We study a model in which voters choose between two candidates on the basis of both ideology and competence. While the ideology of the candidates is commonly known, voters are imperfectly informed about competence. Voter preferences, however, are such that it is a dominant strategy to vote...

We study strategic voting in a Condorcet type model in which voters have identical preferences but differential information. Voters incur private costs of going to the polls and may abstain if they wish; hence voting is voluntary. We show that under majority rule with voluntary voting, it is an...

We study vote buying by competing interest groups in a variety of electoral and contractual settings. While increasing the size of a voting body reduces its buyability in the absence of competition, we show that larger voting bodies may be more buyable than smaller voting bodies when interest...

In the presence of competing interest groups, this paper examines how the form of vote-buying contracts affects policy outcomes. We study contracts contingent upon individual votes, policy outcomes, and/or vote shares. Voters either care about their individual votes, or about the policy outcome....

A common feature of many models of voter turnout is that increasing the perceived closeness of the election should increase voter turnout. However, cleanly testing this prediction is difficult and little is known about voter beliefs regarding the closeness of a given race. We conduct a field...