| Title | Why Waste Your Vote? Informal Voting in Compulsory Elections in Australia (co-authored with Eamon McGinn) |
|---|---|
| Date | 2020年1月10日（金） January 10, 15:30-17:00 |
| Venue | 東京大学学術交流棟（小島ホール）１階・第２セミナー室
[地図] Seminar Room No. 2, Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall), University of Tokyo [MAP] |
| Speaker | Shiko Maruyama (University Technology Sydney) |
| Abstract | Voter turnout in mature democracies tends to range from around 50-70%. Low, for something as critical as electing policymakers, but much higher than basic economic theory would predict. Even in Australia, where voting is compulsory, there are still around 5-6% of voters who submit an informal vote, which does not count towards the total. We make use of a natural experiment, based on exogenous changes in electorate boundaries, to identify what factors influence the number of wasted votes. In advance from the existing literature, we test a range of potential contributing factors together, in a single model, and with causal interpretation. We find that factors that feature in the traditional theory on voter decisions, competitiveness and number of other voters, do not affect the rate of informal voting. Instead, we find that more candidates on the ballot results in higher levels of informal voting. This effect is present regardless of the level of education, which indicates that it is likely to be associated with a decision by the voter to abstain rather than an error. We conclude that making the way voters can express their preferences as simple as possible would be beneficial for reducing wasted votes. |
| Information | 英語での発表となります（Presentation in English） 主催：Empirical Micro Research Seminar 共催：東京労働経済学研究会、Microeconomics Workshop |