Product Description: In competitive and contested democratic elections, insuring integrity is critical. Evaluating Elections shows why systematic analysis and reporting of election performance is important and how data-driven performance management can be used by election officials to improve elections...read more

Product Description: This volume brings together a number of essays that citizens, academics, election officials, policy makers, and other stakeholders can read to become better informed about procedures that used today to audit elections and election administration, and to learn more about new approaches to improve existing election audit procedures...read more

Product Description: This book examines how legislators have juggled their passions over abortion with standard congressional procedures, looking at how both external factors (such as public opinion) and internal factors (such as the ideological composition of committees and party systems) shape the development of abortion policy...read more

Since the 2000 presidential election, the United States has been embroiled in debates about electronic voting. Critics say the new technologies invite tampering and fraud. Advocates say they enhance the accuracy of vote counts and make casting ballots easier--and ultimately foster greater political participation. Electronic Elections cuts through the media spin to assess the advantages and risks associated with different ways of casting ballots--and shows how e-voting can be the future of American democracy. Elections by nature are fraught with risk. Michael Alvarez and Thad Hall fully examine the range of past methods and the new technologies that have been created to try to minimize risk and accurately reflect the will of voters. Drawing upon a wealth of new data on how different kinds of electronic voting machines have performed in recent elections nationwide, they evaluate the security issues that have been the subject of so much media attention, and examine the impacts the new computer-based solutions is having on voter participation. Alvarez and Hall explain why the benefits of e-voting can outweigh the challenges, and they argue that media coverage of the new technologies has emphasized their problems while virtually ignoring their enormous potential for empowering more citizens to vote. The authors also offer ways to improve voting technologies and to develop more effective means of implementing and evaluating these systems. Electronic Elections makes a case for how e-voting can work in the United States, showing why making it work right is essential to the future vibrancy of the democratic process.

Product Description: Studies of federal policy agendas seeking to explain why laws pass and why policies change typically look to the political environment, focusing on the media, congressional hearings, presidential addresses, and preferences of legislators as agents of change...read more

Arguing that tech-savvy Americans are well suited to trade in the 'wheels of democracy' for an online ballot box, the author examines the pros and cons of this controversial issue, covering the philosophical and ethical as well as the physical difficulties of such a revolutionary step. (Politics & Government)