[EL] Secret ballot and low thresholds for contribution disclosure

[Scarberry, Mark]

Interesting to see that confidence in ballot secrecy increases turnout. Might it be reasonable to think that mandatory disclosure of relatively small contributions (as in California on ballot proposition campaigns) will deter people who otherwise would make modest contributions from doing so? Perhaps this is too obvious to need to be stated. Perhaps it's also too obvious to need to say, but contributing modest amounts to the campaign process would seem to be a kind of healthy engagement of the ordinary citizen with the political process, whatever one might think of larger contributions.

Mark

Mark S. Scarberry
Professor of Law
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law



From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rick Hasen
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2014 1:13 PM
To: law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: [EL] more news 4/9/14

...
"Ballot Secrecy Concerns and Voter Mobilization"<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=60280>
Posted on April 9, 2014 12:25 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=60280> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Gerber, Huber, Biggers and Hendry have published this article<http://apr.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/03/24/1532673X14524269.abstract> in American Politics Research. Here is the abstract:

Recent research finds that doubts about the integrity of the secret ballot as an institution persist among the American public. We build on this finding by providing novel field experimental evidence about how information about ballot secrecy protections can increase turnout among registered voters who had not previously voted. First, we show that a private group's mailing designed to address secrecy concerns modestly increased turnout in the highly contested 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election. Second, we exploit this and an earlier field experiment conducted in Connecticut during the 2010 congressional midterm election season to identify the persistent effects of such messages from both governmental and non-governmental sources. Together, these results provide new evidence about how message source and campaign context affect efforts to mobilize previous non-voters by addressing secrecy concerns, as well as show that attempting to address these beliefs increases long-term participation
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...





--

Rick Hasen

Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science

UC Irvine School of Law

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Irvine, CA 92697-8000

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949.824.0495 - fax

rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>

http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/

http://electionlawblog.org
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