The Absentee Ballot and the Secret Ballot: Challenges for Election Reform

Reforms in the recently enacted federal election reform legislation primarily address improving voting at a polling place, but there is a growing share of the electorate who vote away from the polling place through increased use of absentee ballots and vote-by-mail systems. Voters who vote away from the polling place do not have the same protections as those at the polling place. In particular, these voters do not have a secret ballot, as any ballot cast without a drawn curtain behind oneself is potentially subject to coercion, vote buying and fraud. This Article looks at the tension between the Australian Ballot and absentee voting. Both the Australian Ballot and the Absentee Ballot were electoral reforms of previous generations. The Australian Ballot was instituted by almost all of the states in the 1880s and 90s to combat abuses at the ballot box such as vote buying and coercion by party machines. There were two major periods of absentee ballot reform. In both periods of absentee ballot reform, there was recognition of the dangers of casting a ballot away from a home polling place. Since these early periods of adoption of absentee voting laws, there has been a significant rise in voting away from the polling place. In addition, many of the safeguards implemented by early legislation have been repealed. There are a number of advocates for easier absentee balloting, vote by mail, or even voting over the Internet. Although they emphasize the convenience of such measures, these advocates do not seem to appreciate the privacy concerns that the originators of the absentee ballot did. 7b the extent that election reform legislation is to be successful in improving the electoral system, it must take note of the trend toward voting away from the polling place and consider the importance of the secret ballot as well as convenience

The Continuity of Congress

The Continuity of Government Commission was originally formed after 9/11 to address how our key institutions can reconstitute themselves after a catastrophic attack. A new version of the commission, including previous members and new ones, who have experience in all three branches of government, met in 2021 and 2022 to consider continuity-of-government issues in light of the recent pandemic and other developments. In this report, the commission issues its recommendations on the continuity of Congress.The core continuity problem for Congress is that if many members of the House of Representatives were killed in an attack or other catastrophe, the House would likely have no quorum and be unable to meet for months after the event. Unlike the Senate, the House can fill its vacancies only by special election, and those elections are likely to take months to conduct.The key recommendation is for a constitutional amendment to allow for temporary replacements to be appointed to fill the seats of deceased members until special elections are held to elect a permanent replacement. With immediate successors to fill the seats of deceased members of Congress, a Congress with nearly full representation could be reconstituted within days to work with the president to face the challenges of the present emergency.The commission makes several other recommendations that deal with other continuity-of-Congress issues:Creating a limited provision for allowing remote proceedings when members of Congress cannot meet in person in Washington,Allowing temporary replacement members to fill in for incapacitated members in the extreme case when deceased and incapacitated members number more than a majority of the House or Senate, andAdopting procedures to ensure that a new Congress could commence, perhaps even remotely, if a catastrophic emergency prevented the regular opening of a new Congress

Continuity of Government: Presidential Succession

Questions about the continuity of our key institu­tions have arisen at pivotal moments through­out our nation's history. Watershed events such as the Cold War, the death of President Franklin D. Roos­evelt, and the assassination of President John F. Ken­nedy brought continuity-of-government issues into sharp public relief. Ultimately, these events led to sig­nificant reforms, including the 25th Amendment and a new Presidential Succession Act.A decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, the 9/11 attacks forced continuity issues back into the public consciousness. One result was the creation of the first Continuity of Government Commission, the predecessor to the current commission. More than two decades after 9/11, we still have to ask ourselves, Do we have the legal and constitutional framework in place to ensure that our key institutions of govern­ment could recover from a catastrophic event?America has in place legal and constitutional pro­visions that address presidential succession. These provisions serve us well in the straightforward case of a president's death while in office. However, the cur­rent system does not adequately address less straight­forward scenarios, such as a mass attack on multiple people in the line of succession, the simultaneous incapacity of the president and vice president, and unique succession issues that could arise between Election Day and Inauguration Day.In this report, the Continuity of Government Com­mission recommends several changes to the Presiden­tial Succession Act that address these vulnerabilities. These recommendations would not require constitu­tional amendments; they are achievable through sim­ple legislative changes

Thermodynamic and dynamic anomalies for a three dimensional isotropic core-softened potential

Using molecular dynamics simulations and integral equations (Rogers-Young, Percus-Yevick and hypernetted chain closures) we investigate the thermodynamic of particles interacting with continuous core-softened intermolecular potential. Dynamic properties are also analyzed by the simulations. We show that, for a chosen shape of the potential, the density, at constant pressure, has a maximum for a certain temperature. The line of temperatures of maximum density (TMD) was determined in the pressure-temperature phase diagram. Similarly the diffusion constant at a constant temperature, $D$, has a maximum at a density $\rho_{max}$ and a minimum at a density $\rho_{min}<\rho_{max}$. In the pressure-temperature phase-diagram the line of extrema in diffusivity is outside of TMD line. Although in this interparticle potential lacks directionality, this is the same behavior observed in SPC/E water.Comment: 16 page

Structure of strongly coupled, multi-component plasmas

We investigate the short-range structure in strongly coupled fluidlike plasmas using the hypernetted chain approach generalized to multicomponent systems. Good agreement with numerical simulations validates this method for the parameters considered. We found a strong mutual impact on the spatial arrangement for systems with multiple ion species which is most clearly pronounced in the static structure factor. Quantum pseudopotentials were used to mimic diffraction and exchange effects in dense electron-ion systems. We demonstrate that the different kinds of pseudopotentials proposed lead to large differences in both the pair distributions and structure factors. Large discrepancies were also found in the predicted ion feature of the x-ray scattering signal, illustrating the need for comparison with full quantum calculations or experimental verification

Rugged landscapes: Complexity and implementation science

BACKGROUND: Mis-implementation-defined as failure to successfully implement and continue evidence-based programs-is widespread in public health practice. Yet the causes of this phenomenon are poorly understood. METHODS: We develop an agent-based computational model to explore how complexity hinders effective implementation. The model is adapted from the evolutionary biology literature and incorporates three distinct complexities faced in public health practice: dimensionality, ruggedness, and context-specificity. Agents in the model attempt to solve problems using one of three approaches-Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA), evidence-based interventions (EBIs), and evidence-based decision-making (EBDM). RESULTS: The model demonstrates that the most effective approach to implementation and quality improvement depends on the underlying nature of the problem. Rugged problems are best approached with a combination of PDSA and EBI. Context-specific problems are best approached with EBDM. CONCLUSIONS: The model\u27s results emphasize the importance of adapting one\u27s approach to the characteristics of the problem at hand. Evidence-based decision-making (EBDM), which combines evidence from multiple independent sources with on-the-ground local knowledge, is a particularly potent strategy for implementation and quality improvement

Sharp error terms for return time statistics under mixing conditions

We describe the statistics of repetition times of a string of symbols in a stochastic process. Denote by T(A) the time elapsed until the process spells the finite string A and by S(A) the number of consecutive repetitions of A. We prove that, if the length of the string grows unbondedly, (1) the distribution of T(A), when the process starts with A, is well aproximated by a certain mixture of the point measure at the origin and an exponential law, and (2) S(A) is approximately geometrically distributed. We provide sharp error terms for each of these approximations. The errors we obtain are point-wise and allow to get also approximations for all the moments of T(A) and S(A). To obtain (1) we assume that the process is phi-mixing while to obtain (2) we assume the convergence of certain contidional probabilities

The Evolving Treatment Landscape of Advanced Renal Cell Carcinoma in Patients Progressing after VEGF Inhibition

Despite significant changes in the therapeutic landscape of renal cell carcinoma, the majority of patients with metastatic disease eventually progress after first-line treatment with vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy. Understanding existing data on subsequent therapies is crucial to define an optimal treatment sequence following first-line failure. This review examines the data supporting currently approved agents in this setting and provides a framework for decision-making regarding treatment sequencing beyond first-line therapy with VEGFR TKIs

Shuffling cards, factoring numbers, and the quantum baker's map

It is pointed out that an exactly solvable permutation operator, viewed as the quantization of cyclic shifts, is useful in constructing a basis in which to study the quantum baker's map, a paradigm system of quantum chaos. In the basis of this operator the eigenfunctions of the quantum baker's map are compressed by factors of around five or more. We show explicitly its connection to an operator that is closely related to the usual quantum baker's map. This permutation operator has interesting connections to the art of shuffling cards as well as to the quantum factoring algorithm of Shor via the quantum order finding one. Hence we point out that this well-known quantum algorithm makes crucial use of a quantum chaotic operator, or at least one that is close to the quantization of the left-shift, a closeness that we also explore quantitatively.Comment: 12 pgs. Substantially elaborated version, including a new route to the quantum bakers map. To appear in J. Phys.

Implementation of the Hierarchical Reference Theory for simple one-component fluids

Combining renormalization group theoretical ideas with the integral equation approach to fluid structure and thermodynamics, the Hierarchical Reference Theory is known to be successful even in the vicinity of the critical point and for sub-critical temperatures. We here present a software package independent of earlier programs for the application of this theory to simple fluids composed of particles interacting via spherically symmetrical pair potentials, restricting ourselves to hard sphere reference systems. Using the hard-core Yukawa potential with z=1.8/sigma for illustration, we discuss our implementation and the results it yields, paying special attention to the core condition and emphasizing the decoupling assumption's role.Comment: RevTeX, 16 pages, 2 figures. Minor changes, published versio