The unfortunate natural experiment in ballot design: the Scottish Parliamentary elections of 2007
The unfortunate natural experiment in ballot design: the Scottish Parliamentary elections of 2007
The 2007 Scottish Parliamentary elections were notable for the extensive variation across constituencies in rejected ballots (ranging from 1.90% to 12.09%). This paper uses an unfortunate natural experiment to identify the influence of ballot design on the occurrence of rejected ballots, or 'residual votes'. In two electoral regions, visual prompts were removed and instructions were abbreviated on the (already poorly designed) ballot papers. Using zero-truncated negative binomial regression to model total residual votes as well as constituency and regional undervotes and overvotes, we find clear evidence that these changes made a major contribution to the extent of residual votes in constituencies within those regions. The findings emphasise that ballot design is not a trivial subject that can be neglected by electoral administrators.
Ballot design, Rejected ballots, Residual votes, Scottish elections
442-459
Carman, Christopher
c62d237b-85a0-43ff-8e49-87e908bfbe5e
Mitchell, James
0c4ca906-da8c-4d12-b288-0b72a194fc2e
Johns, Robert
02861bc9-b704-49b1-bbc7-cf1c1e9b7a35
September 2008
Carman, Christopher
c62d237b-85a0-43ff-8e49-87e908bfbe5e
Mitchell, James
0c4ca906-da8c-4d12-b288-0b72a194fc2e
Johns, Robert
02861bc9-b704-49b1-bbc7-cf1c1e9b7a35
Carman, Christopher, Mitchell, James and Johns, Robert
(2008)
The unfortunate natural experiment in ballot design: the Scottish Parliamentary elections of 2007.
Electoral Studies, 27 (3), .
(doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2008.02.006).
Abstract
The 2007 Scottish Parliamentary elections were notable for the extensive variation across constituencies in rejected ballots (ranging from 1.90% to 12.09%). This paper uses an unfortunate natural experiment to identify the influence of ballot design on the occurrence of rejected ballots, or 'residual votes'. In two electoral regions, visual prompts were removed and instructions were abbreviated on the (already poorly designed) ballot papers. Using zero-truncated negative binomial regression to model total residual votes as well as constituency and regional undervotes and overvotes, we find clear evidence that these changes made a major contribution to the extent of residual votes in constituencies within those regions. The findings emphasise that ballot design is not a trivial subject that can be neglected by electoral administrators.
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More information
Accepted/In Press date: 13 February 2008
e-pub ahead of print date: 2 April 2008
Published date: September 2008
Keywords:
Ballot design, Rejected ballots, Residual votes, Scottish elections
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 489799
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/489799
ISSN: 0261-3794
PURE UUID: 80d953c3-842b-4b46-a0de-4b7e5be7dfd3
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Date deposited: 02 May 2024 16:37
Last modified: 03 May 2024 02:07
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Author:
Christopher Carman
Author:
James Mitchell
Author:
Robert Johns
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