The 2004 general election was the first presidential election that tested substantial changes states made to their election systems since the 2000 election, including some changes required by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA). HAVA required some major changes in the nation's elections processes, not all which had to be implemented by the November 2004 election. HAVA addressed issues of people, processes, and technology, all of which must be effectively integrated to ensure effective election operations. GAO initiated a review under the authority of the Comptroller General to examine an array of election issues of broad interest to Congress. For each major stage of the election process, this report discusses (1) changes to election systems since the 2000 election, including steps taken to implement HAVA, and (2) challenges encountered in the 2004 election. For this report, GAO sent a survey to the 50 states and the District of Columbia (all responded) and mailed a questionnaire to a nationwide sample of 788 local election jurisdictions about election administration activities (80 percent responded). To obtain more detailed information about experiences for the 2004 election, GAO also visited 28 local jurisdictions in 14 states, chosen to represent a range of election system characteristics. In passing HAVA, Congress provided a means for states and local jurisdictions to improve upon several aspects of the election system, but it is too soon to determine the full effect of those changes. For example, 41 states obtained waivers permitted under HAVA until January 1, 2006, to implement a requirement for statewide voter registration lists. States also had discretion in how they implemented HAVA requirements, such as the identification requirements for first-time mail registrants. Some local election jurisdictions described different identification procedures for first-time mail registrants who registered through voter registration drives. Although states differed regarding where voters who cast provisional ballots for federal office must cast those ballots in order for their votes to be counted, provisional voting has helped to facilitate voter participation. HAVA also created the Election Assistance Commission, which has issued best practice guides and voluntary voting systems standards and distributed federal funds to states for improving election administration, including purchasing new voting equipment. The results of our survey of local election jurisdictions indicate that larger jurisdictions may be replacing older equipment with technology-based voting methods to a greater extent than small jurisdictions, which continue to use paper ballots extensively and are the majority of jurisdictions. As the elections technology environment evolves, voting system performance management, security, and testing will continue to be important to ensuring the integrity of the overall elections process. GAO found that states made... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reveals the story of Barre Seid, a Chicago billionaire who has gifted anti-abortion Supreme Court fixer Leonard Leo, the largest known tranche of dark money in U.S. history. It mentions that Seid's immense wealth will be used to fund extreme right-wing political activities, including challenging gay rights, unions, environmental protection, voting rights, and public education, with the aim of destroying American liberal culture.

DeSantis is simply the first Republicanto appreciate the potential of this once-unimaginableuse of state power to win theculture wars. The pretext for tearing down the schoolleaned heavily on its alleged budgetarywoes, but DeSantis immediately allocated$15 million in state spending and theboard hired Corcoran as president witha base salary above that of presidents ofother Florida universities that have nearly100 times more students. DeSantis's state-imposed ideology isbeing extended to student-run clubs: Onehigh school shut down a meeting by itsQueer and Ally Alliance, a student group,after Florida's Department of Educationreportedly sent the school administrationa threatening message. To complain that the governor andthe state legislature are interfering with"public universities "is, in effect, to complainthat the governor and the state legislatureare interfering with the government thatthey run", editorialized National Review,neatly sweeping away any concern that aRepublican state could ever go too far indictating content to its universities. [Extracted from the article]

A country report for the U.S. is presented from publisher Country Watch Inc., with topics including government strategy, economic growth, and national security.

This includes Trump's refusal to concede defeat; his pressure campaign against state and local officials who would not do his bidding; his efforts to intimidate Mike Pence into violating his oath of office; his summoning supporters to a "wild" protest on January 6; and his reluctance to take action once it was clear the protest had escalated into an all-out riot at the Capitol. In this case, dozens of state and federal courts (including Trump-appointed judges and justices) rejected Trump's frivolous lawsuits. While the Court's three current liberals dissented, two of them conspicuously did not join Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent thundering that the Court "continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build" and is "leading us to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment." Nancy Pelosi refused to seat Jordan and Banks on the theory that they had objected to Biden's electors - yet she chose Bennie Thompson, who objected to George W. Bush's electors, to chair the committee and Jamie Raskin, who objected to Trump's, to serve on it. [Extracted from the article]

In this monograph, we argue for the establishment of a developmental science of politics that describes, explains, and predicts the formation and change of individuals' political knowledge, attitudes, and behavior beginning in childhood and continuing across the life course. Reflecting our goal of contributing both theoretical conceptualizations and empirical data, we have organized the monograph into two broad sections. In the first section, we outline theoretical contributions that the study of politics may make to developmental science and provide practical reasons that empirical research in the domain of politics is important (e.g., for identifying ways to improve civics education and for encouraging higher voting rates among young adults). We also review major historical approaches to the study of political development and provide an integrative theoretical framework to ground future work. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems model as an organizing scheme and emphasizing social justice issues, we describe how factors rooted in cultural contexts, families, and children themselves are likely to shape political development. In the second section of the monograph, we argue for the importance and utility of studying major political events, such as presidential elections, and introduce the major themes, rationales, and hypotheses for a study of U.S. children's views of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In addition, we apply a social‐justice lens to political thought and participation, addressing the role of gender/sex and race/ethnicity in children's political development broadly, and in their knowledge and views of the 2016 U.S. presidential election specifically. In interviews conducted within the month before and after the election, we examined two overarching categories of children's political attitudes: (a) knowledge, preferences, and expectations about the 2016 election, and (b) knowledge and attitudes concerning gender/sex and politics, particularly relevant for the 2016 election given Hillary Clinton's role as the first female major‐party candidate for the presidency. Participants were 187 children (101 girls) between 5 and 11 years of age (M = 8.42 years, SD = 1.45 years). They were recruited from schools and youth organizations in five counties in four U.S. states (Kansas, Kentucky, Texas, and Washington) with varying voting patterns (e.g., Trump voters ranged from 27% to 71% of county voters). The sample was not a nationally representative one, but was racially diverse (35 African American, 50 Latinx, 81 White, and 21 multiracial, Asian American, Middle Eastern, or Native American children). In addition to several child characteristics (e.g., age, social dominance orientation [SDO]), we assessed several family and community characteristics (e.g., child‐reported parental interest in the election and government‐reported county‐level voting patterns, respectively) hypothesized to predict outcome variables. Although our findings are shaped by the nature of our sample (e.g., our participants were less likely to support Trump than children in larger, nationwide samples were), they offer preliminary insights into children's political development. Overall, children in our sample were interested in and knowledgeable about the presidential election (e.g., a large majority identified the candidates correctly and reported some knowledge about their personal qualities or policy positions). They reported more information about Donald Trump's than Hillary Clinton's policies, largely accounted for by the substantial percentage of children (41%) who referred to Trump's immigration policies (e.g., building a wall between the United States and Mexico). Overall, children reported as many negative as positive personal qualities of the candidates, with negative qualities being reported more often for Trump than for Clinton (56% and 18% of children, respectively). Most children (88%) supported Clinton over Trump, a preference that did not vary by participants' gender/sex or race/ethnicity. In their responses to an open‐ended inquiry about their reactions to Trump's win, 63% of children reported negative and 18% reported positive emotions. Latinx children reacted more negatively to the election outcome than did White children. Girls' and boys' emotional responses to the election outcome did not differ. Children's personal interest in serving as U.S. president did not vary across gender/sex or racial/ethnic groups (overall, 42% were interested). Clinton's loss of the election did not appear to depress (or pique) girls' interest in becoming U.S. president. With respect to the role of gender/sex in politics, many children (35%) were ignorant about women's absence from the U.S. presidency. Only a single child was able to name a historical individual who worked for women's civil rights or suffrage. Child characteristics predicted some outcome variables. For example, as expected, older children showed greater knowledge about the candidates than did younger children. Family and community characteristics also predicted some outcome variables. For example, as expected, participants were more likely to support Trump if they perceived that their parents supported him and if Trump received a greater percentage of votes in the children's county of residence. Our data suggest that civic education should be expanded and reformed. In addition to addressing societal problems requiring political solutions, civics lessons should include the histories of social groups' political participation, including information about gender discrimination and the women's suffrage movement in U.S. political history. Providing children with environments that are rich in information related to the purpose and value of politics, and with opportunities and encouragement for political thought and action, is potentially beneficial for youth and their nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) is the most interesting phenomenon in contemporary Indonesian politics. Not only is it growing rapidly in membership and electoral support, it is also bringing a new and markedly different approach to Islamic politics, one which has no precedent in Indonesian history.Understanding PKS and analysing its political behaviour presents challenges to scholars and observers. This is partly due to the fact that the party represents a new trend within Indonesian Islam which has few parallels with preceding movements.Yon Machmudi has rendered us a valuable service. In this book, he provides a thoughtful and authoritative context for viewing PKS. He critiques the existing categorisations for Indonesian Islam and points to their inadequacy when describing the PKS and the campus-based Tarbiyah movement from which it sprang. He reworks the santri typology, dividing it into convergent, radical and global substreams. This offers new possibilities for explaining the PKS phenomenon and assists in differentiating between various types of Islamic revivalism in contemporary Indonesia. It also allows a more understanding of the accommodatory stance which PKS has towards the state and other political forces.Yon's text provides a good overview of the development of PKS from its Tarbiyah movement origins to its impressive success at the 2004 general elections. It considers the party's attitude towards the issues of sharia implementation and community welfare and closes by examining the future challenges facing PKS.It is a well written and authoritative account from a scholar who has done wideranging research on the party.

Over-time and multivariate cross-sectional analyses of large survey samples are used to estimate the likely effects of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by examining turnout in those states where procedures comparable to any of the act's provisions were in force in 1992. In contrast to previous studies, we find that most state motor voter programs did not resemble the NVRA provision. We analyze one state program that did, and in addition use election-day registration as a surrogate, because it also provides one-trip voting. Our two approaches lead to estimates of turnout increases due to the motor voter provision of 4.7 and 8.7 percentage points, respectively. The lack of state counterparts to public agency registration prevents estimates of this provision's consequences. Eliminating purging for not voting will increase turnout by as much as 2 percentage points. Universal mail registration will have no effect. The turnout effects will be greatest among the two largest groups of current nonvoters: people under the age of 30 and those who moved within two years of election day. Neither group is politically distinctive, except for young people's weaker identification with the major parties and greater affinity for third-party candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]