In Voters’ Verdicts, Chris Bonneau and Damon Cann address contemporary concerns with judicial elections by investigating factors that influence voters’ decisions in the election of state supreme court judges. Bonneau and Cann demonstrate that the move to nonpartisan elections, while it depresses political participation, does little to mute the effects of partisanship and ideology. The authors note the irony that judicial elections, often faulted for politicizing the legal process, historically represented an attempt to correct the lack of accountability in the selection of judges by appointment, since unlike appointive systems, judicial elections are at least transparent. This comprehensive study rests on a broad evidentiary base that spans numerous states and a variety of electoral systems. Bonneau and Cann use the first national survey of voters in state supreme court elections paired with novel laboratory experiments to evaluate the influence of incumbency and other ballot cues on voters’ decisions. Data-rich and analytically rigorous, this provocative volume shows why voters decide to participate in judicial elections and what factors they consider in casting their votes. A volume in the series Constitutionalism and Democracy

What are the key factors that win or lose elections in India? What does, or does not, make India's democracy tick? Is this the end of anti-incumbency? Are opinion polls and exit polls reliable? How pervasive is the 'fear factor'? Does the Indian woman's vote matter? Does the selection of candidates impact results? Are elections becoming more democratic or less democratic? Can electronic voting machines (EVMs) be fiddled with? Can Indian elections be called 'a jugaad system'? Published on the eve of India's next general elections, The Verdict will use rigorous psephology, original research and as-yet undisclosed facts to talk about the entire span of India's entire electoral history-from the first elections in 1952, till today. Crucially, for 2019, it provides pointers to look out for, to see if the incumbent government will win or lose. Written by Prannoy Roy, renowned for his knack of demystifying electoral politics, and Dorab Sopariwala, this book will be compulsory reading for anyone interested in politics and elections in India.

The most definitive report ever on verdict effects, this book gives striking new evidence that media assessments of presidential debates sway voters. The authors conducted 2,350 surveys and extensive analysis of news reports to scrutinize the post-debate news of 1988. They also examined the effects of the attack ads used by Bush and Dukakis. They found that the news media consistently downplay debate content and instead emphasize their own views on candidate performance--media verdicts influence voters as much as the debates themselves. Extensive content analyses and more than 2,350 surveys were conducted to analyze media verdicts on the 1988 debates. The verdicts on Bush, Dukakis, Quayle, and Bentsen announced in post-debate newscasts are compared with those from debates in 1984, 1980 and 1976. The study finds that the news media consistently downplay debate content and instead emphasize their own views on candidate performance. These media verdicts influence voters as much as the debates themselves. The study also examines the effects of attack ads used by Bush and Dukakis, and finds that they backfired--network news probably rebroadcast more excerpts of attack ads in 1988 than ever before. Television journalists, the essays in this book show, have become increasingly less interested in how the debates served the information needs of the voters and increasingly more preoccupied with how they affected the ambitions of the candidates. A noticeable trend in 1988 was as the fall debates went on, voters' beliefs that further debates would be helpful to them went down. Another finding of the study deals with a huge tactical error that the League of Women Voters committed by simultaneously announcing its withdrawal and blasting the format and ground rules imposed on it by the Commission on Presidential Debates. Also, the spin doctors who continually spouted insider information during the 1988 campaign gained more legitimacy and impact than ever before--and had a very strong effect on American public affairs journalism. This intriguing book, which also provides policy recommendations for the debates, their sponsors, and the news media, is useful to journalists, researchers, and civic groups concerned with elections, government, campaign reform, and communications.

This book provides a comparative analysis of how judgments from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) affect political participation and electoral justice at the national level. Looking at specific countries, the work analyses the legal impact the implementation of the ECtHR and the IACtHR judgments has, with a specific focus on cases in which the regional court concerned uses the “democratic argument,” that is, an argument related to democracy and political rights. The reasoning is that, although democracy is a much wider concept, judgments concerning violations of political rights and electoral justice provide reliable indicators to assess the status and sustainability of democracy in a State. Moreover, the analysis of the violations of political rights and electoral justice allows an in-depth comparison between the two regional human rights systems. Mindful of the broader scope of the fall-out generated by the non-implementation of judgments, including in socio-economic terms, the book includes a section exploring how judgments issued by the ECtHR and the IACtHR affect voters’ participation in the countries under their jurisdiction. To this end, an original dataset including the 47 Member States of the Council of Europe and the 20 countries which recognised the adjudicatory jurisdiction of the IACtHR is built. Multidisciplinary in aim and scope of analysis, the book will be an invaluable resource for researchers, academics, and policy-makers working in the areas of constitutional law, international human rights law, and political economy.

Leading authorities present the latest cutting edge research on state judicial elections. Starting with recent transformations in the electoral landscape, including those brought about by U.S. Supreme Court rulings, this volume provides penetrating analyses of partisan, nonpartisan, and retention elections to state supreme courts, intermediate appellate courts, and trial courts. Topics include citizen participation, electoral competition, fundraising and spending, judicial performance evaluations, reform efforts,attack campaigns, and other organized efforts to oust judges. This volume also evaluates the impact of judicial elections on numerous aspects of American politics, including citizens’ perceptions of judicial legitimacy, diversity on the bench, and the consequences of who wins on subsequent court decisions. Many of the chapters offer predictions about how judicial elections might look in the future. Overall, this collection provides a sharp evidence-based portrait of how modern judicial elections actually work in practice and their consequences for state judiciaries and the American people.