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Full-Text Articles in Law
Enhancing Rural Representation Through Electoral System Diversity, Henry L. Chambers Jr.
Enhancing Rural Representation Through Electoral System Diversity, Henry L. Chambers Jr.
Law Faculty Publications
Rural Virginians face disparities in outcomes regarding healthcare, access to important infrastructure, and other services. Some disparities may be related to rurality. The sparseness of population in rural areas may limit the sites where people may access services, triggering the need to travel significant distances to obtain goods and services in such areas. Limited access may lead to disparities even when the quality of goods and services in rural areas is high. The disparities affect all rural Virginians, but disproportionately affect rural Virginians of color. The causes of the disparities are complex and myriad, and may be based on race, …
Popular Versus Elite Democracies And Human Rights: Inclusion Makes A Difference, Devin K. Joshi, J. S. Maloy, Timothy M. Peterson
Popular Versus Elite Democracies And Human Rights: Inclusion Makes A Difference, Devin K. Joshi, J. S. Maloy, Timothy M. Peterson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Scholarly research generally finds that democratic governments are more likely to respect human rights than other types of regimes. Different human rights practices among long-standing and affluent democracies therefore present a puzzle. Drawing from democratic theory and comparative institutional studies, we argue more inclusive or "popular" democracies should enforce human rights better than more exclusive or "elite" democracies, even in the face of security threats from armed conflict. Instead of relying on the Freedom House or Polity indexes to distinguish levels of democracy, we adopt a more focused approach to measuring structures of inclusion, the Institutional Democracy Index (IDI), which …
Testimony Before The U.S. House Of Representatives, Elections Subcommittee Of The House Administration Committee, Concerning The Importance Of Independent Post-Election Auditing And Reviewing Impediments To Election Auditing And Greater Transparency., Candice Hoke
Law Faculty Presentations and Testimony
Mandatory election audits are a critical step for restoring public confidence in the electoral system and for learning what problems exist (in equipment, systems, and personnel) so that they might be effectively corrected. Unfortunately, the promise of auditing will be severely undermined if the federal auditing entity lacks independence from the election administrative authority. Secretaries of State can play a number of crucial additional roles that will facilitate efficient and effective election audits, but because of the appearance of conflicts of interest should not be supervising and conducting federal audits. The federal audit effort will be greatly enhanced if the …
Madison's Hope: Virtue, Self-Interest, And The Design Of Electoral Systems, James A. Gardner
Madison's Hope: Virtue, Self-Interest, And The Design Of Electoral Systems, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
In recent years, perhaps no institution of American governance has been so thoroughly and consistently excoriated by legal theorists as the familiar American system of winner-take-all elections. The winner-take-all system is said to waste votes, lead to majority monopolization of political power, and cause the under representation and consequent social and economic subordination of political minorities. Some political scientists have attempted to defend winner-take-all systems on the ground that they perform better than PR in maximizing long-term collective and social interests. This article argues, in contrast, that winner-take-all electoral systems rest upon, and can be adequately defended, if at all, …