Transnational political engagement and emigrant voting

Peltoniemi, Johanna

doi:10.1080/14782804.2018.1515727

Cited by 22 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…For instance, emigrants may join political campaigns, be active in hometown civic associations, or donate money or time to civic projects in the origin country (Guarnizo, Portes, andHaller 2003, 1223). Along with typical voting factors such as age, education, and interest in politics, both emigrants and immigrants make decisions on how and in which ways to politically participate based on the ease of involvement, residence, intention to stay, and geographical distance between the two countries (see, e.g., Peltoniemi 2018). The process of forming transnational ties is critical in this process (Boccagni and Ramírez 2013) since it affects the ways in which migrants are politically active.…”

Section: Migrant Political (Re)socialization and Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Migrant voting: here, there, in both countries, or nowhere

Finn

2020

Citizenship Studies

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Moving past the literature on states granting migrant voting rights, in this article I focus on individuals exercising these rights in order to question the connections between (non)citizenship, political membership, and participation in contemporary societies. With over 120 countries worldwide having enfranchised migrants in some form, the binary of 'here' and 'there' is insufficient to categorize and study migrant political engagement. This article contains a new typology to classify the four options of migrant voting: immigrant (only in the destination country), emigrant (only in the origin country), dual transnational (in both), and abstention (in neither). While emigrant voting requires citizenship, immigrant noncitizen voting does not, so active noncitizen voting weakens the defining dimensions of citizenship as a concept. As a first application, I analyze differences between individuals pertaining to each of the four types, based on a 2017 survey of 680 migrants in Chile since this country grants extensive migrant suffrage rights.

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Section: Migrant Political (Re)socialization and Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Migrant voting: here, there, in both countries, or nowhere

Finn

2020

Citizenship Studies

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“…Although the response rate may seem rather low in comparison to similar surveys collected among resident citizens, it is largely in line with other surveys collected among citizens abroad. In two previous larger data sets collected from non-resident citizens, the response rate varied between 20 and 30 percent (Solevid 2016;Peltoniemi, 2018aPeltoniemi, , 2018b. One reason for the relatively low response rate relates to expired address information in the Population Register Centre of Finland.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered with Trust: Non-Resident Citizens’ Experiences of Newly Adopted Postal Voting

2021

Self Cite

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The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that the traditional “booth, ballot, and pen” model of voting, based on a specific location and physical presence, may not be feasible during a health crisis. This situation has highlighted the need to assess whether existing national electoral legislation includes enough instruments to ensure citizens’ safety during voting procedures, even under the conditions of a global pandemic. Such instruments, often grouped under the umbrella of voter facilitation or convenience voting, range from voting in advance and various forms of absentee voting (postal, online, and proxy voting) to assisted voting and voting at home and in hospitals and other healthcare institutions. While most democracies have implemented at least some form of voter facilitation, substantial cross-country differences still exist. In the push to develop pandemic-sustainable elections in different institutional and political contexts, variation in voter facilitation makes it possible to learn from country-specific experiences. As accessibility and inclusiveness are critical components of elections for ensuring political legitimacy and accountability these lessons are of utmost importance.In this study, we focus on Finland, where the Parliament decided in March 2021 to postpone for two months the municipal elections that were originally scheduled to be held on April 18. Although the decision was mostly justified by the sudden and dramatic daily increase in new COVID-19 infections, the inability to guarantee the opportunity to vote for those in quarantine was included among the likely risks. The failure to organize health-safe voting procedures to accommodate the original schedule emphasizes a certain paradox in the Finnish electoral legislation: caution in introducing new facilitation instruments has led to lower levels of preparedness and flexibility in crisis situations. Although a forerunner in implementing extensive advance voting opportunities, Finland has only recently introduced postal voting, which is restricted to voters living abroad. Hence, we ask: what can be learned from this form of convenience voting if expanded to all voters to enhance the sustainability of elections?Our analyses are based on a survey conducted among non-resident voters (n = 2,100) after the 2019 parliamentary elections in which postal voting from abroad was allowed for the first time. Our results show that whereas trust in the integrity of postal voting is quite high, various efforts needed from individual voters substantially increase the costs of postal voting. Postal operations also raise concerns. Furthermore, voters felt that requiring two witnesses made postal voting cumbersome, an issue that needs to be resolved, particularly if applying postal voting in the context of a pandemic. The Finnish case constitutes a concrete example of a situation in which voter facilitation targeted to a particular segment of society may become a testbed for electoral engineering that will improve voting opportunities for everyone.

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“…Although the response rate may seem rather low in comparison to similar surveys collected among resident citizens, it is largely in line with other surveys collected among citizens abroad. In two previous larger data sets collected from non-resident citizens, the response rate varied between 20 and 30 percent (Solevid 2016;Peltoniemi 2018aPeltoniemi , 2018b. One reason for the relatively low response rate relates to expired address information, although the magnitude of this problem is difficult to calculate with any accuracy as the letters are not returned to the sender.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to run pandemic-sustainable elections: Lessons learned from postal voting

Wass¹,

Peltoniemi²,

Weide³

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that the traditional “booth, ballot, and pen” model of voting, based on a specific location and physical presence, may not be feasible during a health crisis. This situation has highlighted the need to assess whether existing national electoral legislation includes enough instruments to ensure citizens’ safety during voting procedures, even under the conditions of a global pandemic. Such instruments, often grouped under the umbrella of voter facilitation or convenience voting, range from voting in advance and various forms of absentee voting (postal, online, and proxy voting) to assisted voting and voting at home and in hospitals and other healthcare institutions. While most democracies have implemented at least some form of voter facilitation, substantial cross-country differences still exist. In the push to develop pandemic-sustainable elections in different institutional and political contexts, variation in voter facilitation makes it possible to learn from country-specific experiences. As accessibility and inclusiveness are critical components of elections for ensuring political legitimacy and accountability, particularly in times of crisis, these lessons are of utmost importance.In this study, we focus on Finland, where the Parliament decided in March 2021 to postpone for two months the municipal elections that were originally scheduled to be held on April 18. Although the decision was mostly justified by the sudden and dramatic daily increase in new COVID-19 infections, the inability to guarantee those in quarantine the opportunity to vote was included among the likely risks. The failure to organize health-safe voting procedures to accommodate the original schedule emphasizes a certain paradox in the Finnish electoral legislation: caution in introducing new facilitation instruments has led to lower levels of preparedness and flexibility in crisis situations. Although a forerunner in implementing extensive advance voting opportunities, Finland has only recently introduced postal voting, which is restricted to voters living abroad. Hence, we ask: what can be learned from this form of convenience voting if expanded to all voters to enhance the sustainability of elections in future crises like pandemics? Our analyses are based on a survey conducted among non-resident voters (n = 2,100) after the 2019 parliamentary elections in which postal voting from abroad was allowed for the first time. Our results show that whereas trust in the integrity of postal voting is quite high, various efforts needed from individual voters substantially increase the costs of postal voting. Postal operations also raise concerns. Furthermore, voters felt that requiring two witnesses made postal voting cumbersome, an issue that needs to be resolved, particularly if applying postal voting in the context of a pandemic. The Finnish case constitutes a concrete example of a situation in which voter facilitation targeted to a particular segment of society may become a testbed for electoral engineering (see Norris 2004) that will improve voting opportunities for everyone.

show abstract

Transnational political engagement and emigrant voting

Cited by 22 publications

References 57 publications

Migrant voting: here, there, in both countries, or nowhere

Migrant voting: here, there, in both countries, or nowhere

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered with Trust: Non-Resident Citizens’ Experiences of Newly Adopted Postal Voting

How to run pandemic-sustainable elections: Lessons learned from postal voting

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