In practice, a voting procedure is characterized by ballot responses and the way ballots are tallied to determine winners.
Voters are assumed to have clear preferences over candidates and attempt to maximize satisfaction with the election outcome by their ballot responses.
Patricia Smith said her organization, the Oregon Citizens Alliance, a coalition of conservative activists, had placed the measure on the ballot in response to complaints from parents.
But in the 8th District, the state board shows that only 50percentt of those who requested ballots — 4,168 out of 8,363 requests — actually cast ballots, a response rate not only lower than the other portions of Fairfax County, but lower than any other congressional district in the state, according to the Connolly campaign.
Montenegro declares independence either after a ballot, or in response to a move from Belgrade to reassert control.
The ballot measure, a response to the Bush administration's restrictions on stem cell research, will quickly make California a global center of such studies.
The $3 billion California Institute for Regenerative Medicine was created by a state ballot initiative in response to the Bush-era restrictions, for example, and expects to run out of money after 2020 without a new source of funding.
In an era in which democracy has lost much of its lustre, the ballot drew a massive response of 89.6%.
In a sign of the range of measures before voters -- and the divisiveness of the voucher issue in particular -- the nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association, voted this summer to impose a $3 annual surcharge on members' dues, solely to mount a response to ballot initiatives.
"Normally, when marriage comes up on the ballot, it's in response to a court case or legislative action and at most — as in 2009 here and in Maryland and Washington — you have six months to really go out and defend whatever that court or legislature did," Mr. McTighe said.
In practice, that means asking a series of questions about voter registration, intent to vote, past voting, interest in the campaign and knowledge of voting procedures -- all characteristics that typically correlate with a greater likelihood of actually casting a ballot -- and combining responses to those questions into a seven-point scale.
