Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper models an on-year election in which the presidential
and legislative elections are held simultaneously. The president
is elected by plurality rule and each legislator is elected in
single member districts by simple plurality rule. Policy outcomes
are a function of not only which party holds the presidency but
which party gets the majority of seats in the legislature. Parties
are uncertain about the ideal points of the voters. With this
model, we show that first, there are some ticket-splitters in
every equilibrium, and second, there exists an equilibrium in
which moderate voters split their votes between presidential and
legislative elections. In addition, when we apply the equilibrium
strategy into two-period election, we find this model also
explains the midterm loss phenomena.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Paper will describe court decisions citing Bush v. Gore as authority

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: With few exceptions, the study of split ticket voting within the American politics literature has focused on dichotomous outcomes. In every American election, voters make choices about a much larger subset of offices and questions that is complicated by separation of powers and federalism. This paper starts with the working premise that conceptualizing split-ticket voting in the United States as a binary outcome is a potentially problematic oversimplification of reality. Unpacking that simplification may tell us something interesting about the act of split ticket voting, which is the foundation of divided government in America. Using the 1994 American National Election study, I test the informational origins of split ticket voting, measured trichotomously between House, Senate and Gubernatorial elections. The findings suggest that while generally, straight-ticket voting is a high-information act, straight ticket national voters who split their Gubernatorial vote are distinctive from other split-ticketers. I offer evidence that while split balloting at the intragovernmental level is generally a low-information behavior, split balloting at the intergovernmental level is not.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In 2001, pianist Anthony Coleman offered the following reflection about his coming of age as a musician during the 1960s and 1970s: “Most people looked for the funky thing in black music. And some of us found the funky thing in other traditions, like in Asian or African music.. But the idea of finding the funky thing in Jewish music was just not something that I knew anybody was thinking about.” As Coleman’s use of the phrase “funky thing” implies, music is both a collection of sounds and a set of cultural signifiers: both play a part in the formation of musical taste. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the experimentalist branch of jazz was thriving, attracting musicians who sought to open up the music to new influences and compositional and improvisational strategies. Long lauded and feared by whites for its expressive power, black music was seized upon during the 1960s by black cultural critics as a symbol of strength, and it defined what was hip for the youth culture of a new generation. At the same time, young Jewish musicians were inheritors of a separate legacy in American popular music that had serious practical and emotional consequences: to be Jewish was to be unhip. Seeking entrée into a world where hipness equaled cultural capital, budding composer/improvisers tended to see their Jewish backgrounds as irrelevant (or detrimental) to their development as creative musicians. Not coincidentally, many young Jewish musicians were engaged in personal rebellions against family, religion, and, insofar as these were inseparable, Jewish heritage. The counter-cultural ethos, grassroots energies, and political radicalism associated with some of the “new jazz” served as a draw for young musicians with similar values. And musicians of all backgrounds discovered power in the potential of resisting normative whiteness and hegemony through their creative choices and alliances. But the view of race in terms of black or white discouraged the expression of the kind of white otherness embodied in the postwar period by Jewishness. Insofar as Jewishness was seen as part of whiteness, such musicians tended to repudiate or quash it. This paper addresses the complexities of identification faced by Jewish American musicians as they came of age on a 1960s free jazz scene where political ideals often mapped onto artistic interests, and where racial politics and the weight of postwar American pressures to assimilate left musicians little room for Jewish cultural allegiance.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: This poster will detail the process of linking two separate studies undertaken in a Midwestern Suburban Police Department. A roadway composition study was performed to determine who travels in their district. In addition, all traffic tickets issued for that year were collected. The poster will show the spatial analysis of both databases and the methods used to make the data accessible for further analysis of police ticketing patterns.