Master Lever

This site includes links to additional materials for the following paper:

Gorelkina O. and I. Grypari (2018): "One Strike and You're Out: The Effects of the Master Lever on Senators' Positions, Available at SSRN 2889686.

Online Appendix

Press on the Master Lever

States that still have a Master Lever

The master lever, still present in some U.S. states, allows voters to select one party for all offices contested on a ballot, by ticking only one box at the top. It is also known as a straight-ticket, or straight-party, voting option and different versions of it are available in other electoral systems around the world. Its name comes from old voting machines, where levers had to be pulled in order to vote. The picture below shows one such machine. The big levers on the left are the master levers for the Republican and Democratic party. If not used, the voter must pull one little lever for each office separately.

(The picture is taken at the National Museum of American History and we got it from Wikipedia.)