Malaysian Electoral System Reform and the Challenges of its Implementation After the 14th General Election

Prior to the 14th general election (GE-14), electoral practices in Malaysia have been often criticised as being obscure and biased since it was plagued with issues such as dubious voter registers and ballot paper fraud. Therefore, in its manifesto during GE-14, Pakatan Harapan (PH) promised to reform this electoral practice to make it more independent, transparent, and fair. PH then won the GE-14 on the strength of this vow, forcing it to keep its manifesto pledge. However, implementing the said promise is not easy as most of the proposals involve amendments to the Federal Constitution that require the support of at least a two-thirds majority. The fact that PH lacks such a majority has raised the issue of whether or not the objective to reform the electoral system can be materialised. Thus, this article examines the aspects of electoral reform implemented by PH during its 22 months in power and assesses the challenges faced in implementing such electoral system reform. The concept of electoral reform was used as an analytical tool in this article. This article mainly obtained its data from secondary sources including books, journals, theses, official government documents and websites, while primary data were collected from unstructured interviews with authoritative informants. Findings revealed that among the important reforms of the country's electoral system that have been accomplished by PH are improving the standard operating procedures of elections, enhancing election rules that do not require amendments, amending laws that require simple majority support in the parliament, and implementing ‘high-impact’ electoral reforms that require amendments to the Federal Constitution. Moreover, it was also discovered that the main challenge to reforming the electoral system was the constraint of electoral rule amendments that require the approval of a two-thirds majority of parliamentarians. Other obstacles included politicians' unwillingness to accept a new electoral system culture, barriers to accessing data and information owned by other agencies, discrepancies between federal and state legislation, and financial constraints on improving existing hardware and systems necessary for electoral reform success.

Corruption in the "First Order": Predicting the influence of scandal on voting behaviour and media perceptions during a General Election

<p><b>This thesis investigates responses in voting behaviour and media perceptions to the presence of media scandals about politicians and associated political parties during the 2017 New Zealand general election. A repeated measures design was used wherein 351 participants were recruited before the start of the election campaign, primarily from an Introductory Psychology course at Victoria University of Wellington. Follow-up surveys were conducted at three time points throughout the two month campaign. Participants were randomly allocated into one of two conditions for each follow-up survey. Half the participants were given a real news article to read about a media scandal, the other half read an article about a policy platform by the same political party. At the end of the election campaign, participants were asked about their voting behaviours. A second study was conducted after Labour Party leader, Jacinda Ardern, was announced Prime Minister with participants recruited via social media sites ‘Twitter’ and ‘Facebook’. In this study, 153 participants recalled information about scandals that were present in the media during the election campaign.</b></p> <p>Results showed that political scandals in news media do have an influence on voter perceptions, but not in an easily predictable way. Prior perceptions of political parties were the best predictors of who participants intended to vote for. Participants responded most strongly to public policy articles rather than scandal information, particularly those more knowledgeable of New Zealand’s political system, and therefore likely more engaged with politics in general. Further, there was evidence that information presented in the media influenced how participants viewed political parties that were not involved in the scandal, which is an important under a proportional voting system like MMP which requires understanding of the relationships between parties.</p> <p>Evidence was also found for a backlash effect towards the media wherein participants who were exposed to scandal information would displayed a decrease in trust towards the general media, consistent with the idea that one reason why voters may not respond negatively to scandal information reflects the decision that the source of the information is not credible. Future research should consider more targeted analysis on the different sources of news media, especially new media like blogs, social media, and entertainment news.</p>

Corruption in the "First Order": Predicting the influence of scandal on voting behaviour and media perceptions during a General Election

<p><b>This thesis investigates responses in voting behaviour and media perceptions to the presence of media scandals about politicians and associated political parties during the 2017 New Zealand general election. A repeated measures design was used wherein 351 participants were recruited before the start of the election campaign, primarily from an Introductory Psychology course at Victoria University of Wellington. Follow-up surveys were conducted at three time points throughout the two month campaign. Participants were randomly allocated into one of two conditions for each follow-up survey. Half the participants were given a real news article to read about a media scandal, the other half read an article about a policy platform by the same political party. At the end of the election campaign, participants were asked about their voting behaviours. A second study was conducted after Labour Party leader, Jacinda Ardern, was announced Prime Minister with participants recruited via social media sites ‘Twitter’ and ‘Facebook’. In this study, 153 participants recalled information about scandals that were present in the media during the election campaign.</b></p> <p>Results showed that political scandals in news media do have an influence on voter perceptions, but not in an easily predictable way. Prior perceptions of political parties were the best predictors of who participants intended to vote for. Participants responded most strongly to public policy articles rather than scandal information, particularly those more knowledgeable of New Zealand’s political system, and therefore likely more engaged with politics in general. Further, there was evidence that information presented in the media influenced how participants viewed political parties that were not involved in the scandal, which is an important under a proportional voting system like MMP which requires understanding of the relationships between parties.</p> <p>Evidence was also found for a backlash effect towards the media wherein participants who were exposed to scandal information would displayed a decrease in trust towards the general media, consistent with the idea that one reason why voters may not respond negatively to scandal information reflects the decision that the source of the information is not credible. Future research should consider more targeted analysis on the different sources of news media, especially new media like blogs, social media, and entertainment news.</p>

Post-Islamism in Indonesia: Analysis of Islamic Political Party Programs in the 2019 National Elections

Although most Indonesia's population is Muslim, the Islamic parties' votes do not show a significant general election. This tendency encourages Islamic parties to develop post-Islamism to win the sympathy of majority Muslim voters in Indonesia. Ahead of the 2019 election, identity politics or sectarian politics had strengthened in the 2017 DKI Jakarta Regional Head Election, and even identity politics had long ago emerged with the proliferation of Sharia regulations in several regions, as well as the issuance of the MUI Fatwa regarding the illegitimacy of secularism, liberalism, and pluralism. This study aims to see whether Islamic parties maintain Post Islamism in political programs in the 2019 election. The research uses a library research method by collecting data from books, journals, national print, and online media. The study results explain that Islamic parties remain consistent in using the Post Islamism approach in the 2019 election, even though their vote acquisition is stagnant as a middle board party. Received: 4 September 2021 / Accepted: 15 November 2021 / Published: 3 January 2022

Civic Engagement on Voters Turnout in General Election

The concern of voter turnout during general election is a serious problem. As such, the study found that civic engagement influences significantly voter turnout during general election in Tanzania. The findings based on primary data and descriptive statistics and a logistic regression model identified how civic engagement influences maximum voters turnout. These include putting names of voters before election day, authority to enforce law protecting voters, communities to know the importance of voting, Further, logistic regression model also deepens the finding that civic engagement influences voters turnout by establishing gender system on voting and emphasis youth's registration before election and .to encourage voters so that they know importance of voting. Conclusion is that voter turnout requires well organised and arranged packages of civic engagement. Recommendation is to emphasis on civic engagement as it explores voters' interest specifically democratic system and transparency.

Europe and Euroscepticism on Twitter During the 2019 European Parliament Elections

The purpose of this research is to analyse the activity on Twitter of the eight main candidates who stood in the 2019 European election in Spain. The analysis was developed throughout the electoral campaign and established based on two methodological perspectives. First, the content analysis allowed to observe which topics each candidate spoke about and from which perspective (pro-European or Eurosceptic). Second, the discourse analysis allowed to further explore the political communication strategies developed. This analysis is based on two hypotheses. The first (H1) is that European issues and approaches will not be a priority in candidates' discourses for the European Parliament, given the context of political polarisation in Spain and the fact that these elections can be read as a second round for the April 2019 general election. The second (H2) is that Euroscepticism will have a marginal presence in candidates' messages. The results confirm H2 but reject H1.

Netralitas Aparatur Sipil Negara Dalam Pemilihan Umum Kepala Daerah Kabupaten Asahan Tahun 2020

This study aims to find out and analyze the neutrality of the State Civil Apparatus in the 2020 Asahan district head election as well as to describe and analyze what factors and obstacles to the non-neutrality of the state civil apparatus in the 2020 Asahan District Head General Election. The type of research used is descriptive qualitative with descriptive analytical method. This study uses a qualitative approach that produces descriptive data in the form of recording researchers and facts that will be found in the field. This study uses the theory of bureaucracy according to Weber (1974) and the theory of neutrality according to Amin which states that neutral means not taking sides and not being involved. The results of this study revealed a lack of neutrality for ASN in Asahan Regency as evidenced by violations involving 8 ASN and field facts based on observations and interviews. Meanwhile, the factors that lead to the occurrence of violations are the position factor and the group similarity factor. From the research that has been carried out, it was found that the application of this neutrality rule has obstacles in the form of obstacles from the ASN body itself, the suboptimal monitoring system carried out by Bawaslu and KASN, public understanding of ASN neutrality, and the absence of a budget for monitoring ASN neutrality in the PILKADA of the Asahan Regency Government.

The Regulation of Continuous Election Design’s Implementation Based on the Constitutional Court’s Decision

This study aims to describe the consistency of judges' considerations in the Constitutional Court Decision No. 14/PUU-XI/2013 and the Constitutional Court Decision No. 55/PUU-XVII/2019 and its suitability with the design of the election administration according to the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia. To measure the consistency of the two Constitutional Court Decisions, the meaning of the original intent of holding elections simultaneously according to the Amendment of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia will be used. This is normative legal research, which uses approach legislation (statute approach) and historical approach (historical approach). The results of this study indicate that the judge's considerations in the Constitutional Court Decision 14/PUU-XI/2013 are inconsistent with the Constitutional Court Decision 55/PUU-XVII/2019. Based on the original intent study, the Amendrs to the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia disagreed on the simultaneous implementation of the General Election in Indonesia. So the judge's consideration in the Constitutional Court's decision Number 14/PUU-XI/2013, which requires simultaneous elections, is not following the design of the election administration according to the amendment to the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia. Six alternatives for the simultaneous implementation of elections.

Yugoslavia and General Election in Italy in 1948

The paper deals with Yugoslav perceptions of the 1948 general election in Italy. The research focuses primarily on reports of the Yugoslav legation in Rome, which closely monitored the election campaign as well as the consequences of this watershed in the Cold War phase of Italian history. The Yugoslav sources cast a light on the strategies of the principal protagonists in the Italian political turmoil in April 1948.