral options. The current context encompasses technological, legislative, political, economic and social aspects. Even more, the context of electronic voting in digital democracy involves aspects regarding globalization, technical challenges concerning interoperability, data standardization and security.

Voting rights for alien residents--who wants it?

Science.gov (United States)

Tung, K R

1985-01-01

Foreign nationals permanently domiciled in Sweden have been entitled since 1975 to vote and to municipal and county council elections. This article examines some of the major issues associated with international migration and disenfranchisement of migrants created by a contradiction between economic and political rationale. The alien population of Sweden remained small for a long time, but during the 1960s it rose 1st to 300,000 and later to 400,000 persons. Since 1970, aliens have constituted roughly 5% of the total national population of 8.3 million. Surveys following the 3 elections held in Sweden so far have shown immigrants to be quite well informed concerning election procedures and the parties. In contrast to single males, women with children tend to be highly stable, because of favorable social security for women, particularly for women with children. Participation elections among women (55%) is higher than among men (49%), and married women (58%) are usually the highest participants. Class-voting is still rather strong in Sweden; the percentage difference in preference for Socialist parties between working-class and middle-class was as high 55% in 1960. Long term trends in the distribution of party-preference among immigrants are determined to a large extent by the policy on immigration regulation and political asylum for refugees and exiles. Another selectivity is due to the differential remigration rate. A 1976 study showed that although local franchise of immigrants is now the law of the land, some Swedes are still against the granting of voting rights and electability to immigrants. On the whole, there is clearly a psychological environment conducive, at least in Stockholm, to the task of putting local franchise reform into real practice.

A theoretical adaptive model of thermal comfort - Adaptive Predicted Mean Vote (aPMV)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Yao, Runming [School of Construction Management and Engineering, The University of Reading (United Kingdom); Faculty of Urban Construction and Environmental Engineering, Chongqing University (China); Li, Baizhan [Key Laboratory of the Three Gorges Reservoir Region' s Eco-Environment (Ministry of Education), Chongqing University (China); Faculty of Urban Construction and Environmental Engineering, Chongqing University (China); Liu, Jing [School of Construction Management and Engineering, The University of Reading (United Kingdom)

2009-10-15

This paper presents in detail a theoretical adaptive model of thermal comfort based on the ''Black Box'' theory, taking into account factors such as culture, climate, social, psychological and behavioural adaptations, which have an impact on the senses used to detect thermal comfort. The model is called the Adaptive Predicted Mean Vote (aPMV) model. The aPMV model explains, by applying the cybernetics concept, the phenomena that the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) is greater than the Actual Mean Vote (AMV) in free-running buildings, which has been revealed by many researchers in field studies. An Adaptive coefficient ({lambda}) representing the adaptive factors that affect the sense of thermal comfort has been proposed. The empirical coefficients in warm and cool conditions for the Chongqing area in China have been derived by applying the least square method to the monitored onsite environmental data and the thermal comfort survey results. (author)

Another issue comes out: gay rights policy voting in recent U.S. presidential elections.

Science.gov (United States)

Rhodebeck, Laurie A

2015-01-01

Drawing from the theory of policy voting, this study examines the impact of opinions about gay rights on voting for presidential candidates. Qualitative analysis of the major party platforms and candidate campaign rhetoric from the six presidential elections held between 1988 and 2008 indicates that Democratic and Republican presidential candidates began openly expressing opposing positions on gay rights issues in 1992. Quantitative analysis of public opinion shows that, starting in 1992 and continuing through 2008, gay rights issues became more salient to the public, and opinions about gay rights began to exert a significant effect on vote choice. The study concludes with a discussion of the partisan forces that shaped the electoral significance of gay rights issues during the period from 1988 to 2008 and speculation about the role of gay rights issues in shaping future partisan electoral strategy.

Speaker gender identification based on majority vote classifiers

Science.gov (United States)

Mezghani, Eya; Charfeddine, Maha; Nicolas, Henri; Ben Amar, Chokri

2017-03-01

Speaker gender identification is considered among the most important tools in several multimedia applications namely in automatic speech recognition, interactive voice response systems and audio browsing systems. Gender identification systems performance is closely linked to the selected feature set and the employed classification model. Typical techniques are based on selecting the best performing classification method or searching optimum tuning of one classifier parameters through experimentation. In this paper, we consider a relevant and rich set of features involving pitch, MFCCs as well as other temporal and frequency-domain descriptors. Five classification models including decision tree, discriminant analysis, nave Bayes, support vector machine and k-nearest neighbor was experimented. The three best perming classifiers among the five ones will contribute by majority voting between their scores. Experimentations were performed on three different datasets spoken in three languages: English, German and Arabic in order to validate language independency of the proposed scheme. Results confirm that the presented system has reached a satisfying accuracy rate and promising classification performance thanks to the discriminating abilities and diversity of the used features combined with mid-level statistics.

Should EU Citizens Living in other Member States Vote there in National Elections?

OpenAIRE

CAYALA, Philippe; SETH, Catriona; BAUBÖCK, Rainer

2012-01-01

The core right of EU citizenship is freedom of movement within the territory of the Union. But EU citizens who live in a member state other than their homeland cannot vote in the national elections of that country unless they first acquire its citizenship through naturalisation. In several member states they also lose their right to vote in national elections of their country of origin when they have lived abroad for too long. A group of EU citizens has started a European Citizens' Initiative...

First order augmentation to tensor voting for boundary inference and multiscale analysis in 3D.

Science.gov (United States)

Tong, Wai-Shun; Tang, Chi-Keung; Mordohai, Philippos; Medioni, Gérard

2004-05-01

Most computer vision applications require the reliable detection of boundaries. In the presence of outliers, missing data, orientation discontinuities, and occlusion, this problem is particularly challenging. We propose to address it by complementing the tensor voting framework, which was limited to second order properties, with first order representation and voting. First order voting fields and a mechanism to vote for 3D surface and volume boundaries and curve endpoints in 3D are defined. Boundary inference is also useful for a second difficult problem in grouping, namely, automatic scale selection. We propose an algorithm that automatically infers the smallest scale that can preserve the finest details. Our algorithm then proceeds with progressively larger scales to ensure continuity where it has not been achieved. Therefore, the proposed approach does not oversmooth features or delay the handling of boundaries and discontinuities until model misfit occurs. The interaction of smooth features, boundaries, and outliers is accommodated by the unified representation, making possible the perceptual organization of data in curves, surfaces, volumes, and their boundaries simultaneously. We present results on a variety of data sets to show the efficacy of the improved formalism.

CBO Testimony: Statement of Robert F. Hale, Assistant Director, National Security Division, Congressional Budget Office

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Hale, Robert F

1991-01-01

.... This testimony, by Robert F. Hale, Congressional Budget Office, covers the following topics: Socioeconomic Backgrounds of Enlisted Recruits, Racial Mix of Enlisted Recruits, Shifts in Recruiting during the 1980s, Altering the Composition of the Military: Reserve Mobilization and Conscription, and Should the Social Composition of the Military be a Concern?

Evaluating ballot initiative support for legalised marijuana: The case of Washington.

Science.gov (United States)

Collingwood, Loren; O'Brien, Ben Gonzalez; Dreier, Sarah

2018-03-11

In 2012, Washington and Colorado became the first U.S. states to legalise recreational marijuana. By 2016, eight states and the District of Columbia had legalised recreational marijuana, with more expected to consider it in 2018. Despite this trend, little academic research explains what drives ballot-initiative vote choice on marijuana legalisation. This paper uses a pre-election random sample voter survey to examine the individual characteristics that correlated with Washington voters' support for legal recreational marijuana. We find that voting on marijuana ballot initiatives largely reflects public opinion about marijuana and is particularly shaped voters' political ideology, party affiliation, religious affiliation and practice, and education. Notably, we find that those reporting experiences (i.e., someone they know) with the criminal justice system are more supportive of legalisation than those who do not. We conclude that marijuana legalisation voting behavior generally aligns with public opinion on the issue. However, one key aspect of Washington's legalisation campaign-the criminal injustices of marijuana illegality-helped shape Washington state voting behavior. Further research is needed to examine if, when, and in what contexts criminal justice campaign themes are likely to strengthen or undermine future states' marijuana legalisation efforts. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Embryo Cell Membranes Reconstruction by Tensor Voting

OpenAIRE

Michelin , Gaël; Guignard , Léo; Fiuza , Ulla-Maj; Malandain , Grégoire

2014-01-01

International audience; Image-based studies of developing organs or embryos produce a huge quantity of data. To handle such high-throughput experimental protocols, automated computer-assisted methods are highly desirable. This article aims at designing an efficient cell segmentation method from microscopic images. The proposed approach is twofold: first, cell membranes are enhanced or extracted by the means of structure-based filters, and then perceptual grouping (i.e. tensor voting) allows t...

An OMIC biomarker detection algorithm TriVote and its application in methylomic biomarker detection.

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, Cheng; Liu, Jiamei; Yang, Weifeng; Shu, Yayun; Wei, Zhipeng; Zheng, Weiwei; Feng, Xin; Zhou, Fengfeng

2018-04-01

Transcriptomic and methylomic patterns represent two major OMIC data sources impacted by both inheritable genetic information and environmental factors, and have been widely used as disease diagnosis and prognosis biomarkers. Modern transcriptomic and methylomic profiling technologies detect the status of tens of thousands or even millions of probing residues in the human genome, and introduce a major computational challenge for the existing feature selection algorithms. This study proposes a three-step feature selection algorithm, TriVote, to detect a subset of transcriptomic or methylomic residues with highly accurate binary classification performance. TriVote outperforms both filter and wrapper feature selection algorithms with both higher classification accuracy and smaller feature number on 17 transcriptomes and two methylomes. Biological functions of the methylome biomarkers detected by TriVote were discussed for their disease associations. An easy-to-use Python package is also released to facilitate the further applications.

Vote for your favorite tourist attraction on "Le Dauphiné Libéré"

CERN Multimedia

2015-01-01

Dear colleagues, During the summer, the French regional daily newspaper Le Dauphiné Libéré has been inviting its readers to vote for their favourite tourist attraction (natural or otherwise) in the Bellegarde area and the Pays de Gex, and CERN is one of the nominees. This is a great opportunity for us to communicate directly with people living in the region, particularly those who have not yet had the chance to visit CERN, and who, thanks to this survey, might be curious to learn more about the Laboratory and pay us a visit. Remember, visits to CERN are free of charge all year round! We invite you to vote for CERN by clicking on this link: http://www.ledauphine.com/ain/2015/07/10/votez-pur-votre-site-prefere-dans-le-bassin-bellegardien-et-le-pays-de-gex. We’re counting on your votes! CERN Local Communication team

Congressional Restrictions on U.S. Military Operations in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Somalia, and Kosovo: Funding and Non-Funding Approaches

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Belasco, Amy; Cunningham, Lynn J; Fischer, Hannah; Niksch, Larry A

2007-01-01

This report discusses the political context and congressional consideration of various funding and other restrictive legislative language applying to military operations in Indochina between 1970 and 1973...

76 FR 29750 - Filing Dates for the Nevada Special Election in the 2nd Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2011-05-23

... 2nd Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: Nevada has scheduled a Special General Election on September 13, 2011, to fill... Heller. Committees required to file reports in connection with the Special General Election on September...

75 FR 10483 - Filing Dates for the Pennsylvania Special Election in the 12th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2010-03-08

... in the 12th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: Pennsylvania has scheduled a Special General Election on May 18... John P. Murtha. Committees required to file reports in connection with the Special General Election on...

76 FR 17124 - Filing Dates for the California Special Election in the 36th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2011-03-28

... the 36th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: California has scheduled a special general election on May 17, 2011, to... committees of candidates who participate in the California Special General and Special Runoff Elections shall...

Electricity is the real target - nuclear energy the scapegoat. Comparison between nuclear energy and hydro power voting behaviour

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Aegerter, Irene

1993-01-01

As nuclear community sometimes feel desperate because the nuclear energy is a very special subject triggering so much controversy among women and young persons especially it has been found that the battle against nuclear energy is just a pretext. Comparing the campaign on a referendum against hydropower - voted in Switzerland in may 1992 it was found astonishingly that exactly the same arguments were applied as during the campaign for the phase out of nuclear energy in 1990. The results were presented at PIME 1991. Voting behaviour for nuclear energy and hydro power are comparable: the gender gap (32% acceptance by men versus 48% by women) found in the 1992 vote about stopping hydropower plants in Switzerland was bigger than the one found in the 1990 vote about nuclear energy. A detailed analysis of these data is presented

One voice or different choice?: Vote defection of European Union member states in the United Nations General Assembly

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Burmester, Nicolas; Jankowski, Michael

2018-01-01

Existing research suggests that European Union member states are increasingly able to act in concert in the United Nations General Assembly. Based on several hundred co-ordination meetings per year, the European Union ‘speaks with one voice’ on most of the resolutions voted upon in the United...... Nations General Assembly. However, little is known about instances where the European Union member states do not vote coherently. Three questions remain unanswered. First, which aspects affect deviating voting behaviour of European Union member states? Second, who are the most frequent defectors from...... the European Union’s majority position? Third, which voting blocs within the European Union can be identified? The article answers these questions in a quantitative design by controlling for domestic factors, issues of resolutions and the position of the United States. The results suggest that domestic aspects...

An efficient method for tensor voting using steerable filters

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Franken, E.M.; Almsick, van M.A.; Rongen, P.M.J.; Florack, L.M.J.; Haar Romenij, ter B.M.; Leonardis, A.; Bischof, H; Pinz, A.

2006-01-01

In many image analysis applications there is a need to extract curves in noisy images. To achieve a more robust extraction, one can exploit correlations of oriented features over a spatial context in the image. Tensor voting is an existing technique to extract features in this way. In this paper, we

Education's impact on explanations of radical right-wing voting

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lubbers, M.; Tolsma, J.

2011-01-01

One of the reactions to the large demographic changes in Europe due to migration has been the rise of radical right-wing parties. Previous research has shown that education is one of the most relevant explanations of this voting behaviour. By pooling the European Social Surveys from 2002, 2004, 2006

75 FR 34450 - Filing Dates for the Indiana Special Election in the 3rd Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2010-06-17

... 3rd Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: Indiana has scheduled a Special General Election on November 2, 2010, to fill.... Committees required to file reports in connection with the Special General Election on November 2, 2010...

Class voting and Left–Right party positions: A comparative study of 15 Western democracies, 1960–2005

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jansen, G.; Evans, G.; Graaf, N.D. de

2013-01-01

Studies that explain the class voting have often focused on "bottom-up" social factors, but paid little attention to 'top-down' political factors. We argue that party positions on left–right ideology have an effect on the strength of class voting. This argument is tested by estimating the impact of

Enacting tobacco taxes by direct popular vote in the United States: lessons from 20 years of experience.

Science.gov (United States)

Lum, K L; Barnes, R L; Glantz, S A

2009-10-01

Tobacco tax increases reduce tobacco use, can provide funds for tobacco prevention and enjoy broad public support. Because of tobacco industry influence in legislatures, US public health advocates have shifted the venue for tobacco tax policymaking to direct popular vote 22 times since 1988. We combined case studies of individual state campaigns with tobacco industry documents to identify strategies related to outcome. The tobacco industry developed a voter segmentation model to determine which tobacco tax increases it could defeat. Two industry arguments arising from this model often were raised in losing campaigns-the tax increase did not dedicate enough to tobacco control and hospitals and health maintenance organisations would profit. The industry effectively influenced early voters. Success was associated with building a strong base of public support before the campaign, dedicating sufficient funds to tobacco control, avoiding proposals largely devoted to financing hospitals and other medical service providers, effectively engaging grassroots and framing the campaign with clear justifications for cigarette tax increases. Tobacco tax ballot measures commonly allocated substantial funds to medical services; tobacco companies are becoming more successful in making this use of funds an issue. Proponents' campaigns should be timed to account for the trend to voting well before election day. Ballot measures to increase tobacco taxes with a substantial fraction of the money devoted to tobacco control activities will probably fare better than ones that give priority to funding medical services.

Gender, populist attitudes, and voting: Explaining the gender gap in voting for populist radical right and populist radical left parties

OpenAIRE

Spierings, N.; Zaslove, A.S.

2017-01-01

Empirical studies have demonstrated that compared to almost all other parties, populist radical right (PRR) parties draw more votes from men than from women. However, the two dominant explanations that are generally advanced to explain this disparity - gender differences regarding socio-economic position and lower perceptions regarding the threat of immigrants - cannot fully explain the difference. The article contends that it might actually be gender differences regarding the conceptualisati...

PERILAKU NON-VOTING DALAM PEMILIHAN KEPALA DAERAH KOTA PADANG PERIODE 2008-2013 (Studi Kasus di Kecamatan Koto Tangah

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aina Aina

2013-06-01

Full Text Available The direct provincial and mayoral election often witnesses the tendency of low voter turnout, as happened in Padang city mayoral election in 2008. This research seeks to reveal the non-voting behavior and the causes of the behavior in Koto Tangah district, which has the lowest voter turnout; 42.51%. This research is a descriptive-qualitative where data is obtained by using in-depth interview technique and documentation study. Snowball sampling is used to select sample of voters who vote in Padang 2008 election. The data was then analyzed using qualitative method. The result shows that there were two types of non-voting behavior in Koto Tangah community in Padang 2008 mayoral election; (1 did not come to the ballot box; (2 did come to the ballot box but did not cast ballots properly. The behavior was caused by several factors; (1 psychological factor; (2 factor of political system; (3 factor of political trust; and (4 factor of socio-economic status. Psychological factor means non-voters’ characters tend to be apathetic and ignorant of politics. In terms of political system factor, non-voting behavior was driven by dissatisfaction with the government’s performance which showed no change. Political trust factor showed that most non-voters do not believe in the processes and results of the local elections. Meanwhile, in socio-economic status, most non-voters are educated. On the other hand, employment and income also contributed to the non-voting behavior. Key words: direct local election, Padang mayoral election, low voter turnout, non-voting behavior

Class voting and Left–Right party positions: A comparative study of 15 Western democracies, 1960–2005

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jansen, Giedo

2013-01-01

Studies that explain the class voting have often focused on “bottom-up” social factors, but paid little attention to ‘top-down’ political factors. We argue that party positions on left–right ideology have an effect on the strength of class voting. This argument is tested by estimating the impact of

Pesticides: Improvements Needed To Ensure the Safety of Farmworkers and Their Children. Report to Congressional Requesters.

Science.gov (United States)

Guerrero, Peter F.

In response to a Congressional request, the General Accounting Office examined issues related to pesticide safety for children in agricultural settings. Pesticides can cause acute, chronic, or delayed-onset illnesses. Children may be exposed to pesticides through farm work; eating pesticide-treated foods; or contact with drift from pesticide…

76 FR 33285 - Filing Dates for the Nevada Special Election in the 2nd Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2011-06-08

... 2nd Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for... members of major or minor political parties on the special general election ballot until candidates are... INFORMATION: On May 12, 2011, the Commission approved the filing dates for the Special General Election in the...

78 FR 68443 - Filing Dates for the Florida Special Elections in the 13th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2013-11-14

... 13th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for... Primary and the Special General Election on March 11, 2014, shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report, 12-day... committees of candidates who participate in the Florida Special Primary and Special General Elections shall...

75 FR 12544 - Filing Dates for the Hawaii Special Election In the 1st Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2010-03-16

... 1st Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: Hawaii has scheduled a Special General Election on May 22, 2010, to fill the U.... Committees required to file reports in connection with the Special General Election on May 22, 2010, shall...

78 FR 9916 - Filing Dates for the Missouri Special Election in the 8th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2013-02-12

... 8th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: Missouri has scheduled a Special General Election on June 4, 2013, to fill the.... Committees required to file reports in connection with the Special General Election on June 4, 2013, shall...

Voting for a Career

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Egerod, Benjamin Carl Krag

effects depending on the senator's career ambitions. While retiring senators are no longer accountable to anyone but themselves, revolving door politicians will be accountable to their future employers, because they depend on them for post-elective employment. During their final Congress, this should lead......I investigate how the revolving door affects voting in the Senate. The literature on final-term problems suggests that senators should become more extreme before they leave office, because they no longer are accountable to voters. Lack of electoral accountability could, however, have different...... revolving door senators to moderate themselves, while retiring ones should grow more partisan. Using data on post-elective career trajectories from 102nd to the 113th Senate, I present fixed effects estimates that back this claim. I show that the effect is driven by senators, who choose to resign...

Tweets Win Votes: A Persuasive Communication Perspective on Donald Trump’s Twitter Use During the 2016 US Presidential Election Campaign

OpenAIRE

Bai, Yu

2017-01-01

Twitter, a microblogging platform, has been increasingly used as a tool for political election campaigns. In an attempt to persuade people to vote for them, candidates and political parties worldwide have begun to incorporate Twitter in their campaigns to disseminate campaign information, promote themselves, and mobilize voters. In the 2016 U.S presidential election, Donald Trump had actively utilized Twitter to promote his campaign and convince voters to support him, which helped him earn a ...

A voting-based star identification algorithm utilizing local and global distribution

Science.gov (United States)

Fan, Qiaoyun; Zhong, Xuyang; Sun, Junhua

2018-03-01

A novel star identification algorithm based on voting scheme is presented in this paper. In the proposed algorithm, the global distribution and local distribution of sensor stars are fully utilized, and the stratified voting scheme is adopted to obtain the candidates for sensor stars. The database optimization is employed to reduce its memory requirement and improve the robustness of the proposed algorithm. The simulation shows that the proposed algorithm exhibits 99.81% identification rate with 2-pixel standard deviations of positional noises and 0.322-Mv magnitude noises. Compared with two similar algorithms, the proposed algorithm is more robust towards noise, and the average identification time and required memory is less. Furthermore, the real sky test shows that the proposed algorithm performs well on the real star images.

Congressional Budget Action for Fiscal Year 2012 and Its Impact on Education Funding. Issue Brief

Science.gov (United States)

Delisle, Jason

2011-01-01

The fiscal year 2012 budget process has been anything but typical or predictable. While fiscal year 2012 starts in just a few weeks on October 1, 2011, the annual appropriations process is far from complete, and funding for federal education programs has not yet been finalized. Nevertheless, congressional action in the months that have led up to…

Sex, race, gender, and the presidential vote

OpenAIRE

Susan B. Hansen

2016-01-01

Racial resentment has been shown to have a significant impact on voting by whites in recent presidential elections, and a much larger impact than the traditional gender-gap measure based on the male-female dichotomy. This analysis will use data from the American National Election Studies [ANES] to compare broader indicators of race and gender applicable to the Democratic and Republican parties as well as to respondents’ opinions of appropriate roles for women. Since the 1980s the parties have...

75 FR 17742 - Filing Dates for the Georgia Special Election in the 9th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-07

... 9th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: Georgia has scheduled a special general election on May 11, 2010, to fill the U... participate in the Georgia Special General and Special Runoff Elections shall file a 12-day Pre-General Report...

76 FR 51366 - Filing Dates for the Oregon Special Election in the 1st Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2011-08-18

... 1st Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for... Special Primary and Special General Election on January 31, 2012, shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report... Primary and Special General Elections shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report on October 27, 2011; a...

77 FR 56208 - Filing Dates for the Kentucky Special Election in the 4th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2012-09-12

... 4th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: Kentucky has scheduled a general election on November 6, 2012, to fill the U.S... required to file reports in connection with the Special General Election on November 6, 2012, shall file a...

78 FR 53454 - Filing Dates for the Louisiana Special Elections in the 5th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2013-08-29

... the 5th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: Louisiana has scheduled a Special General Election on October 19, 2013, to fill... Special General and Special Runoff Elections shall file a 12-day Pre-General Report on October 7, 2013; a...

The effect of subsidising firms on voting behaviour: Evidence from Flemish elections

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Caroline Buts

2012-06-01

Full Text Available Despite an international consensus on the importance to limit State aid spending, large amounts of resources are still devoted to a wide variety of subsidies to firms. A sizable literature studies the relationship between general government spending and the proximity of elections, mostly documenting a positive link. In addition, other studies verify whether this strategy of increasing government expenditure pays off in terms of number of votes. We focus on one type of government spending that can be quite vulnerable to becoming ‘targeted spending’, i.e. subsidies to firms. We empirically test the relationship between the amount of subsidies granted to firms at the local level and local support for incumbent parties in the regional government. To that end, we make use of subsidy data derived from financial statements on 2008 and Flemish election results of 2004 and 2009. We find that the total amount of subsidies as well as subsidies per capita granted in 2008 positively correlate to support for incumbent parties 2009, meaning that voters appear to reward subsidy granting politicians.

Voting over Selective Immigration Policies with Immigration Aversion

OpenAIRE

Giuseppe Russo

2011-01-01

The claim that "skilled immigration is welcome" is often associated to the increasing adoption of selective immigration policies. I study the voting over differentiated immigration policies in a two-country, three-factor general equilibrium model where there exist skilled and unskilled workers, migration decisions are endogenous, enforcing immigration restriction is costly, and natives dislike unskilled immigration. According to my findings, decisions over border closure are made to protect t...

The Context of Voting: Does Neighborhood Ethnic Diversity Affect Turnout?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bhatti, Yosef; Danckert, Bolette; Hansen, Kasper Møller

2017-01-01

(mobilization theory), diminishes social cohesion that in turn makes voters likely to withdraw from voting (marginalization theory), or does not impact turnout at all. This study is one of the first to investigate the question using individual-level longitudinal data, which adds substantially to the causal...

Consumer protection : Federal actions are needed to improve oversight of the household goods moving industry : report to congressional committees

Science.gov (United States)

2001-03-01

The ICC Termination Act of 1995 transferred federal responsibilities for protecting consumers who move their household goods across state lines using commercial moving companies to the Department of Transportation. A 1998 congressional hearing brough...

78 FR 48869 - Filing Dates for the Massachusetts Special Elections in the 5th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2013-08-12

... in the 5th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates... Special Primary and the Special General Election on December 10, 2013, shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary... Elections shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report on October 3, 2013; a 12-day Pre- General Report on...

77 FR 43823 - Filing Dates for the Michigan Special Election in the 11th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2012-07-26

... 11th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for... Special Primary and Special General Election on November 6, 2012, shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report... Elections shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report on August 24, 2012; a 12-day Pre-General Report on October...

75 FR 62131 - Filing Dates for the New York Special Election in the 29th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-07

... 29th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: New York has scheduled a Special General Election on November 2, 2010, to fill.... Committees required to file reports in connection with the Special General Election on November 2, 2010...

76 FR 45797 - Filing Dates for the New York Special Election in the 9th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2011-08-01

... 9th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: New York has scheduled a Special General Election on September 13, 2011, to.... Committees required to file reports in connection with the Special General Election on September 13, 2011...

Weather conditions and political party vote share in Dutch national parliament elections, 1971-2010

Science.gov (United States)

Eisinga, Rob; Te Grotenhuis, Manfred; Pelzer, Ben

2012-11-01

Inclement weather on election day is widely seen to benefit certain political parties at the expense of others. Empirical evidence for this weather-vote share hypothesis is sparse however. We examine the effects of rainfall and temperature on share of the votes of eight political parties that participated in 13 national parliament elections, held in the Netherlands from 1971 to 2010. This paper merges the election results for all Dutch municipalities with election-day weather observations drawn from all official weather stations well distributed over the country. We find that the weather parameters affect the election results in a statistically and politically significant way. Whereas the Christian Democratic party benefits from substantial rain (10 mm) on voting day by gaining one extra seat in the 150-seat Dutch national parliament, the left-wing Social Democratic (Labor) and the Socialist parties are found to suffer from cold and wet conditions. Cold (5°C) and rainy (10 mm) election day weather causes the latter parties to lose one or two parliamentary seats.

Public support for river restoration funding in relation to local river ecomorphology, population density, and mean income

Science.gov (United States)

SchläPfer, Felix; Witzig, Pieter-Jan

2006-12-01

In 1997, about 140,000 citizens in 388 voting districts in the Swiss canton of Bern passed a ballot initiative to allocate about 3 million Swiss Francs annually to a canton-wide river restoration program. Using the municipal voting returns and a detailed georeferenced data set on the ecomorphological status of the rivers, we estimate models of voter support in relation to local river ecomorphology, population density, mean income, cultural background, and recent flood damage. Support of the initiative increased with increasing population density and tended to increase with increasing mean income, in spite of progressive taxation. Furthermore, we found evidence that public support increased with decreasing "naturalness" of local rivers. The model estimates may be cautiously used to predict the public acceptance of similar restoration programs in comparable regions. Moreover, the voting-based insights into the distribution of river restoration benefits provide a useful starting point for debates about appropriate financing schemes.

Presidential Debate Watching, Issue Knowledge, Character Evaluation, and Vote Choice

Science.gov (United States)

Benoit, William L.; Hansen, Glenn J.

2004-01-01

This study employs NES (National Election Survey) data from several presidential elections to investigate the effects of presidential debate watching on voters' issue knowledge, character evaluation, and vote choice. Debates can instill issue knowledge; however, voters are less likely to learn about incumbent presidents seeking re-election after a…

Towards a Global History of Voting: Sovereignty, the Diffusion of Ideas, and the Enchanted Individual

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David Gilmartin

2012-05-01

Full Text Available This article suggests a framework for moving toward a global history of voting and democracy that focuses less on the diffusion of European ideas (however important those ideas were than on embedding the history of voting within a worldwide history of ideas on sovereignty. The article posits a general framework for such a history focusing on a “conundrum of sovereignty” grounding legitimate rule in a space imagined as simultaneously within and outside worldly society. Rooted in a “secular theology” such ideas shaped in the 19th and 20th centuries the establishment of systems of mass voting (including the secret ballot, and the sovereignty of the “people” both in Europe and other parts of the world alike, in the process producing an image of the individual voter as an “enchanted individual.” The article looks at developments within Europe and in India in these terms.1

Climate Change Beliefs Count: Relationships With Voting Outcomes at the 2010 Australian Federal Election

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rod McCrea

2015-05-01

Full Text Available Climate change is a political as well as an environmental issue. Climate change beliefs are commonly associated with voting behaviour, but are they associated with swings in voting behaviour? The latter are arguably more important for election outcomes. This paper investigates the predictive power of these beliefs on voting swings at the 2010 Australian federal election after controlling for a range of other related factors (demographic characteristics of voters, different worldviews about nature and the role of government, and the perceived opportunity cost of addressing climate change. Drawing on data from two nationally representative surveys of voters and data from the Australian Electoral Commission, this paper investigates relationships between climate change beliefs and voting swings at both the individual and electorate levels. At an individual level, a hypothetical 10% change in climate change beliefs was associated with a 2.6% swing from a conservative Coalition and a 2.0% swing toward Labor and 1.7% toward the Greens party, both left on the political spectrum. At the electorate level, this equates to a shift of 21 seats between the two main political parties (the Coalition and Labor in Australia’s 150 seat parliament, after allocating Green preferences. Given many seats are marginal, even modest shifts in climate change beliefs can be associated with changes in electoral outcomes. Thus, climate change is expected to remain a politically contested issue in countries like Australia where political parties seek to distinguish themselves, in part, by their responses to climate change.

77 FR 9927 - Filing Dates for the Arizona Special Election in the 8th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2012-02-21

... 8th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for... Special Primary and Special General Election on June 12, 2012, shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report, a... Elections shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report on April 5, 2012; a 12-day Pre-General Report on May 31...

77 FR 22574 - Filing Dates for the Washington Special Election In the 1st Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2012-04-16

... the 1st Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for... Special Primary and Special General Election on November 6, 2012, shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report... Elections shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report on July 26, 2012; a 12-day Pre-General Report on October 25...

77 FR 75161 - Filing Dates for the Illinois Special Election in the 2nd Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2012-12-19

... 2nd Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for... Special Primary and Special General Election on April 9, 2013, shall file a 12- day Pre-Primary Report, a... Elections shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report on February 14, 2013; a 12-day Pre-General Report on March...

76 FR 16419 - Filing Dates for the New York Special Election in the 26th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2011-03-23

... 26th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates for special election. SUMMARY: New York has scheduled a Special General Election on May 24, 2011, to fill the.... Committees required to file reports in connection with the Special General Election on May 24, 2011, shall...

Memberships, Voting, Social Trust, and Online Participation in Emerging Adulthood

Science.gov (United States)

Menard, Lauren Ann; Slater, Robert O.

2012-01-01

American political and civic engagement was examined by life stage and educational attainment levels in 2008 political data. Engaged proportions of older Americans were larger than young Americans for Memberships, Voting, and Social Trust. A larger proportion of Young Adults (23%) than Older Adults (19%), however, was found for Online…

A Logical Analysis of Quantum Voting Protocols

Science.gov (United States)

Rad, Soroush Rafiee; Shirinkalam, Elahe; Smets, Sonja

2017-12-01

In this paper we provide a logical analysis of the Quantum Voting Protocol for Anonymous Surveying as developed by Horoshko and Kilin in (Phys. Lett. A 375, 1172-1175 2011). In particular we make use of the probabilistic logic of quantum programs as developed in (Int. J. Theor. Phys. 53, 3628-3647 2014) to provide a formal specification of the protocol and to derive its correctness. Our analysis is part of a wider program on the application of quantum logics to the formal verification of protocols in quantum communication and quantum computation.

Ising percolation in a three-state majority vote model

Science.gov (United States)

Balankin, Alexander S.; Martínez-Cruz, M. A.; Gayosso Martínez, Felipe; Mena, Baltasar; Tobon, Atalo; Patiño-Ortiz, Julián; Patiño-Ortiz, Miguel; Samayoa, Didier

2017-02-01

In this Letter, we introduce a three-state majority vote model in which each voter adopts a state of a majority of its active neighbors, if exist, but the voter becomes uncommitted if its active neighbors are in a tie, or all neighbors are the uncommitted. Numerical simulations were performed on square lattices of different linear size with periodic boundary conditions. Starting from a random distribution of active voters, the model leads to a stable non-consensus state in which three opinions coexist. We found that the "magnetization" of the non-consensus state and the concentration of uncommitted voters in it are governed by an initial composition of system and are independent of the lattice size. Furthermore, we found that a configuration of the stable non-consensus state undergoes a second order percolation transition at a critical concentration of voters holding the same opinion. Numerical simulations suggest that this transition belongs to the same universality class as the Ising percolation. These findings highlight the effect of an updating rule for a tie between voter neighbors on the critical behavior of models obeying the majority vote rule whenever a strict majority exists.

Voting on the environment: Price or ideology? Evidence from Swiss referendums

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bornstein, Nicholas [Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, ENAC - INTER - REME, BP St. 16, 1015 Lausanne (Switzerland); Lanz, Bruno [Economics for the Environment Consultancy Ltd - EFTEC, 73-75 Mortimer Street, London, W1W 7SQ (United Kingdom)

2008-10-15

Studies on preferences for environmental quality usually posit that price and income explain most of the observed choices. Incorporating recent advances in the economics of non-selfish behavior into the traditional public choice approach, we argue that the willingness to contribute to public goods as well as social norms need to be taken into account when analyzing environmental voting outcomes. We study aggregate results of three ballot proposals in Switzerland put to vote in the year 2000 which foresaw different tax schemes on fossil energy. Our main results show that the aggregate level choice pattern is to be explained by income as well as structural attributes that make costs and benefits of the projects vary. More importantly, our results underline the importance of including variables pertaining to the notion of ideology, both in terms of statistical fit and obtaining unbiased estimates for price and income determinants. (author)

Voting on the environment: Price or ideology? Evidence from Swiss referendums

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bornstein, Nicholas; Lanz, Bruno

2008-01-01

Studies on preferences for environmental quality usually posit that price and income explain most of the observed choices. Incorporating recent advances in the economics of non-selfish behavior into the traditional public choice approach, we argue that the willingness to contribute to public goods as well as social norms need to be taken into account when analyzing environmental voting outcomes. We study aggregate results of three ballot proposals in Switzerland put to vote in the year 2000 which foresaw different tax schemes on fossil energy. Our main results show that the aggregate level choice pattern is to be explained by income as well as structural attributes that make costs and benefits of the projects vary. More importantly, our results underline the importance of including variables pertaining to the notion of ideology, both in terms of statistical fit and obtaining unbiased estimates for price and income determinants. (author)

Early Election Returns and the Voting Behavior of Adolescent Voters

Science.gov (United States)

Mann, Leon; And Others

1971-01-01

High school students participated in a field experiment that tested the effects of exposure to early election returns in a nonpartisan referendum. Students in the brighter classes changed their vote less frequently, but when they changed their preferences they showed a greater bandwagon effect. Students in the classes of lower academic achievement…

"All in Favour, Say Aye!" Voting in Pupils' Collaborative Talk

Science.gov (United States)

Newman, Ruth

2015-01-01

This paper draws on the findings of an Economic and Social Research Council and British Telecom-funded project which explored the teaching of collaborative talk in the secondary English classroom. During the analysis of the video data collected, voting was observed as a strategy in pupils' collaborative decision-making. Converse to its democratic…

Electoral campaigns and their effect on voting. A study of the 2003 presidential elections in Argentina

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Orlando D’ADAMO

2013-10-01

Full Text Available This paper aims to explore empirically the potential influence presidential electoral campaigns may exert on the process of voting decision making. Four dimensions of this problem are analysed: 1. the communicational resources of a campaign that result most effective, 2. if the voters perceive the differential media exposure received by each of the candidates, 3. in case they do, if that perception has an impact on the positive image of the candidates and 4. the capacity of campaigns to operate changes on the voting decision. The obtained data indicate that in the memory they build of campaigns, the subjects recognize the predominance of television messages, perceive the differential media exposure of candidates, that this perception does not necessarily mean they have a positive image of those who received more media exposure, and that they point out the potential of the campaign to change their initial voting decision.

Voting to Ban Same-Sex Marriage: Interests, Values, and Communities

Science.gov (United States)

McVeigh, Rory; Diaz, Maria-Elena D.

2009-01-01

From 2000 through 2008, initiatives proposing to ban same-sex marriage were on the ballot in 28 states. Although same-sex marriage opponents scored lopsided victories in most cases, voting outcomes varied substantially at the county level. This article examines sources of that variation and argues that opposition to same-sex marriage should be…

17 CFR 270.32a-2 - Exemption for initial period from vote of security holders on independent public accountant for...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... from vote of security holders on independent public accountant for certain registered separate accounts... from vote of security holders on independent public accountant for certain registered separate accounts... 32(a) of the Act that selection of an independent public accountant shall have been submitted for...

System-level protection and hardware Trojan detection using weighted voting.

Science.gov (United States)

Amin, Hany A M; Alkabani, Yousra; Selim, Gamal M I

2014-07-01

The problem of hardware Trojans is becoming more serious especially with the widespread of fabless design houses and design reuse. Hardware Trojans can be embedded on chip during manufacturing or in third party intellectual property cores (IPs) during the design process. Recent research is performed to detect Trojans embedded at manufacturing time by comparing the suspected chip with a golden chip that is fully trusted. However, Trojan detection in third party IP cores is more challenging than other logic modules especially that there is no golden chip. This paper proposes a new methodology to detect/prevent hardware Trojans in third party IP cores. The method works by gradually building trust in suspected IP cores by comparing the outputs of different untrusted implementations of the same IP core. Simulation results show that our method achieves higher probability of Trojan detection over a naive implementation of simple voting on the output of different IP cores. In addition, experimental results show that the proposed method requires less hardware overhead when compared with a simple voting technique achieving the same degree of security.

A closed-form solution to tensor voting: theory and applications.

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Tai-Pang; Yeung, Sai-Kit; Jia, Jiaya; Tang, Chi-Keung; Medioni, Gérard

2012-08-01

We prove a closed-form solution to tensor voting (CFTV): Given a point set in any dimensions, our closed-form solution provides an exact, continuous, and efficient algorithm for computing a structure-aware tensor that simultaneously achieves salient structure detection and outlier attenuation. Using CFTV, we prove the convergence of tensor voting on a Markov random field (MRF), thus termed as MRFTV, where the structure-aware tensor at each input site reaches a stationary state upon convergence in structure propagation. We then embed structure-aware tensor into expectation maximization (EM) for optimizing a single linear structure to achieve efficient and robust parameter estimation. Specifically, our EMTV algorithm optimizes both the tensor and fitting parameters and does not require random sampling consensus typically used in existing robust statistical techniques. We performed quantitative evaluation on its accuracy and robustness, showing that EMTV performs better than the original TV and other state-of-the-art techniques in fundamental matrix estimation for multiview stereo matching. The extensions of CFTV and EMTV for extracting multiple and nonlinear structures are underway.

System-level protection and hardware Trojan detection using weighted voting

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hany A.M. Amin

2014-07-01

Full Text Available The problem of hardware Trojans is becoming more serious especially with the widespread of fabless design houses and design reuse. Hardware Trojans can be embedded on chip during manufacturing or in third party intellectual property cores (IPs during the design process. Recent research is performed to detect Trojans embedded at manufacturing time by comparing the suspected chip with a golden chip that is fully trusted. However, Trojan detection in third party IP cores is more challenging than other logic modules especially that there is no golden chip. This paper proposes a new methodology to detect/prevent hardware Trojans in third party IP cores. The method works by gradually building trust in suspected IP cores by comparing the outputs of different untrusted implementations of the same IP core. Simulation results show that our method achieves higher probability of Trojan detection over a naive implementation of simple voting on the output of different IP cores. In addition, experimental results show that the proposed method requires less hardware overhead when compared with a simple voting technique achieving the same degree of security.

Tobacco company campaign contributions and congressional support of the cigar bill

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Robbins RA

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Although it is widely held that campaign contributions influence support for legislation, the impact of contributions is unclear. Despite lack of a tobacco growing or manufacturing constituency, many members of Congress (MOC in the Southwest support the pro-tobacco Traditional Cigar Manufacturing and Small Business Jobs Preservation Act of 2015 (HR 662/S 441, aka the "Cigar Bill". The association between campaign contributions from tobacco companies (2006-16 with cosponsor for the Cigar Bill were examined. There was a highly significant correlation with 92% of Southwest MOC who cosponsored the Cigar Bill having received campaign contributions. In contrast, 31% of those who did not cosponsoring the bill had received tobacco company campaign contributions (p<0.001 by Fisher's Exact Test. These data demonstrates a highly significant correlation between campaign contributions and legislative support for the "Cigar Bill".

Development of a majority vote decision module for a self-diagnostic monitoring system for an air-operated valve system

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kim, Woo Shin [Dept. of Information and Communication Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul (Korea, Republic of); Chai, Jang Bom [Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon (Korea, Republic of); Kim, In Taek [Dept. of Information and Communication Engineering, Myongji University, Yongin (Korea, Republic of)

2015-08-15

A self-diagnostic monitoring system is a system that has the ability to measure various physical quantities such as temperature, pressure, or acceleration from sensors scattered over a mechanical system such as a power plant, in order to monitor its various states, and to make a decision about its health status. We have developed a self-diagnostic monitoring system for an air-operated valve system to be used in a nuclear power plant. In this study, we have tried to improve the self-diagnostic monitoring system to increase its reliability. We have implemented three different machine learning algorithms, i.e., logistic regression, an artificial neural network, and a support vector machine. After each algorithm performs the decision process independently, the decision-making module collects these individual decisions and makes a final decision using a majority vote scheme. With this, we performed some simulations and presented some of its results. The contribution of this study is that, by employing more robust and stable algorithms, each of the algorithms performs the recognition task more accurately. Moreover, by integrating these results and employing the majority vote scheme, we can make a definite decision, which makes the self-diagnostic monitoring system more reliable.

Development of a majority vote decision module for a self-diagnostic monitoring system for an air-operated valve system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Woo Shin; Chai, Jang Bom; Kim, In Taek

2015-01-01

A self-diagnostic monitoring system is a system that has the ability to measure various physical quantities such as temperature, pressure, or acceleration from sensors scattered over a mechanical system such as a power plant, in order to monitor its various states, and to make a decision about its health status. We have developed a self-diagnostic monitoring system for an air-operated valve system to be used in a nuclear power plant. In this study, we have tried to improve the self-diagnostic monitoring system to increase its reliability. We have implemented three different machine learning algorithms, i.e., logistic regression, an artificial neural network, and a support vector machine. After each algorithm performs the decision process independently, the decision-making module collects these individual decisions and makes a final decision using a majority vote scheme. With this, we performed some simulations and presented some of its results. The contribution of this study is that, by employing more robust and stable algorithms, each of the algorithms performs the recognition task more accurately. Moreover, by integrating these results and employing the majority vote scheme, we can make a definite decision, which makes the self-diagnostic monitoring system more reliable

Evidence for the influence of the mere-exposure effect on voting in the Eurovision Song Contest

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Diarmuid B. Verrier

2012-09-01

Full Text Available The mere exposure, or familiarity, effect is the tendency for people to feel more positive about stimuli to which they have previously been exposed. The Eurovision Song Contest is a two-stage event, in which some contestants in the final will be more familiar to viewers than others. Thus, viewers' voting is likely to be influenced by this effect. Previous work attempting to demonstrate this effect in this context has been unable to control for contestant quality. The current study, which used a novel procedure to analyse the way in which contestant countries distributed their points (a function of how viewers voted in those countries between 2008 and 2011, showed that contestants did better if they previously appeared in a semifinal that was seen by voters. This is evidence that the mere exposure effect, alongside previously studied factors such as cultural and geographical closeness, influences the way viewers vote in the Eurovision.

Marijuana experiences, voting behaviors and early perspectives regarding marijuana legalization among college students from two states

Science.gov (United States)

Moreno, Megan A; Whitehill, Jennifer M; Quach, Vincent; Midamba, Nikita; Manskopf, Inga

2016-01-01

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to understand college students’ 1) views and experiences regarding marijuana, 2) voting behaviors, and 3) early perceptions of the impact of legislation. PARTICIPANTS College students from Washington and Wisconsin were interviewed between May–September 2013 METHODS Participants completed phone interviews assessing marijuana attitudes, intentions, behaviors, voting behaviors or intentions, and perceptions of the impact of legislation. RESULTS A total of 283 participants completed the interview (83.7% retention rate): 56.8% were female, 57.2% were from Wisconsin, and 74.6% were Caucasian. Almost half of Washington participants (46.3%) indicated that they voted for marijuana legalization. Participants most commonly responded that the legislation did not change their attitudes towards marijuana, though some participants discussed perceived safety of the product because legislation passed. CONCLUSIONS Findings indicate similarities in views and experiences among college students from states affected and unaffected by legalization; legalization may increase perceptions of safety. PMID:26182234

Department of Defense energy policy and research: A framework to support strategy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Strakos, Joshua K.; Quintanilla, Jose A.; Huscroft, Joseph R.

2016-01-01

The Department of Defense (DOD) is the major consumer of energy within the Federal government, and it has been directed to implement cost cutting measures related to energy dependence through numerous Executive Orders and Congressional legislation. As a result, the DOD released an Energy Strategy which outlines ways to reduce energy requirements in order to meet both Presidential and Congressional mandates for energy security. With this research, we provide a historical review (1973–2014) of energy policy, legislation, and research. Additionally we identify gaps between strategy and research. The results show that DOD energy research lacks a unifying structure and guiding framework. We propose a knowledge management framework to unify and guide research efforts in direct support of the DOD Energy Strategy. - Highlights: •Unification of effort is needed to support strategic goals. •Provides the current state of DOD energy research. •Proposes a framework to guide DOD energy research. •Frames the DOD energy research context and landscape. •Promotes a unifying structure for DOD energy research.

Elections for representatives of the personnel – Join, get involved, vote!

CERN Multimedia

Staff Association

2017-01-01

Every two years in September, the CERN Staff Association organises the elections of representatives of the personnel. The process of renewing the Staff Council consists of several stages: Information for members of the personnel (MPE and MPA1); call for applications and search for candidates in different electoral colleges; election of delegates via electronic voting; announcement of the results and establishing a new Staff Council. This process will follow a specific timetable: Call for applications from Monday, 11 September to Friday, 13 October at 5 p.m. Voting from Monday, 23 October at noon to Monday 13, November at 5 p.m. Publication of the election results in the Echo newsletter on Tuesdays 21 November and 5 December. Staff Association Assizes (for the outgoing Council and the new Council) on Monday, 27 and Tuesday, 28 November. First meeting of the new Staff Council and election of a new Executive Committee on Tuesday, 5 December. Informing the personnel (MPE and MPA) The Staff Association uses s...

77 FR 21773 - Filing Dates for The New Jersey Special Election in The 10th Congressional District

Science.gov (United States)

2012-04-11

... The 10th Congressional District AGENCY: Federal Election Commission. ACTION: Notice of filing dates... with both the Special Primary and Special General Election on November 6, 2012, shall file a 12-day Pre... General Elections shall file a 12-day Pre-Primary Report on May 24, 2012; a 12-day Pre-General Report on...

Personality and Self-regulation as Determinants of Rational Decision Making in a Political Voting Situation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tatiana A. Indina

2009-01-01

Full Text Available The association of self-regulation and personality factors with rational decision making was investigated using an experimental model of political voting. The results revealed different sets of personality characteristics for rational and emotional voters. A self-regulation/personality typology of decision making was then constructed, and traits representing self-regulation, cognition, and personality were examined as predispositions toward rational decision making. As a result, specific connections among these variables were uncovered, through which the primary role of the conscious self-regulation system in the management of rational decision making in a political voting context was established.

Relevant factors for the voting decision in the 2002 presidential election: An analysis of the ESEB (Brazilian Electoral Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yan Carreirão

2007-03-01

Full Text Available The article investigates some of the most relevant factors for the voting de- cision in the 2002 presidential election by testing some of the main hypotheses about electoral behaviour in the country by means of logistic regression analyses based on data from the ESEB (Brazilian Electoral Study, a post-electoral survey conducted on a national sample of voters. In the models, taken as a whole, politi- cal opinions did not have much weight in the voting decision. Furthermore, they are unable to “explain” a very large share of voters’ positioning on a left-right scale or on a scale of voters’ “party sentiments”. All these “political” variables taken as a whole, in turn, “explain” only part of the evaluations that voters make of the government’s performance. The analysis shows that Brazilian voters’ voting deci- sion seems rather varied, since some variables were shown to be relevant to “ex- plain” the vote for a candidate, but not for the others. The variables shown to be more frequent (for all four candidates analysed and with more considerable weight were: voters’ religion, their “party sentiments”, their positioning on a left-right scale, the evaluations made of the then current government (in actual fact impor- tant only for the vote for Serra, the government’s candidate and the candidates’ attributes (especially “reliability” and “preparedness/competence”.

Obstacles in energy security: An analysis of congressional and presidential framing in the United States

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Below, Amy

2013-01-01

Despite decades of policymaking, the U.S. has only recently made significant strides in becoming a more energy secure nation. With a focus on the executive and legislative branches, this paper investigates two possible political obstacles to achieve this policy goal. The first question it asks is whether or not the two branches have been defining energy security in the same way. As the concept itself has no universal definition, it is possible that the branches have been focusing on different aspects of the term. Results from a content analysis of presidential speeches and congressional hearings suggest that no such division has occurred. The subsequent question asks whether or not the two branches, in tandem, are providing the foundation for sound policy. Results suggest that Congress and presidents have defined and discussed energy security in a generally balanced, comprehensive and internally non-conflictual way. What policy emerges from these discussions should be the subject of future research. -- Highlights: •A content-analysis of congressional hearings and presidential speeches was conducted. •Executive and legislative branches have been generally unified in how they frame the issue of energy security. •Both have avoided overreliance on sensationalized frames. •Both do not focus enough attention on energy efficiency and intensity

The Political Economy of Clean Air Legislation. An Analysis of Voting in the U.S. Senate on Amendments to the 1990 Clean Air Act

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Burkey, M.L.; Durden, G.C.

1998-01-01

Much research in political science and economics has attempted to explain voting patterns among members of legislative bodies. In this paper we extend the existing analysis in three ways. First, we address the subject of voting on air quality regulation by the U.S. Senate. A subject of great importance and significance, such votes have not previously been the focus of much empirical investigation. Second, we develop an arguably more correct and effective methodology for measuring and understanding the ideological preferences of individual Senators, as revealed by their voting patterns on 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act. Third, we apply the minimum chi-square methodology for estimating the determinants of Senator voting patterns on the issue. In Section 2, the economic theory of regulation is elaborated as it is specifically related to 1990 senate voting on amendments to the Clean Air Act. In Section 3, we provide a brief literature review, focusing on the principal-agent model and how voting patterns are influenced by campaign contributions, constituent socio-economic characteristics, and individual legislator ideology. In Section 4 we present a very simple model of the principal-agent relationship which underlies legislative voting behavior. In this section (supplemented by information in an appendix) we introduce a new methodology for creating a proxy variable to represent legislator ideology, comparing the new method with those previously used. Section 5 provides a chronological background on clean air legislation, and Section 6 discusses the data and proxy variables used for the empirical estimations. Section 7 contains a presentation and evaluation of three empirical techniques, including one not previously used, the minimum chi-square method which, we argue, is both appropriate and easily interpretable. This claim is based upon the fact that the dependent variable, SCORE, is neither continuous nor dichotomous, but ordered and categorical, constructed

Yemen: DOD Should Improve Accuracy of Its Data on Congressional Clearance of Projects as It Reevaluates Counterterrorism Assistance

Science.gov (United States)

2015-04-01

Section 1206 project was grounded in October 2014 because it lacked spare tires , resulting in a loss of medium-lift capability for the Yemeni Air Force...Testimony Order by Phone Connect with GAO To Report Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in Federal Programs Congressional Relations Public Affairs Please Print on Recycled Paper.

Swiss underground L/ILW repository at Wellenberg: How to proceed following the negative vote of the Canton

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kowalski, E.; Fritschi, M.

1996-01-01

In Switzerland, the process of implementing a low- and intermediate-level waste repository is entering a crucial phase. Progress has been made in the technical and partly also in the political field. After extended investigations, the site of Wellenberg in Canton Nidwalden was selected in June 1993, followed by the submission of an application for a general license to the Swiss Federal Government in June 1994. The general license is only the first step in a comprehensive licensing procedure which consists of federal, cantonal and community licenses. In addition to the > licenses, a special mining concession must be applied for to the Canton, since the repository is considered as a facility which may interfere with hypothetical future mining projects and this falls within the jurisdiction of the Canton. In Canton Nidwalden, the mining concession can only be granted by a vote of the population. The people of the siting community of Wolfenschiessen previously agreed to host the company responsible for constructing and operating the repository (Nuclear Waste Management Cooperative Wellenberg - GNW) by a 63 % affirmative vote. Equally, the necessary community zone planning has been adapted by a 70 % affirmative vote. Unfortunately, the decisive cantonal vote on 25th June 1995 regarding the mining concession was negative by 52.5 %. This created a politically difficult situation, especially with regard to the Federal Government which does not believe that a geologically suitable site should be rejected for political reasons. This paper briefly covers the results of the site selection procedure and the characteristics of the selected site of Wellenberg, as well as the procedure applied to enhance project acceptance. It analyses the reasons for the negative cantonal vote and describes the measures taken to cope with the new situation

16 CFR 802.64 - Acquisitions of voting securities by certain institutional investors.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... institutional investors. 802.64 Section 802.64 Commercial Practices FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION RULES, REGULATIONS... § 802.64 Acquisitions of voting securities by certain institutional investors. (a) Institutional investor. For purposes of this section, the term institutional investor means any entity of the following...

Publication Voting Power (PVP): method of finding Evidence-Support

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Background: Extracting the best evidence that support a procedure is a difficult, time consuming task that needs expert statistical knowledge. A way to make weighting evidence more simple and straight for busy clinicians is needed. Methods: The publications about the procedure under question are lined in an ascending ...

78 FR 49276 - Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation; Request for Nominations for Voting Members

Science.gov (United States)

2013-08-13

... 25 members, who are Special Government Employees, and 5 ex-officio, non-voting members. Members and... committees; and therefore, extends particular encouragement to nominations for appropriately qualified female...

Latin America Report. Who’s Who in the Brazilian Constituent Assembly

Science.gov (United States)

1987-03-04

leftist bench includes such weighty ideologues as Florestan Fernandes , elected by the Sao Paulo PT [.Workers Party]; respected congressional leaders...to maintain the nation’s sovereignty. In the final text^ a conciliatory7 S S?,^i!S!^’%S’t"y W°Uld — d0mestic «*«. « ^termined politics? Fernandes (PT...Oliveira Fernandes (PUT), 43, reelected (19,633 votes). Economist. Was director of the State Department of Highways (1974-1975), ARENA-apponted

Voting Behaviour in the 2009 South African Election Wählerverhalten bei den südafrikanischen Wahlen von 2009

OpenAIRE

Norbert Kersting

2009-01-01

This article analyses voting behaviour in the South African election of 2009 and draws conclusions regarding the significance of party affiliation and issue-based voting in South Africa. It demonstrates the low level of voter registration and voter turnout. In the 2009 election the Independent Electoral Commission had problems with electoral management for the first time; however, it was able to prevent electoral violence. During the campaign the newly founded COPE focused on institutional re...

Response Scales in Voting Advice Applications : Do Different Designs Produce Different Outcomes?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rosema, M.; Louwerse, T.

2016-01-01

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) represent popular election campaign tools in many countries, enabling voters to discover which party or candidate provides the best match with their political preferences. This article examines the effects of design choices on these tools by focusing on the response

Response Scales in Voting Advice Applications: Do Different Designs Produce Different Outcomes?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rosema, Martin; Louwerse, Tom

2016-01-01

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) represent popular election campaign tools in many countries, enabling voters to discover which party or candidate provides the best match with their political preferences. This article examines the effects of design choices on these tools by focusing on the response

The effects of social media on political party perception and voting behavior

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Riezebos, Peter; de Vries, Sjoerd A.; de Vries, Pieter Walter; de Zeeuw, Erik

2011-01-01

This study sought to determine to what extent social media influences political party perception (PPP) and political voting behavior. Based on literature a conceptual model was developed which measures political interest, political trust, religion and the use of social media and their effects on PPP

Public Support for Public Schools: The Past, the Future, and the Federal Role.

Science.gov (United States)

Piele, Philip K.

1983-01-01

Various indices of public support for the schools--school finance voting patterns, public opinion polls, and court litigation--are analyzed to document current trends. Two possible scenarios are forecast for the future, based on socioeconomic and demographic patterns. The need for future government support is stressed. (PP)

75 FR 57807 - Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation; Request for Nominations for Voting Members

Science.gov (United States)

2010-09-22

... consists of up to 25 members, who are Special Government Employees, and 5 ex-officio, non-voting members... for appropriately qualified female, minority, or disabled candidates. Dated: September 15, 2010...

The rise of repeal: policy entrepreneurship and Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Science.gov (United States)

Neff, Christopher L; Edgell, Luke R

2013-01-01

We report on policy entrepreneurship by Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) and how its legislative strategies used mini-windows of opportunity to shift Capitol Hill perspectives of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) from political plutonium to an emerging issue requiring a second look. Four phases in the legislative history of DADT are identified: radioactive, contested, emerging, and viable. In all, this article argues that SLDN's entrepreneurship focused on contesting congressional sensibilities to wait or defer on repeal, maintained that every discharge was damaging and transitioned toward a post-repeal mind set. Finally, we illustrate the importance of these transitions by comparing SLDN's 2004 estimated vote count for the introduction of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act with the final 2010 voting results on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act.

"I Never Thought about It": Teaching People with Intellectual Disability to Vote

Science.gov (United States)

Agran, Martin; MacLean, William; Andren, Katherine Anne Kitchen

2015-01-01

Despite an increasing commitment in promoting the full inclusion of people with intellectual disability in their communities, it appears that few adults with intellectual disability participate in elections as registered voters. We surveyed a variety of stakeholders about voting by people with intellectual disability using quantitative and…

75 FR 27743 - Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act

Science.gov (United States)

2010-05-18

... ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act... previously submitted by New Mexico. DATES: This notice is effective upon publication in the Federal Register... 27744

A fractionally cointegrated VAR analysis of economic voting and political support

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jones, Maggie E. C.; Ørregård Nielsen, Morten; Popiel, Michael Ksawery

We use a fractionally cointegrated vector autoregressive model to examine the relationship between Canadian political support and macroeconomic conditions. This model is well suited for the analysis because it allows multiple fractional time series and admits simple asymptotic inference for the m......We use a fractionally cointegrated vector autoregressive model to examine the relationship between Canadian political support and macroeconomic conditions. This model is well suited for the analysis because it allows multiple fractional time series and admits simple asymptotic inference...... for the model parameters and tests of the hypotheses of interest. In the long-run equilibrium, we find that support for the Progressive Conservative Party was higher during periods of high interest rates and low unemployment, while support for the Liberal Party was higher during periods of low interest rates...

For Many Students, Electoral Enthusiasm Runs up against Barriers to Voting

Science.gov (United States)

Lipka, Sara

2008-01-01

Stories of transient students missing deadlines or being misled about their voting rights are nothing new. But this year, the role younger voters played in Barack Obama's win in Iowa's Democratic presidential primary seems to have motivated a wave of college students in other states. Some of those students--and the campaigns courting them--are out…

Student Elections Online: Dickinson College Uses Technology To Get Out the Vote.

Science.gov (United States)

Dempsey, Paul

2000-01-01

Recently, Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, used the World Wide Web to combat student apathy and encourage students to participate in elections. This article explains: the pros and cons of online voting; planning for online elections; preparing the ballots; specific techniques for conducting online elections; HTML forms and common gateway interface…

High School Community Service as a Predictor of Adult Voting and Volunteering

Science.gov (United States)

Hart, Daniel; Donnelly, Thomas M.; Youniss, James; Atkins, Robert

2007-01-01

The influences of high school community service participation, extracurricular involvement, and civic knowledge on voting and volunteering in early adulthood were examined using the National Educational Longitudinal Study. The major finding in this study is that both voluntary and school-required community service in high school were strong…

Conditions of vacuous voting in the boardroom

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Darlene M. Andert

2007-01-01

Full Text Available The issue of U.S. corporate governance has been approached as a management structure without regard for the non-hierarchical oversight qualities that are embedded in the legal foundation of its birth. This paper reviews the: (1 U.S. federal Model Business Corporation that unifies the individual state corporate enabling statutes; and (2 The Delaware General Corporation Law that applies to over half of the U.S. Fortune 500 companies and posits the structure of U.S. corporate governance is nonhierarchical, though practiced hierarchically. Further, it is not always the full board that creates board action, and asymmetrical communication and asymmetrical member action create the conditions for vacuous voting.

Real-Time Straight-Line Detection for XGA-Size Videos by Hough Transform with Parallelized Voting Procedures.

Science.gov (United States)

Guan, Jungang; An, Fengwei; Zhang, Xiangyu; Chen, Lei; Mattausch, Hans Jürgen

2017-01-30

The Hough Transform (HT) is a method for extracting straight lines from an edge image. The main limitations of the HT for usage in actual applications are computation time and storage requirements. This paper reports a hardware architecture for HT implementation on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) with parallelized voting procedure. The 2-dimensional accumulator array, namely the Hough space in parametric form (ρ, θ), for computing the strength of each line by a voting mechanism is mapped on a 1-dimensional array with regular increments of θ. Then, this Hough space is divided into a number of parallel parts. The computation of (ρ, θ) for the edge pixels and the voting procedure for straight-line determination are therefore executable in parallel. In addition, a synchronized initialization for the Hough space further increases the speed of straight-line detection, so that XGA video processing becomes possible. The designed prototype system has been synthesized on a DE4 platform with a Stratix-IV FPGA device. In the application of road-lane detection, the average processing speed of this HT implementation is 5.4ms per XGA-frame at 200 MHz working frequency.

76 FR 1559 - Guidelines for the Use of Electronic Voting Systems in Union Officer Elections

Science.gov (United States)

2011-01-11

... Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) and the Department of Defense's Business Transformation Agency....regulations.gov , and during normal business hours at the above address. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT...

How Politicians' Reelection Efforts Can Reduce Public Trust, Electoral Support, and Policy Approval

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bøggild, Troels

2016-01-01

shows that, in addition to outcomes, people care about procedural fairness and, particularly, impartial decision-makers who make decisions without personal motives and interests. This, I argue, confronts politicians with a delicate task: Politicians must present voters with favorable policy outcomes...... but without appearing as if they pursue these policies based on a personal, vote-maximizing motive for reelection. In four survey experiments, I find support for this argument. Participants were significantly less inclined to trust and vote for politicians and support their policies when political decisions......Politicians’ desire for reelection motivates them to be responsive to voters’ policy preferences. In the traditional view, voters choose between candidates based on their delivery of favorable outcomes such as ideologically appealing policies or a prospering economy. However, research in psychology...

Mesh Denoising based on Normal Voting Tensor and Binary Optimization

OpenAIRE

Yadav, S. K.; Reitebuch, U.; Polthier, K.

2016-01-01

This paper presents a tensor multiplication based smoothing algorithm that follows a two step denoising method. Unlike other traditional averaging approaches, our approach uses an element based normal voting tensor to compute smooth surfaces. By introducing a binary optimization on the proposed tensor together with a local binary neighborhood concept, our algorithm better retains sharp features and produces smoother umbilical regions than previous approaches. On top of that, we provide a stoc...

Red Rural, Blue Rural: The Geography of Presidential Voting in Rural America

Science.gov (United States)

Scala, Dante J.; Johnson, Kenneth M.

2016-01-01

Political commentators routinely treat rural America as an undifferentiated bastion of strength for Republicans. In fact, rural America is a deceptively simple term describing a remarkably diverse collection of places encompassing nearly 75 percent of the U.S. land area and 50 million people. Voting trends in this vast area are far from…

EU issue voting: asset or liability? How European integration affects parties' electoral fortunes

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Vries, C.E.

2010-01-01

This study develops and tests arguments about how political parties’ electoral fortunes in national elections are influenced by voters’ preferences regarding the European Union (EU). To date, there is increasing evidence demonstrating the impact of EU issues on vote choice in national elections — a

Enact legislation supporting residential property assessed clean energy financing (PACE)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Saha, Devashree

2012-11-15

Congress should enact legislation that supports residential property assessed clean energy (PACE) programs in the nation’s states and metropolitan areas. Such legislation should require the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase residential mortgages with PACE assessments while at the same time providing responsible underwriting standards and a set of benchmarks for residential PACE assessments in order to minimize financial risks to mortgage holders. Congressional support of residential PACE financing will improve energy efficiency, encourage job creation, and foster economic growth in the nation’s state and metropolitan areas.

The Vote of the Mexican Immigrants. An Analysis of the Results of the 2006 Presidential Election, to the light of political behavior theories

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mgt. Octavio Adolfo Pérez Preciado

2007-01-01

Full Text Available The 2 of July of the 2006, the Mexican residents abroad could for the first time voted in a presidential election. According to the results given by the electoral federal institute (IFE, Felipe Calderon, candidate by the National Action Party (PAN of right oriented, was the one that obtained the majority of these suffrages, followed by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, candidate of the “alliance for the good of the people,” of leftist orientation. These was the most competitive election ever take place in Mexico. In the essay, electoral results of this election are analyzed to the light of different theories about the voting behavior of the emigrants. We concludes the vote of the Mexicans abroad reproduces and reflects so much the way in which the emigrants in their native place vote, as well as the political and cultural influence that exerts the conduct of the voter the political and electoral system of the new country of residence.

Religion, Poverty, and Politics: Their Impact on Women's Reproductive Health Outcomes.

Science.gov (United States)

Kimball, Richard; Wissner, Michael

2015-01-01

This study sought to explore the relationship(s) between U.S. states of selected social determinants of health (SDH) and three women's reproductive health outcomes including abortion, teen births, and infant mortality rates (IMR). The data from multiple population surveys were used to establish on a state-by-state basis, the interactions between selected SDH (religion, voting patterns, child poverty, and GINI) and their policy effects on three women's reproductive health outcomes (abortion, teen births, and IMRs) using publicly available national databases. Child poverty rates and the GINI coefficient were analyzed. Religiosity information was obtained from the Pew Forum's surveys. Voting results were collected from the 2008 congressional and presidential races and were used as proxy measures for conservative- versus liberal-leaning policies and policy makers. Using multiple regression analysis, higher IMRs were associated with higher religiosity scores. Lower abortion rates were associated with voting conservatively and higher income inequality. Higher teen birth rates were associated with higher child poverty rates and voting conservatively. This study shows that selected SDH may have substantial impacts on women's reproductive health outcomes at the state level. Significant inequalities exist between liberal and conservative states that affect women's health outcomes. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A voting-based statistical cylinder detection framework applied to fallen tree mapping in terrestrial laser scanning point clouds

Science.gov (United States)

Polewski, Przemyslaw; Yao, Wei; Heurich, Marco; Krzystek, Peter; Stilla, Uwe

2017-07-01

This paper introduces a statistical framework for detecting cylindrical shapes in dense point clouds. We target the application of mapping fallen trees in datasets obtained through terrestrial laser scanning. This is a challenging task due to the presence of ground vegetation, standing trees, DTM artifacts, as well as the fragmentation of dead trees into non-collinear segments. Our method shares the concept of voting in parameter space with the generalized Hough transform, however two of its significant drawbacks are improved upon. First, the need to generate samples on the shape's surface is eliminated. Instead, pairs of nearby input points lying on the surface cast a vote for the cylinder's parameters based on the intrinsic geometric properties of cylindrical shapes. Second, no discretization of the parameter space is required: the voting is carried out in continuous space by means of constructing a kernel density estimator and obtaining its local maxima, using automatic, data-driven kernel bandwidth selection. Furthermore, we show how the detected cylindrical primitives can be efficiently merged to obtain object-level (entire tree) semantic information using graph-cut segmentation and a tailored dynamic algorithm for eliminating cylinder redundancy. Experiments were performed on 3 plots from the Bavarian Forest National Park, with ground truth obtained through visual inspection of the point clouds. It was found that relative to sample consensus (SAC) cylinder fitting, the proposed voting framework can improve the detection completeness by up to 10 percentage points while maintaining the correctness rate.

Ising percolation in a three-state majority vote model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Balankin, Alexander S., E-mail: abalankin@ipn.mx [Grupo Mecánica Fractal, ESIME, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, México D.F., 07738 (Mexico); Martínez-Cruz, M.A.; Gayosso Martínez, Felipe [Grupo Mecánica Fractal, ESIME, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, México D.F., 07738 (Mexico); Mena, Baltasar [Laboratorio de Ingeniería y Procesos Costeros, Instituto de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Sisal, Yucatán, 97355 (Mexico); Tobon, Atalo; Patiño-Ortiz, Julián; Patiño-Ortiz, Miguel; Samayoa, Didier [Grupo Mecánica Fractal, ESIME, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, México D.F., 07738 (Mexico)

2017-02-05

Highlights: • Three-state non-consensus majority voter model is introduced. • Phase transition in the absorbing state non-consensus is revealed. • The percolation transition belongs to the universality class of Ising percolation. • The effect of an updating rule for a tie between voter neighbors is highlighted. - Abstract: In this Letter, we introduce a three-state majority vote model in which each voter adopts a state of a majority of its active neighbors, if exist, but the voter becomes uncommitted if its active neighbors are in a tie, or all neighbors are the uncommitted. Numerical simulations were performed on square lattices of different linear size with periodic boundary conditions. Starting from a random distribution of active voters, the model leads to a stable non-consensus state in which three opinions coexist. We found that the “magnetization” of the non-consensus state and the concentration of uncommitted voters in it are governed by an initial composition of system and are independent of the lattice size. Furthermore, we found that a configuration of the stable non-consensus state undergoes a second order percolation transition at a critical concentration of voters holding the same opinion. Numerical simulations suggest that this transition belongs to the same universality class as the Ising percolation. These findings highlight the effect of an updating rule for a tie between voter neighbors on the critical behavior of models obeying the majority vote rule whenever a strict majority exists.

Ising percolation in a three-state majority vote model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Balankin, Alexander S.; Martínez-Cruz, M.A.; Gayosso Martínez, Felipe; Mena, Baltasar; Tobon, Atalo; Patiño-Ortiz, Julián; Patiño-Ortiz, Miguel; Samayoa, Didier

2017-01-01

Highlights: • Three-state non-consensus majority voter model is introduced. • Phase transition in the absorbing state non-consensus is revealed. • The percolation transition belongs to the universality class of Ising percolation. • The effect of an updating rule for a tie between voter neighbors is highlighted. - Abstract: In this Letter, we introduce a three-state majority vote model in which each voter adopts a state of a majority of its active neighbors, if exist, but the voter becomes uncommitted if its active neighbors are in a tie, or all neighbors are the uncommitted. Numerical simulations were performed on square lattices of different linear size with periodic boundary conditions. Starting from a random distribution of active voters, the model leads to a stable non-consensus state in which three opinions coexist. We found that the “magnetization” of the non-consensus state and the concentration of uncommitted voters in it are governed by an initial composition of system and are independent of the lattice size. Furthermore, we found that a configuration of the stable non-consensus state undergoes a second order percolation transition at a critical concentration of voters holding the same opinion. Numerical simulations suggest that this transition belongs to the same universality class as the Ising percolation. These findings highlight the effect of an updating rule for a tie between voter neighbors on the critical behavior of models obeying the majority vote rule whenever a strict majority exists.

Child Care: States Exercise Flexibility in Setting Reimbursement Rates and Providing Access for Low-Income Children. Report to Congressional Requesters.

Science.gov (United States)

Shaul, Marnie S.

In order to promote low-income parents' job preparation and work efforts, states were given greater flexibility to design programs using federal funds to subsidize child care for low-income families. At Congressional request, this report from the General Accounting Office describes how states set reimbursement rates and calculates the extent to…

Biases in the effects of family background characteristics on voting preference: The Dutch case

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vries, J. de; Graaf, N.D. de; Eisinga, R.N.

2009-01-01

This article examines whether intergenerational transmission of party preference is biased by retrospective and other-report measurement of family background characteristics [In our model the dependent variable is voting preference, while one of our explanatory variables is father's party

The Effectiveness of Campaign Messages on Turnout and Vote Choice

OpenAIRE

Friedel, Sylvia

2013-01-01

In this dissertation, I study campaign effects on turnout and vote choice. I analyze different campaign messages and the way they affect voters across various situations. First, through an online survey experiment, I study the impact of campaign messages and ideological cues on voters as they make inferences on candidates. Next, through a field experiment, I test whether microtargeted messages or general messages on the economy have any effect on turnout. Lastly, using online survey data, I e...

The Election System of the Swiss Confederation: Counting of Votes and Establishment of Election Results

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Magdalena A. Tarnavskaya

2014-01-01

Full Text Available In the following article the author covers the process of counting the votes and the disclosure rules of establishment the election results in the Swiss Confederation. Switzerland along with other EU member states pays special attention to the determination of the election results. According to Art. 149 para. 2 Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation the elections to the National Council, which is one of two chambers of the Federal Assembly, are held according to proportional representation system. The Hagenbach-Bischoff system is used for allocating seats in National Council of the Swiss Con federation. However the above mentioned system for determining the quota of votes per each mandate creates ambiguous opinions among Swiss scientists and legal experts, which frequently comes up in discussions whether to modify it or not. In this article, the author also gives a brief description of the main political parties in Switzerland and statistics of seats allocation in 49 legislature of National Council following the elections of October 23, 2011. As a result, the author provides the full information on the process of votes counting and establishment of election results in the Swiss Confederation. The material presented in this article is particularly interesting and relevant in terms of improving the electoral legislation in the Russian Federation. The information presented by the author will be useful to all parties interested in electoral law.

Biases in the effects of family background characteristics on voting preference : The Dutch case

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Vries, J.; de Graaf, Nan Dirk; Eisinga, R.

This article examines whether intergenerational transmission of party preference is biased by retrospective and other-report measurement of family background characteristics [In our model the dependent variable is voting preference, while one of our explanatory variables is father’s party

77 FR 27020 - Proposed Information Collection; Comment Request; Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and...

Science.gov (United States)

2012-05-08

... distinct from independent surveys, media polls, or other outside agencies. Federal, state, and local election officials use these data to formulate policies relating to the voting and registration process. College institutions, political party committees, research groups, and other private organizations also...

Open your eyes and vote!

CERN Multimedia

Rebecca Leam

The CERN film-making club is organizing the second edition of the CinéGlobe International Short Film Festival and everyone is invited to attend a series of selection screenings in November to vote on which they like and think should be publicly shown in the Globe and at the Forum Meyrin in February 2010.   This year over 700 short films were submitted for three competitions: the majority for the general fiction category for films up to ten minutes in length, and others for science fiction (20 minutes) and science documentary (30 minutes). “In 2007 we had just one competition open to films from any genre. We decided to add the science related competitions to the second edition to make a stronger link with CERN as a physics lab,” explained Quentin King, Chairman of the Selection Committee and member of CERN’s film-making club, Open Your Eyes Films. “The entries are extremely diverse and touch on almost every aspect of life. The creativity of short...

A call of duty in hard times: Duty to vote and the Spanish Economic Crisis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carol Galais

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Although scarce, the literature addressing the effects of the economy on voter turnout and political attitudes has yielded mixed results. By using individual, longitudinal data from Spain—a country devastated by the Great Recession—our study illuminates how the latest economic crisis has impacted citizens’ perceptions of voting. We analyze how economic conditions and perceptions of the economy have transformed the belief that voting is a civic duty, which is one of the strongest attitudinal predictors of turnout. Our results suggest that hard times slightly weaken citizens’ sense of civic duty, particularly among the youngest. However, the adverse effects of the economic crisis are compensated by the positive effects of the electoral context, and as a consequence there is no aggregate decline in civic duty during the period examined (2010–2012.

75 FR 51759 - Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act

Science.gov (United States)

2010-08-23

... ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act... previously submitted by California. DATES: This notice is effective upon publication in the Federal Register... plans submitted for publication provide information on how the respective state succeeded in carrying...

Fault diagnosis method for nuclear power plants based on neural networks and voting fusion

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhou Gang; Ge Shengqi; Yang Li

2010-01-01

A new fault diagnosis method based on multiple neural networks (ANNs) and voting fusion for nuclear power plants (NPPs) was proposed in view of the shortcoming of single neural network fault diagnosis method. In this method, multiple neural networks that the types of neural networks were different were trained for the fault diagnosis of NPP. The operation parameters of NPP, which have important affect on the safety of NPP, were selected as the input variable of neural networks. The output of neural networks is fault patterns of NPP. The last results of diagnosis for NPP were obtained by fusing the diagnosing results of different neural networks by voting fusion. The typical operation patterns of NPP were diagnosed to demonstrate the effect of the proposed method. The results show that employing the proposed diagnosing method can improve the precision and reliability of fault diagnosis results of NPPs. (authors)

Legal requirements governing proxy voting in Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Werlauff, Erik

2008-01-01

The requirements in Danish company law concerning proxy voting in companies whose shares have been accepted for listing on a regulated market have been successively tightened in recent years, and corporate governance principles have also led to the introduction of several requirements concerning...... proxy holders. A thorough knowledge of these requirements is important not only for the listed companies but also for their advisers and investors in Denmark and abroad. This article considers these requirements as well as the additional requirements which will derive from Directive 2007....../36 on the exercise of shareholders' rights in listed companies, which must be implemented by 3 August 2009. It is pointed out that companies may provide with advantage in their articles of association for both the existing and the forthcoming requirements at this early stage....

75 FR 6643 - Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act

Science.gov (United States)

2010-02-10

... ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act... plans previously submitted by New Jersey and Wisconsin. DATES: This notice is effective upon publication... the State plans submitted for publication provide information on how the respective State succeeded in...

75 FR 39671 - Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-12

... ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act... plan previously submitted by South Dakota. DATES: This notice is effective upon publication in the... 254(a)(12), all the state plans submitted for publication provide information on how the respective...

Racial Cleavage in Local Voting: The Case of School and Tax Issue Referendums.

Science.gov (United States)

Button, James

1993-01-01

Explores voting behavior of African Americans and whites in local school and tax referenda to determine whether racial conflict is still a primal factor in noncandidate elections. Results for voters in 5 counties in Florida (over 1,699,000 voters) reveal African-American underregistration and the continuing importance of racial cleavage. (SLD)

Registering to Vote Is Easy, Right? Active Learning and Attitudes about Voter Registration

Science.gov (United States)

Gershtenson, Joseph; Plane, Dennis L.; Scacco, Joshua M.; Thomas, Jerry

2013-01-01

In a democracy, agents of political socialization, such as schools and parents, generally emphasize the importance of voting. While college students may be exposed briefly to voter registration as a barrier to participation, there is little evidence that the topic is given serious attention in the classroom. This research addresses how classroom…

Democratic accountability and the votes for nuclear energy

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bradbury, F

1980-10-01

Political aspects of nuclear energy figured in United Kingdom elections during the 1970s as the issue of risks aroused popular interest. The failure of such a complex issue to make an impact at the polls reflects certain electoral inadequacies in the democratic process in that too much time elapsed between opportunities for citizens to express their will and this resulted in pressure groups replacing referenda. Nuclear issues illustrate the dilemma of risk assignment and risk assignment when the perception of risks is not balanced by clear information about the benefits. True democratic accountability would allow citizens to vote directly on each major issue rather than periodically electing a representative with a package of unrelated positions. 7 references. (DCK)

75 FR 41454 - Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-16

... ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act... plans previously submitted by Alaska. DATES: This notice is effective upon publication in the Federal... programs. In accordance with HAVA Section 254(a)(12), all the state plans submitted for publication provide...

78 FR 77110 - Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act

Science.gov (United States)

2013-12-20

... ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act... at www.eac.gov . DATES: This notice is effective upon publication in the Federal Register. FOR... publication provide information on how the respective State succeeded in carrying out its previous State plan...

The Federal Voting Assistance Program: Refocusing and Reorganizing for the Road Ahead

Science.gov (United States)

2015-12-16

Assistance Program (FVAP) admin-isters the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA)1 and helps uniformed-service members and other U.S...a more strategic approach to setting goals, organizing for action, and allocating resources. FVAP leadership commis- sioned RAND to undertake a...RAND team’s analysis of FVAP’s strategy, operations, and organization was based on information collected directly from FVAP, conversations with

An Improved Evolutionary Programming with Voting and Elitist Dispersal Scheme

Science.gov (United States)

Maity, Sayan; Gunjan, Kumar; Das, Swagatam

Although initially conceived for evolving finite state machines, Evolutionary Programming (EP), in its present form, is largely used as a powerful real parameter optimizer. For function optimization, EP mainly relies on its mutation operators. Over past few years several mutation operators have been proposed to improve the performance of EP on a wide variety of numerical benchmarks. However, unlike real-coded GAs, there has been no fitness-induced bias in parent selection for mutation in EP. That means the i-th population member is selected deterministically for mutation and creation of the i-th offspring in each generation. In this article we present an improved EP variant called Evolutionary Programming with Voting and Elitist Dispersal (EPVE). The scheme encompasses a voting process which not only gives importance to best solutions but also consider those solutions which are converging fast. By introducing Elitist Dispersal Scheme we maintain the elitism by keeping the potential solutions intact and other solutions are perturbed accordingly, so that those come out of the local minima. By applying these two techniques we can be able to explore those regions which have not been explored so far that may contain optima. Comparison with the recent and best-known versions of EP over 25 benchmark functions from the CEC (Congress on Evolutionary Computation) 2005 test-suite for real parameter optimization reflects the superiority of the new scheme in terms of final accuracy, speed, and robustness.

Could the outcome of the 2016 US elections have been predicted from past voting patterns?

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Schmitz, Peter MU

2017-07-01

Full Text Available In South Africa, a team of analysts has for some years been using statistical techniques to predict election outcomes during election nights in South Africa. The prediction method involves using statistical clusters based on past voting patterns...

The Technology of Unequal Rights for Women: Patent Drawings of a Voting Machine

Science.gov (United States)

Hussey, Michael

2008-01-01

In 1878, Senator Aaron A. Sargent of California introduced to the Senate an amendment to the Constitution "Conferring upon Women the Right of Suffrage." Drafted by Susan B. Anthony, this same amendment would be introduced on a near-yearly basis until its final passage by Congress on May 19, 1919. Varying degrees of voting rights presented an…

77 FR 75425 - Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act

Science.gov (United States)

2012-12-20

... ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION Publication of State Plan Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act... site at www.eac.gov . DATES: This notice is effective upon publication in the Federal Register. FOR... with HAVA Section 254(a)(12), all the State plans submitted for publication provide information on how...

A Network-Oriented Modeling Approach to Voting Behavior During the 2016 US Presidential Election

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Goedschalk, Linford; Treur, J.; Verwolf, Roos; De la Prieta, F

2017-01-01

In this paper a network-oriented computational model is presented for voting intentions over time specifically for the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. The focus was on the role of social and mass communication media and the statements made by

Development of a body motion interactive system with a weight voting mechanism and computer vision technology

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Chern-Sheng; Chen, Chia-Tse; Shei, Hung-Jung; Lay, Yun-Long; Chiu, Chuang-Chien

2012-09-01

This study develops a body motion interactive system with computer vision technology. This application combines interactive games, art performing, and exercise training system. Multiple image processing and computer vision technologies are used in this study. The system can calculate the characteristics of an object color, and then perform color segmentation. When there is a wrong action judgment, the system will avoid the error with a weight voting mechanism, which can set the condition score and weight value for the action judgment, and choose the best action judgment from the weight voting mechanism. Finally, this study estimated the reliability of the system in order to make improvements. The results showed that, this method has good effect on accuracy and stability during operations of the human-machine interface of the sports training system.

Tipping the scale? Social media’s influences on EU attitudes and vote choice in the Danish 2015 EU referendum

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ohme, Jakob

Citizens’ media use can be an important predictor of attitudes towards the European Union; those attitudes, in turn, can affect EU-related vote decisions. Elementary changes in the media environment and the increasing pressure on the EU in recent referendums may therefore be connected (e.g. Denmark...... in a referendum. Using a two-wave survey design (n=675), the study investigates if political social media use reinforces existing attitudes towards the EU. Subsequently, positive and negative polarization tendencies are connected to the ‘yes or no’ vote of Danish citizens in the 2015 EU referendum. The study...

Lives matter. Do votes? Invited commentary on "Black lives matter: Differential mortality and the racial composition of the U.S. electorate, 1970-2004".

Science.gov (United States)

Purtle, Jonathan

2015-07-01

Racial health disparities in the United States are produced and perpetuated through public policies that differentially allocate risks and resources for health. Elected officials have the ability modify the structural determinants of racial health disparities through policy decisions and, through voting, the electorate can influence the extent to which these policy decisions promote health equity. In this commentary, I synthesize research on the voting behavior of electorates and policy decisions and present strategies to foster sociopolitical environments that are conducive to the implementation and enforcement of racial health disparity reduction initiatives. There is a need for research that contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the role of voting in health policy making processes and further development of empirically-based policy advocacy strategies. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The role of candidate evaluations in the 2014 European Parliament elections: Towards the personalization of voting behaviour?

Science.gov (United States)

Gattermann, Katjana; De Vreese, Claes H

2017-09-01

We study the personalization of voting behaviour in European Parliament elections. We argue that information from the media is crucial for providing linkages between candidates and voters. Moreover, we contend that candidates can serve as information short-cuts given the complexity of European Union politics. We use a four-wave Dutch panel survey and a media study that enable us to link evaluations of lead candidates, party preferences, and vote choice to exposure to news about these candidates. We show, firstly, that exposure to candidate news is a strong explanatory factor for candidate recognition. Secondly, we find that candidate evaluations positively affect party choice, albeit mainly for those voters who tend to be politically aware. Our research has implications for debates about the European Union's accountability deficit.

TIGER/Line Shapefile, 2012, Series Information File for the 2010 Census Voting District State-based (VTD) Shapefile

Data.gov (United States)

US Census Bureau, Department of Commerce — Voting district is the generic name for geographic entities such as precincts, wards, and election districts established by State governments for the purpose of...

The effect of membership rules and voting schemes on the success of international climate agreements

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Finus, M.; Altamirano-Cabrera, J.C.; Ierland, van E.C.

2005-01-01

We empirically test the role of membership rules and voting schemes for climate change coalitions with the STAbility of COalitions model (STACO). The model comprises twelve world regions and captures long-run effects of greenhouse gas accumulation. We apply three stability concepts that capture the

11 CFR 100.149 - Voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities for Presidential candidates.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... conditions are met: (a) Exemption not applicable to general public communication or political advertising..., billboard, direct mail, or similar type of general public communication or political advertising. For... a political party of the costs of voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities conducted by...

CONSIDERATIONS WITH REGARD TO THE USUFRUCT OVER THE RIGHT OF VOTE AS GUARANTY APPLIED IN THE BUSINESS ACTIVITY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Florin CONSTANTINESCU

2016-05-01

Full Text Available The aim of the present article is to scrutinize the usufruct over the right of vote related to a share as legal concept (from foregoing and current Romanian legislation and doctrine standpoint and to highlight also the legal traits and the effective benefits provided as guaranty. To the same extent, the consolidation of the legal regime of this concept as guaranty is also the pursued objective. Although the usufruct over the right of vote has been not considered as a valid guaranty, the companies from Romania (mostly the banks used this mechanism as guaranty within the (sophisticated lending transactions. It is worthy to be mentioned that the right of vote may be related to a share belonging to a joint-stock company or to a social part belonging to a limited liability company. The main scope of such guaranty is to strengthen the creditor’s rights besides other established hard collaterals (mortgages over real estates, shares, receivables etc.. Thus, the creditor may influence the corporate will of a company (within the general shareholders meeting. Moreover, the guaranty has to be set up in the form of a notarized deed (authenticated by a Notary Public aiming to be considered a writ of execution and to enable the creditor to commence the foreclosure if needed. Having in mind the above, this paper mainly regards: the content of the right of vote related to a share, security, social part, the applicability of the usufruct to the shares belonging to different companies (joint-stock companies listed or not listed to the Stock Exchange, other companies of capitals and persons, the relevant differences between the usufruct as dismemberment of the ownership right and the usufruct as guaranty, the significant aspects regarding the guaranty agreement, proposals to amend the legislation.

Mediated Leader Effects: The Impact of Newspapers' Portrayal of Party Leadership on Electoral Support.

Science.gov (United States)

Aaldering, Loes; van der Meer, Tom; Van der Brug, Wouter

2018-01-01

Conventional wisdom holds that party leaders matter in democratic elections. As very few voters have direct contact with party leaders, media are voters' primary source of information about these leaders and, thus, the likely origin of leader effects on party support. Our study focuses on these supposed electoral effects of the media coverage of party leaders. We examine the positive and negative effects of specific leadership images in Dutch newspapers on vote intentions. To this end, we combine an extensive automated content analysis of leadership images in the media with a panel data set, the Dutch 1Vandaag Opinion Panel (1VOP), consisting of more than fifty thousand unique respondents and 110 waves of interviews conducted between September 2006 and September 2012. The results confirm that media coverage of party leaders' character traits affects voters: Positive mediated leadership images increase support for the leader's party, while negative images decrease this support. However, this influence is not unconditional: During campaign periods, positive leadership images have a stronger effect, while negative images no longer have an impact on subsequent vote intentions.

Mediated Leader Effects: The Impact of Newspapers’ Portrayal of Party Leadership on Electoral Support

Science.gov (United States)

Aaldering, Loes; van der Meer, Tom; Van der Brug, Wouter

2017-01-01

Conventional wisdom holds that party leaders matter in democratic elections. As very few voters have direct contact with party leaders, media are voters’ primary source of information about these leaders and, thus, the likely origin of leader effects on party support. Our study focuses on these supposed electoral effects of the media coverage of party leaders. We examine the positive and negative effects of specific leadership images in Dutch newspapers on vote intentions. To this end, we combine an extensive automated content analysis of leadership images in the media with a panel data set, the Dutch 1Vandaag Opinion Panel (1VOP), consisting of more than fifty thousand unique respondents and 110 waves of interviews conducted between September 2006 and September 2012. The results confirm that media coverage of party leaders’ character traits affects voters: Positive mediated leadership images increase support for the leader’s party, while negative images decrease this support. However, this influence is not unconditional: During campaign periods, positive leadership images have a stronger effect, while negative images no longer have an impact on subsequent vote intentions. PMID:29527251

A novel hybrid biometric electronic voting system: integrating finger print face recognition

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Najam, S.S.; Shaikh, A.Z.; Naqvi, S.

2018-01-01

A novel hybrid design based electronic voting system is proposed, implemented and analyzed. The proposed system uses two voter verification techniques to give better results in comparison to single identification based systems. Finger print and facial recognition based methods are used for voter identification. Cross verification of a voter during an election process provides better accuracy than single parameter identification method. The facial recognition system uses Viola-Jones algorithm along with rectangular Haar feature selection method for detection and extraction of features to develop a biometric template and for feature extraction during the voting process. Cascaded machine learning based classifiers are used for comparing the features for identity verification using GPCA (Generalized Principle Component Analysis) and K-NN (K-Nearest Neighbor). It is accomplished through comparing the Eigen-vectors of the extracted features with the biometric template pre-stored in the election regulatory body database. The results of the proposed system show that the proposed cascaded design based system performs better than the systems using other classifiers or separate schemes i.e. facial or finger print based schemes. The proposed system will be highly useful for real time applications due to the reason that it has 91% accuracy under nominal light in terms of facial recognition. (author)

CERTIFICATE REVOCATION SCHEME BASED ON WEIGHTED VOTING GAME AND RATIONAL SECURE MULTIPARTY COMPUTING

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

N Aravinthan

2017-03-01

Full Text Available The Mobile Adhoc Network consists of deployed mobile nodes which lead to the frequent changes in network topology. Due to topology changes, required infrastructure is unavailable for communication. Moreover, malicious nodes present in MANET make use of this modification and can easily launch highly vulnerable attacks on the routing path of the network. Hence, Security issue such as removing misbehaving nodes is the primary issue in MANET. Effective certificate revocation scheme was introduced to identify and eliminate the node with malicious activities in the network based on the weighted voting game (ECR-WVG approach. In this approach, weights and quota were two factors, determined for an effective revocation of malicious nodes certificates. However, security during multiparty transmission was not taken into account in ECR-WVG. In Effective Certificate Revocation Scheme based on Weighted Voting Game and Rational Secure Multi-Party Computing (ECR-WVG-RSMPC method, rational secret sharing scheme is introduced along with ECR-WVG approach for securing multiparty transmission. Performance evaluation can be done between ECR-WVG and ECR-WVG-RSMPC in terms of false revocation, malicious node revocation, normalized time for revocation and revocation accuracy ratio.

Vessel Enhancement and Segmentation of 4D CT Lung Image Using Stick Tensor Voting

Science.gov (United States)

Cong, Tan; Hao, Yang; Jingli, Shi; Xuan, Yang

2016-12-01

Vessel enhancement and segmentation plays a significant role in medical image analysis. This paper proposes a novel vessel enhancement and segmentation method for 4D CT lung image using stick tensor voting algorithm, which focuses on addressing the vessel distortion issue of vessel enhancement diffusion (VED) method. Furthermore, the enhanced results are easily segmented using level-set segmentation. In our method, firstly, vessels are filtered using Frangi's filter to reduce intrapulmonary noises and extract rough blood vessels. Secondly, stick tensor voting algorithm is employed to estimate the correct direction along the vessel. Then the estimated direction along the vessel is used as the anisotropic diffusion direction of vessel in VED algorithm, which makes the intensity diffusion of points locating at the vessel wall be consistent with the directions of vessels and enhance the tubular features of vessels. Finally, vessels can be extracted from the enhanced image by applying level-set segmentation method. A number of experiments results show that our method outperforms traditional VED method in vessel enhancement and results in satisfied segmented vessels.

NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] safety research in support of regulation, 1987

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1988-05-01

This report, the third in a series of annual reports, was prepared in response to congressional inquiries concerning how nuclear regulatory research is used. It summarizes the accomplishments of the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research during 1987. The goal of this office is to ensure that research provides the technical bases for rulemaking and for related decisions in support of NRC licensing and inspection activities. This report describes both the direct contributions to scientific and technical knowledge with regard to nuclear safety and their regulatory applications

Imagining class : A study into material social class position, subjective identification, and voting behavior across Europe

NARCIS (Netherlands)

D'Hooge, L.; Achterberg, P.H.J.; Reeskens, T.

2018-01-01

The traditional approach to class voting has largely ignored the question whether material class positions coincide with subjective class identification. Following Sosnaud et al. (2013), this study evaluates party preferences when Europeans’ material and subjective social class do not coincide.

Mesh Denoising based on Normal Voting Tensor and Binary Optimization.

Science.gov (United States)

Yadav, Sunil Kumar; Reitebuch, Ulrich; Polthier, Konrad

2017-08-17

This paper presents a two-stage mesh denoising algorithm. Unlike other traditional averaging approaches, our approach uses an element-based normal voting tensor to compute smooth surfaces. By introducing a binary optimization on the proposed tensor together with a local binary neighborhood concept, our algorithm better retains sharp features and produces smoother umbilical regions than previous approaches. On top of that, we provide a stochastic analysis on the different kinds of noise based on the average edge length. The quantitative results demonstrate that the performance of our method is better compared to state-of-the-art smoothing approaches.