Ballot Propositions and Information Costs: Direct Democracy and the Fatigued Voter

Ballot Propositions and Information Costs: Direct Democracy and the Fatigued Voter

Ballot propositions have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years, not least because they have become an increasingly important part of the democratic process in the U.S., and especially in California. Yet voters seem increasingly disenchanted with this process. One way of understanding v...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Political research quarterly 1992-06, Vol.45 (2), p.559-568
Main Authors: Bowler, Shaun, Donovan, Todd, Happ, Trudi
Format: Article
Language:eng
Subjects:
Ballots
Direct democracy
Elections
Elective offices
Governors
Indexing in process
Political campaigns
Preferential voting
Presidential elections
Primary elections
Voter behavior
Voter turnout
Voting
Voting behaviour
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Ballot propositions have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years, not least because they have become an increasingly important part of the democratic process in the U.S., and especially in California. Yet voters seem increasingly disenchanted with this process. One way of understanding voter reaction to propositions is to conceive of them as presenting voters with a set of decisionmaking costs which they seek to minimize. Developing hypotheses from this simple basis allows us to make a series of predictions of likely voter turnout on ballot propositions. We find that ballot position, proposition type, and spending patterns have statistically significant impacts upon the decision of voters to express a preference for or against a given proposition.
ISSN:0043-4078
1065-9129
2325-8675
1938-274X