Election Law Journal 

About: Election Law Journal is an academic journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Voting. It has an ISSN identifier of 1533-1296. Over the lifetime, 345 publications have been published receiving 2967 citations. The journal is also known as: ELJ.

The Incumbency Advantage in U.S. Elections: An Analysis of State and Federal Offices, 1942–2000

Abstract: Rising incumbency advantages in U.S. House elections have prompted a wave of new electoral laws, ranging from campaign nance regulations to term limits. We test a central claim for these reforms { that the incumbency advantage re°ects the collective irresponsibility inherent in legislatures. We study incumbency advantages for all state executive elections from 1942 to 2000 and contrast that with incumbency advantages in state and federal legislative elections. We nd that incumbency advantages for state executives and for legislators are similar in magnitude and have grown at the same rate over the last 60 years. If anything legislators have lower incumbency advantages than state executives. This nding reveals that the incumbency advantage is not unique to legislatures and that theories of incumbency advantages based on redistricting, legislative irresponsibility, pork barrel politics, and other features of legislatures do not explain the incumbency advantage. Some time in the late 1960s, congressional scholars began to note the increasing vote margins of U.S. House incumbents. By the mid-1970s a full-blown debate about the magnitude and sources of the incumbency advantage in US House elections had emerged. The list of potential causes is many { redistricting, congressional-bureaucratic relations, pork barrel spending, campaign nances, and declining party attachments. Broadly speaking, the debate over the sources of the incumbency advantage points either to factors that are distinctive to legislative politics, such as pork barrel politics and redistricting, or to factors that likely a®ected all o±ces, most notably the decline of party attachments or the growth of government generally. The conventional wisdom holds that legislative incumbents have uniquely high electoral advantages for two reasons. The rst is that many things that are thought to a®ect reelection rates are unique to legislatures. The most important of these are redistricting and seniority. Cox and Katz (2002) argue that the redistricting revolution caused the rise of incumbency advantages after the 1960s, because district lines can now be drawn to prevent competition. McKelvey and Reizman (1992) argue that seniority systems create a disincentive for voters to select someone else. Power within the legislature is tied to seniority, and as a legislator climbs the seniority rank the voters that legislator represents will bene t. Because all incumbents have some seniority no voters want to turn out their incumbent in the place of a new person, who will be the lowest ranked legislator. A second reason that legislators are thought to have especially large incumbency advantages is the lack of collective responsibility. Executives are held accountable for the broad performance of their agencies. Governors are responsible for economic performance; attorneys general, for crime; and so forth. Executives are also accountable for their actions: an executive decision is the decision of the individual politician. Legislatures, by contrast, are collective bodies. It is hard to know who in the legislature is responsible for a weak economy or a high crime rate. Party leaders can also coordinate legislators so that an individual legislator does not have to cast a vote that is particularly unpopular in the individual's

The Future of Partisan Symmetry as a Judicial Test for Partisan Gerrymandering after LULAC v. Perry

Abstract: While the Supreme Court in Bandemer v. Davis found partisan gerrymandering to be justiciable, no challenged redistricting plan in the subsequent 20 years has been held unconstitutional on partisan ...

Campaign Finance Laws and Political Efficacy: Evidence from the States

Abstract: The decline of political efficacy and trust in the United States is often linked to the rise of money in politics. Both the courts and reform advocates justify restrictions on campaign donations and spending as necessary for the improvement of links between the government and the governed. We conduct the first test of whether campaign finance laws actually influence how citizens view their government by exploiting the variation in campaign finance regulations both across and within states during the last half of the 20th century. Our analysis reveals no large positive effects of campaign finance laws on political efficacy. Public disclosure laws and limits on contributions from organizations are in some cases associated with modest increases in efficacy, but public financing is associated with a similarly modest decrease in efficacy. ∗Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association and 2003 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. We thank Barry Burden, Dick Niemi, the editors, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Thanks also to Matt Jacobsmeier and Matt Stiffler for research assistance. †Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, Harkness Hall, Rochester, NY 146270146; 585-273-4779; david.primo@rochester.edu; Fax: 585-271-1616 ‡Department of Economics and Truman School of Public Affairs, University of Missouri, 118 Professional Building, Columbia, MO 65211; 573-882-5572; milyoj@missouri.edu; Fax: 573-882-2697

Did Firms Profit from Soft Money

Abstract: 193 AT ITS HEART, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) seeks to limit the private benefits that firms receive from campaign contributions. A series of rulings by the Federal Election Commission created the opportunity for organizations and individuals to give funds to party accounts outside the system of direct contribution limits—so-called soft money. Although little used before 1992, soft money ballooned during the 1990s. In the 2000 election, the two major parties raised approximately $500 million in soft money, most of which came from corporations in donations in excess of $100,000, at least ten times larger than the hard contribution limits set in the Federal Elections Campaign Act.1 Companies were widely alleged to have profited directly and substantially from their soft money donations. In the years leading up to the passage of BCRA, public interest groups and the press provided numerous examples of firms that benefited from public policies and were also large soft money donors—tobacco, pharmaceutical, and oil companies were especially featured in these reports. The most telling evidence, cited extensively by the majority opinion in McConnell v. FEC, emerged in hearings before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce in 1998. Corporate executives and legislators testified that soft money donations were often given when valuable government contracts where on the line. In other cases, donors feared that if they did not contribute, then their companies would lose competitive advantages through regulations. These were clearly stories of excess. Parties and their candidates received donations well in excess of what they could raise under the hard money limits, and corporations, which gave most of the soft party money, allegedly received excessively large benefits at public expense in return for their contributions. Were these cases typical, or exceptional? If exceptional, then the government might best deal with the problems of corrupt practices through aggressive enforcement of anti-bribery laws. If typical, then the government might attempt to eliminate these problems with blanket restrictions on contributions—as they in fact did. At issue is the extent to which donors, especially large corporate donors, benefited from soft money. Economists and political scientists have long been puzzled about the influence of campaign contributions on public policy. An extensive literature examines the association between hard money contributions and public policy decision-making, especially roll call voting in the U.S. Congress. The large majority of studies find no significant effects of hard money contributions on public policy, and, in those that do find some association, the magnitude of the effects is typically very small.2

Helping America Vote? Election Administration, Partisanship, and Provisional Voting in the 2004 Election

Abstract: State and local election officials play an important role in implementing election laws and administrative rules. There is some suspicion that election officials may tilt rules and procedures to he...