Abstract
This paper investigates the drivers and barriers of internet voting and the implications of a global pandemic for the development of the respective technology. In contrast to the expected uptake in the early 2000s of internet voting, the technology is still rather seldomly used in election systems around the world. The paper at hand explores the different forces that drive or impede internet voting adoption from a political, social, legal, organizational, contextual, economic and technological perspective. In an exploratory approach, 18 expert interviews and extensive complementary desk research were conducted.
The findings identified 15 general drivers and 15 general barriers for the process of internet voting adoption. The evidence suggests that for a large part, the political features, trust and perception are the most pivotal factors to internet voting development.
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Notes
- 1.
For a better understanding, see: 22. Licht, N.: Insights into Internet Voting: Adoption Stages, Drivers & Barriers, and the Possible Impact of COVID-19. Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance. Tallinn University of Technology (2021).
- 2.
The empirical findings will be cited as in-text citations with the interview number in brackets, in the following format: e.g., single citation (1), multiple citations (1;2; 3…).
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Acknowledgements
This work received support from mGov4EU and eceps grants - 857622 and 959072 and, in the case of Dr. David Duenas-Cid, also from Polish National Research Center grant (Miniatura 3 - 2019/03/X/HS6/01688 “Zaufanie do technologii w e-administracji: Powtórna analiza nieudanego wdrożenia elektronicznych maszyn do głosowania w Holandii (2006–07)”.
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Licht, N., Duenas-Cid, D., Krivonosova, I., Krimmer, R. (2021). To i-vote or Not to i-vote: Drivers and Barriers to the Implementation of Internet Voting. In: Krimmer, R., et al. Electronic Voting. E-Vote-ID 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12900. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86942-7_7
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