This study explores the relationship between electoral participation and income redistribution by way of social transfers, using data from the European Social Survey, the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, and the Luxembourg Income Study. It extends previous research by measuring the income skew of turnout rather than using average turnout as a proxy for its income bias. We find that, controlling for a number of other variables,...

In cross-national empirical work on income inequality and government redistribution, the greatest emphasis has been on the extremes of the income scale. Less work has been done on groups that are neither rich nor poor—the middle class. The lack of attention to this group is unfortunate for several reasons. Most obviously, the middle class, if defined as the three middle income quintile groups, is by far the largest income group,...

Internet voting has been trialed or introduced for several countries, including Norway, Portugal, United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland as an additional voting channel to increase voter turnout and, also to modernize the electoral process. However, only Estonia has successful introduced internet voting, deploying e-enabled elections in general governmental levels. This paper aims to provide an exploratory study on the Estonian...

It is widely accepted that income influences voting behavior. Does wealth? Is the effect similar across countries? Studies of wealth and voting behavior have not existed until recently, in part because of the absence of data on wealth holdings. The findings in this chapter indicate that wealth is related to voting behavior in some countries but not in others. The chapter models the effects of wealth on one form of voting behavior,...