The paradox between an individual's decisions to head to the polls and the absence of
strictly rational arguments for this action has intrigued–and troubled–many scholars. The …

Local government is the hidden leviathan of American politics: it accounts for nearly a tenth
of gross domestic product, it collects nearly as much in taxes as the federal government, and …

One of the most contentious issues in politics today is the propriety of electing judges. Ought
judges be independent of democratic processes in obtaining and retaining their seats, or …

As political campaigns become increasingly adversarial, scholars are giving some much-
needed attention to the effect of negative advertising on turnout. In a widely recognized …

It is an established fact that off-cycle elections attract lower voter turnout than on-cycle
elections. I argue that the decrease in turnout that accompanies off-cycle election timing …

Despite the importance of local elections in the United States, political scientists have little
knowledge of what shapes vote choice in most municipalities and special districts …

This paper reports the first laboratory study of the swing voter's curse and provides insights
on the larger theoretical and empirical literature on “pivotal voter” models. Our experiment …

In this article, we examine the effect of “choice fatigue” on decision making. We exploit a
natural experiment in which voters face the same contest at different ballot positions due to …

Voters in low-information elections frequently rely on heuristics or information shortcuts
when making their decisions of whom to support. While existing research on these shortcuts …

A number of recent formal models predict a positive effect of political knowledge on turnout.
Both information acquisition and turnout, however, are likely to be determined by a similar …