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An investigation into the usability of electronic voting systems for complex elections

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Abstract

Many studies on electronic voting evaluate their usability in the context of simple elections. Complex elections, which take place in many European countries, also merit attention. The complexity of the voting process, as well as that of the tallying and verification of the ballots, makes usability even more crucial in this context. Complex elections, both paper-based and electronic, challenge voters and electoral officials to an unusual extent. In this work, we present two studies of an electronic voting system that is tailored to the needs of complex elections. In the first study, we evaluate the effectiveness of the ballot design with respect to motivating voters to verify their ballot. Furthermore, we identify factors that motivate voters to verify, or not to verify, their ballot. The second study also addresses the effectiveness of the ballot design in terms of verification, but this time from the electoral officials’ perspective. Last, but not least, we evaluate the usability of the implemented EasyVote prototype from both the voter and electoral official perspectives. In both studies, we were able to improve effectiveness, without impacting efficiency and satisfaction. Despite these usability improvements, it became clear that voters who trusted the electronic system were unlikely to verify their ballots. Moreover, these voters failed to detect the “fraudulent” manipulations. It is clear that well-formulated interventions are required in order to encourage verification and to improve the detection of errors or fraudulent attempts.

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Notes

  1. For a worldwide status quo of electronic voting visit the link: http://www.e-voting.cc/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/e-voting_worldmap_2015.pdf http://www.e-voting.cc/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/e-voting_worldmap_2015.pdf, last accessed 16 November 2015.

  2. For a more detailed classification of electronic voting systems refer to [15, 18], and for voting forms to [23].

  3. The idea of paper audit trails was invented by Mercuri [30], and later associated by Rivest and Wack with the notion of software-independence [34].

  4. https://github.com/SecUSo/EasyVote, last accessed 16 November 2015.

  5. According to Volkamer et al. [46] evaluating the usability of electronic voting systems is important and critical for trust establishment.

  6. Note that the maximal number of votes a voter can cast, is determined by the number of seats in the parliament.

  7. Note that the automatic assignments of votes takes place in the tallying process.

  8. http://www.pcwahl.de/, last accessed 16 November 2015.

  9. The PC-Wahl software is assumed to be trustworthy. Thus, this step serves as a self-control for the electoral officials.

  10. http://www.intern.tu-darmstadt.de/gremien/ethikkommisson/index.en.jsp, last accessed 16 November 2015.

  11. Note that if participants had questions regarding the vote casting process while reading the poster, they could ask the experimenter.

  12. Participants in the voting booth could print only one ballot, as proposed by Budurushi et al. [8]. If the participant wanted to cast a different vote from the one already printed, he/she was required to leave the voting booth, privately destroy the printed ballot and re-enter the voting booth.

  13. Note that in the study the ballot boxes were not labelled and one of the ballot boxes was hidden in order not to confuse or bias the participants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universtität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Jurlind Budurushi, Melanie Volkamer & Marcel Woide

  2. University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Karen Renaud

Authors
  1. Jurlind Budurushi
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  2. Karen Renaud
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  3. Melanie Volkamer
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  4. Marcel Woide
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Correspondence to Jurlind Budurushi.

Additional information

This project (HA project no. 435/14-25) is funded in the framework of Hessen ModellProjekte, financed with funds of LOEWE Landes-Offensive zur Entwicklung Wissenschaftlich-konomischer Exzellenz, Frderlinie 3: KMU-Verbundvorhaben (State Offensive for the Development of Scientific and Economic Excellence).

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Budurushi, J., Renaud, K., Volkamer, M. et al. An investigation into the usability of electronic voting systems for complex elections. Ann. Telecommun. 71, 309–322 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12243-016-0510-2

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