Decoding the Sphinx-Like Silence : State Residency, Petition Circulation, and the First Amendment

State governments are the primary regulators of elections and ballot access in the United States. State statutes determine who is eligible to be on the ballot in each particular state, as well as who may assist these individuals by gathering petition signatures. Candidates for political office, initiative proponents, and their supporters have challenged some of these restrictions as unconstitutional burdens on political speech. The U.S. Supreme Court has had great difficulty in articulating a coherent standard of review in this area of the law, which shows that the line between a state’s reasonable regulation of the election process and an unconstitutional burden on First Amendment rights is not easy to define. One particular area where this issue has come into focus is state laws requiring petition circulators to be state residents or, alternatively, eligible to vote in the state. The majority of circuits have declared these restrictions unconstitutional burdens on political speech, while one circuit has found them a reasonable regulation of a state’s electoral process. This Note explores the history and context of the Supreme Court’s struggle to establish a consistent standard of review in ballot-access cases before examining the nuances of the constitutionality of both residency and voter eligibility requirements. This Note ultimately argues that the minority view is the more correct reading of Supreme Court precedent and that residency requirements are generally reasonable state regulations of elections, while voter eligibility requirements are unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment

Assessing candidate preference through web browsing history

Predicting election outcomes is of considerable interest to candidates, political scientists, and the public at large. We propose the use of Web browsing history as a new indicator of candidate preference among the electorate, one that has potential to overcome a number of the drawbacks of election polls. However, there are a number of challenges that must be overcome to effectively use Web browsing for assessing candidate preference—including the lack of suitable ground truth data and the heterogeneity of user populations in time and space. We address these challenges, and show that the resulting methods can shed considerable light on the dynamics of voters’ candidate preferences in ways that are difficult to achieve using polls.Accepted manuscrip

Back to the Drawing Board: Revisiting the Supreme Court\u27s Stance on Partisan Gerrymandering

In the United States, state legislatures have drawn voting districts to achieve desired election results for hundreds of years. Dating back to the James Madison presidency, various legislatures and iterations of the U.S. Supreme Court have wrestled with the legal and constitutional issues that stem from the practice known as “gerrymandering.” While courts and legislatures have, at times, been successful in eliminating some of the more sinister uses of the tactic, such as racially motivated district-line drawing, gerrymandering inspired by partisan motives remains. Continual improvements in technology coupled with an increasingly divided political culture mean that partisan gerrymandering is at risk of becoming more effective than ever. As a result, the voices of individuals with political ideologies opposing those of the sitting state legislatures risk being quieted to barely audible whispers. Until this year, however, the Supreme Court had contented itself to stand idly by, firmly refusing to wade into the legal and constitutional muck that is partisan gerrymandering. This Note explores the uses and effects of partisan gerrymandering by modern state legislatures. It then delves into the contentious history of the partisan gerrymandering question at the Supreme Court level, with special focus on a concurring opinion by Justice Kennedy in which he proposed a solution for how to handle future partisan gerrymandering issues. This Note analyzes the validity of Justice Kennedy’s solution and ultimately concludes that his proposal has sound legal and practical support and would allow courts to hold unconstitutional efforts to gerrymander along political lines

Donald Trump v. The Electorate: A Twitter Feud for the Ages

This thesis began as an exploration into Donald Trump’s Twitter use in the final year of his presidency, starting with his first (and at the time, only) impeachment and ending with the November 2020 election. As an incumbent running for re-election, Donald Trump broke from precedent by opting out of the traditional messaging strategy of expanding his base and promoting unity and instead focused on energizing his existing supporters. Throughout his campaign and presidency, his Trumpian-style of rhetoric which perpetuated an “us versus them” mentality resulted in threats and real violence by his supporters. The role of social media has grown tremendously in the past decade, and has shifted political messaging as a result. While traditional media had a structure to fact-check stories, social media allows for the constant sharing of oversimplified ideas. With Trump’s massive Twitter following, he was able to engage in tweet-storms on any given subject, no matter how accurate the content of his messages were. Social media companies frequently rebuffed calls to increase the policing and accountability of Trump’s accounts. But in 2020, they were faced with a challenge: a sitting president actively challenged the integrity of a national election. Twitter decided to fact-check his tweets, which helped limit the spread of disinformation. However, these labels were not enough to overcome the circulation of lies that the election was stolen, bolstered by Trump and other Republicans across the country. By comparing the escalation of violence with the online messaging between November 2020 and January 2021, I conclude that Trump’s repeated claims that his supporters must “stop the steal” and fight for the country led directly to the kind of violence we witnessed on January 6th

How local media coverage of voter fraud influences partisan perceptions in the United States

Extant findings show that voter fraud is extremely rare and difficult to prove in the United States. Voter’s knowledge about voter fraud allegations likely comes through the media, who tend to sensationalize the issue. In this study, we argue that the more voters are exposed to media coverage of voter fraud allegations, the more likely that they will perceive that voter fraud is a frequent problem. We merge the 2012 Survey of Performance of American Elections with state-level media coverage of voter fraud leading up to the 2012 election. Our results show that media coverage of voter fraud is associated with public beliefs about voter fraud. In states where fraud was more frequently featured in local media outlets, public concerns about voter fraud were heightened. In particular, we find that press attention to voter fraud has a larger influence on Republicans than Democrats and Independents. We further find that media coverage of voter fraud does not further polarize partisan perceptions of voter fraud. Rather, political interest moderates state media coverage on voter fraud beliefs only among Republicans. Lastly, our results provide no support that demographic changes, approval of election administration, or information concerning actual reported voting irregularities have any discernable effects on partisan perceptions

A Little Birdie Said: How Twitter is Disrupting Shareholder Activism

Shareholders are organizing and mobilizing on new social media platforms like Twitter. This changes the dynamics of shareholder proxy contests in ways that favor shareholders over management. Disruptive technology may bring about a shareholder revolution, which may not be in shareholders’ best interests, at least from the perspective of shareholder wealth maximization, and it also has powerful implications for the future of corporate social responsibility

Does Fear of Government Corruption Affect Voter Turnout?

According to the Survey of American Fears (2020-2021) fear of corrupt government officials is the number one thing Americans fear: 79.6 % of them in fact. In addition, voter turnout is one of the quintessential pillars that allows a democracy to function properly. In this paper I will examine the extent to which fear of government officials’ corruption affects voter turnout. Using the data from the Chapman Survey of American Fears and variables from the American National Election Study between 2020 and 2021, I expect to find a moderately strong relationship between fear of government corruption and voter turnout. Moreover, I expect to find that the more an American, fears that government corruption is taking place, the less likely that individual is to vote. When looking at the 2020 and 2021 data on elections and fears, I expect media, policy, and party control to affect the fear Americans have of governmental corruption. Another mechanism I expect to affect American’s fear of corruption is political preference; more specifically I expect Republicans to have less of a fear of government corruption. Although eliminating fear of corruption is nearly impossible, limiting outside factors that increase fear of corruption can increase voter turnout, and increase political activism in the United States