Mar 14, 2008
Why having an Electoral Commision is bad for you…
Why do voters in some countries have confidence in their electoral process, and others don’t? Sarah Birch’s paper (pdf, 337k), forthcoming in Electoral Studies, shows that countries with use state funding of parties have voters with higher levels of faith in their electoral processes, as do countries that employ PR (although the effect here isn’t half as strong as people might think). Curiously, countries with formally independent bodies overseeing the elections have lower levels of faith. Watch out Electoral Commision!