Policy Crisis and Political Leadership: Election Law Reform in the States after the 2000 Presidential Election

Abstract

What effect do political leaders have on policy adoption in response to a crisis? The vote-counting crisis in the presidential election in Florida in 2000 forced policymakers in all 50 states to re-examine their own election laws and procedures. Some state leaders acted as entrepreneurs, seizing the opportunity to advance major reform, while others sought only modest or no substantive change. We test the impact of political leadership on policy adoption in a crisis situation by constructing a leadership variable from content analysis of news coverage in the states. We find that the activities of elected or appointed policymakers, particularly the states' chief elections officials (CEOs), had a decisive effect on the extent of election reforms adopted by the states. Five other factors also affected the adoption of election reforms: political culture, the ideology of a state's electorate, recommendations by statewide commissions, legislative term limits, and the interaction between the winner's margin of victory in the 2000 presidential election and the state's residual vote rate.

The Changing Nature … and Costs … of Election Administration

“…The state level saw much activity, both in reaction to HAVA and independently (Palazzolo and Ceasar 2005; Palazzolo and Moscadelli 2006). A useful resource for identifying state‐level changes is the database on state election reform maintained by the National Conference of State Legislatures (2010).…”

Public perceptions of felon-juror exclusion: An exploratory study

“…For example, the 2000 US presidential election brought felon-voter disenfranchisement into the spotlight (Palazzolo and Moscardelli, 2006). In that election, 827,000 convicted felons in Florida were statutorily disqualified from voting (Uggen and Manza, 2002).…”

The Political Landscape: A New Approach to Understanding Corporate Political Activity

“…It is worth noting that issue salience may differ from location to location (Maestas et al, 2006;Simons & Ingram, 2004;Thomsen, 2014). Thus an issue that has achieved salience in one political district might not have the same importance in another (Palazzolo & Moscardelli, 2006). For example, farm issues may be very important in states such as Iowa or Nebraska that are very rural and whose economies depend upon agriculture, while such issues may have limited impact in more heavily urbanized states such as Massachusetts or Florida.…”