The Digitization of Democracy in Practice
Comparing Internet Voting in Estonia and the U.S.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v12i3.4623Keywords:
Digital Democracy, Internet Voting, Comparative Analysis, Estonia, The U.S.Abstract
In the recent development of electronic government and electronic democracy, Internet voting
has sparked intense academic debates and attracted various experimentations among nation-
states. This paper overviews major theoretical discussions over the topic and compares
literature on the evolution of Internet voting practices in two countries: Estonia and the United
States. We argue that the diffusion and sustainability of the Internet voting system in national
politics is not the sole outcome of technological innovation. Instead, it relies upon a
comprehensive institutional building of digital infrastructure that maintains public trust in the
digital transformation and charters the government action in response to security risks.
Downloads
References or Bibliography
Abazorius, A. (2020) ‘MIT researchers identify security vulnerabilities in voting app.’ Available at: https://news.mit.edu/2020/voting-voatz-app-hack-issues-0213 (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Abba, A.L. et al. (2017) ‘Security analysis of current voting systems.’ [Conference presentation]. Electrical and computing technologies and applications (ICECTA), pp.1-6.
Alvarez, R.M. and Hall, T.E. (2008) ‘Building secure and transparent elections through standard operating procedures.’ Public Administration Review, 68(5): pp.828-838.
Alvarez, R.M., Hall, T.E. and Trechsel, A. (2009) ‘Internet voting in Comparative Perspective: The case of Estonia.’ PS: Political Science & Politics, 42(3): pp.497-505.
Anooja, A. (2016) ‘Internet voting system and digital India.’ International Journal of Emerging Trends & Technology in Computer Science, 5(1): 62-64.
Auer, A. and Mendez, M. (2005) ‘Introducing e-voting for the European Parliament elections.’ in F. Mendez and A.H. Trechsel (ed.) The European Union and E-Voting (Electronic Voting). London: Routledge, pp.124-143.
Awad, M. and Leiss, E.L. (2011) ‘Internet voting in the USA: Analysis and commentary.’ Transforming Government: People. Process and Policy, 5(1): pp.45-55.
Berinsky, A.J. (2005) ‘The perverse consequences of electoral reform in the United States.’ American Politics Research, 33(4): pp.471-491.
Birch, S. (2010) ‘Perceptions of electoral fairness and voter turnout.’ Comparative Political Studies, 43(12): pp.1601-1622.
Bochsler, D. (2010) ‘Can Internet voting increase political Participation? Remote electronic voting and turnout in the Estonian 2007 parliamentary elections.’ [Conference presentation]. The ‘Internet and Voting’ Conference. 3-4 June. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1456827 (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Brattberg, E. and Maurer, T. (2018) ‘Russian election interference: Europe’s counter to fake news and cyber attacks.’ Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Carman, C., Mitchell, J. and Johns, R. (2008) ‘The unfortunate natural experiment in ballot design: The Scottish Parliamentary elections of 2007.’ Electoral Studies. 27(3): pp.442-459.
Carter, L. and Bélanger, F. (2005) ‘The utilization of e-government services: Citizen trust, innovation and acceptance factors.’ Information System Journal, 15(1): pp.5-25.
Carter, L. and Campbell, R. (2011) ‘The impact of trust and relative advantage on Internet voting diffusion.’ Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research. 6(3): pp.28-42.
Council of Europe. (2004) ‘Legal, operational and technical standards for e-voting.’ Available at: https://www.coe.int/t/dgap/goodgovernance/Activities/Key-Texts/Recommendations/Rec(2004)11_Eng_Evoting_and_Expl_Memo_en.pdf (Accessed: 6 May 2023)
Council of Europe. (2017) ‘Recommendation CM/Rec(2017)51of the Committee of Ministers to member States on standards for e-voting.’ Available at: https://rm.coe.int/0900001680726f6f (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Dahl, R.A. (1989) Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Ehin, P. et al. (2022) ‘Internet voting in Estonia 2005-2019: Evidence from eleven elections.’ Government Information Quarterly, 39(4): 101718.
Ehin, P. and Solvak, M. (2021) ‘Party cues and trust in remote Internet voting: Data from Estonia 2005-2019’, in Krimmer, R. et al. (eds.) Electronic Voting. Berlin, Germany: Springer, pp.75-90.
File, T. (2018) ‘Characteristics of voters in the Presidential Election of 2016’, Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. Available at: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/demo/P20-582.pdf (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Fillion, S. (2020) ‘If Estonia figured out online voting 15 years ago, why can’t the U.S.?’ Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniefillion/2020/08/24/if-estonia-figured-out-online-voting-15-years-ago-why-cant-the-us/?sh=235d30f315ab (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Foer, F. (2020) ‘Russiagate was not a hoax’, The Atlantic, 19 August. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/russiagate-wasnt-a-hoax/615373/ (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Freedom House. (2017) ‘Populists and autocrats: The dual threat to global democracy.’ Available at: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2017/populists-and-autocrats-dual-threat-global-democracy (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Garrone, P. (2005) ‘Fundamental and political rights in electronic elections.’ in F. Mendez and A.H. Trechsel (ed.) The European Union and E-Voting (Electronic Voting). London: Routledge, pp.111-123.
Gerber, A.S. et al. (2013) ‘Do perceptions of ballot secrecy influence turnout? Results from a field experiment.’ American Journal of Political Science, 57(3): pp.537-551.
Germann, M. (2021) ‘Making votes count with Internet voting.’ Political Behavior, 43: pp.1511-1533.
Germann, M. and Serdült, U. (2017) ‘Internet voting and turnout: Evidence from Switzerland.’ Electoral Studies, 47: pp.1-12.
Gibson, R.K. (2005) ‘Internet voting and the European Parliament elections’, in F. Mendez and A.H. Trechsel (ed.) The European Union and E-Voting (Electronic Voting). London: Routledge, pp.29-59.
Gomez, B.T., Hansford, T.G. and Krause, G.A. (2007) ‘The Republicans Should Pray for Rain: Weather, Turnout, and Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections.’ The Journal of Politics, 69(3): pp.649-663.
Goodman, N.J. (2014) ‘Internet voting in a local election in Canada,’ in B. Grofman, A.H. Trechsel and M. Franklin (eds.) The Internet and Democracy in Global Perspective. Berlin, Germany: Springer, pp. 7-24.
Goodman, N.J., Pammett, J.H., and DeBardeleben, J. (2010) ‘A comparative assessment of electronic voting’. Available at: https://www.elections.ca/res/rec/tech/ivote/comp/ivote_e.pdf (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Goodman, N.J. and Spicer, Z. (2019) ‘Administering elections in a digital age: Online voting in Ontario municipalities.’ Canadian Public Administration, 62(3): pp.369-392.
Gronke, P. et al. (2008) ‘Convenience voting.’ Annual Review of Political Science, 11: pp.437-455.
Hall, T. (2015) ‘Internet voting: The state of the debate’, in S. Coleman and D. Freelon (eds.) Handbook of Digital Politics. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, pp.103-117.
Heiberg, S., Parsovs, A., & Willemson, J. (2015). ‘Log Analysis of Estonian Internet Voting 2013-2014.’ IACR Cryptol. Available at: https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1211.pdf (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Helm, J.E. (2021) ‘Distributed Internet voting architecture: A thin client approach to Internet voting.’ Journal of Information Technology, 36(2): pp.128-153.
Internet Policy Institute. (2001) ‘Report of the national workshop on Internet voting: Issues and research agenda’. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/1123075.1123096 (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Jefferson, D. et al. (2004) ‘Analyzing Internet voting security: An extensive assessment of a proposed Internet-based voting system.’ Communications of the ACM, 47(19): pp.59-64.
Kavakli, E., Gritzalis, S., and Christos, K. (2007) ‘Protecting privacy in system design: The electronic voting case.’ Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, 1(4): pp.307-332.
Kiefer, E. (2020) “NY halts ‘Internet voting’ experiment after court challenge.” Available at: https://patch.com/new-jersey/newarknj/nj-halts-internet-voting-experiment-after-court-challenge (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Kies, R. and Kriesi, H. (2005) ‘Internet voting and opinion formation.’ in F. Mendez and A.H. Trechsel (ed.) The European Union and E-Voting (Electronic Voting). London: Routledge, pp.147-165.
Kitsing, M. (2011) ‘Online participation in Estonia: Active voting, low engagement.’ Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, pp.20-26.
Krimmer, R., Duenas-Cid, D. and Krivonosova, I. (2020) ‘Debate: safeguarding democracy during pandemics. Social distancing, postal, or internet voting—the good, the bad or the ugly?’ Public Money & Management, 41: pp.8-10.
Krimmer, R. and Volkamer, M. (2005) ‘Bits or paper? Comparing remote electronic voting to postal voting.’ Available at: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=b675ceb003b719aaa5bff885347162cb84c4f76d (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Krivonosova, I. (2022) ‘The forgotten election administrator of Internet voting: Lessons from Estonia.’ Policy Studies, 43: pp.1254-1276.
Kshetri, N. and Voas, J. (2018) ‘Blockchain-Enabled E-Voting.’ IEEE Software, 35(4): pp. 95-99.
LRT English. (2020) ‘Lithuanian government backs online voting, but with caveats.’ Available at: https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1190786/lithuanian-government-backs-online-voting-but-with-caveats (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Lust, A. (2015) ‘Online voting: Boon or bane for democracy?’ Information Policy, 20(4): pp.313-323.
Lust, A. (2018) ‘I-vote, therefore I am? Internet voting in Switzerland and Estonia.’ SAIS Review of International Affairs, 38(1): pp.65-79.
Mendez, F. (2010) ‘Elections and the internet: On the difficulties of ‘upgrading’ elections in the digital era.’ Journal of Representative Democracy, 46(4): pp.459-469.
Mestel, S. (2022) ‘American democracy isn’t ready for this: Lessons from the iVote meltdown.’ The Atlantic, 20 May. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/american-democracy-isnt-ready-online-voting/629927/ (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Microsoft. (2017). ‘From Submarines to Cyber: Estonia’s Innovation Journey.’ Available at: https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy/2017/11/29/submarines-cyber-estonias-innovation-journey/ (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Norris, P. (2005) ‘E-voting as the magic ballot for European Parliamentary elections?’ in F. Mendez and A.H. Trechsel (ed.) The European Union and E-Voting (Electronic Voting). London: Routledge, pp.60-90.
Norris, P. (2014) Why Electoral Integrity Matters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
OCED. (2023) ‘OECD broadband statistics update.’ Available at: https://www.oecd.org/digital/broadband-statistics-update.htm (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Parks, M. (2019) ‘In 2020, some Americans will vote on their phones. Is that the future?’ Available at: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/07/776403310/in-2020-some-americans-will-vote-on-their-phones-is-that-the-future (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Powell, A. et al. (2012) ‘E-voting intent: A comparison of young and elderly voters.’ Government Information Quarterly, 29(3): pp.361-372.
Pratchett, L. et al. (2005) ‘Balancing security and simplicity in e-voting.’ in F. Mendez and A.H. Trechsel (ed.) The European Union and E-Voting (Electronic Voting). London: Routledge, pp.166-184.
Raag, T. (2020) ‘Eesti digiriik naudib nii kohalike elanike kui e-residentide toetust.’ Available at: https://pealinn.ee/2020/06/04/eesti-digiriik-naudib-nii-kohalike-elanike-kui-e-residentide-toetust/ (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Riker, W. and Ordeshook, P. (1968). ‘A Theory of the Calculus of Voting.’ American Political Science Review, 62(1), pp.25-42.
Roonemaa, M. (2017) ‘Global lessons from Estonia’s tech-savvy government.’ Available at: https://en.unesco.org/courier/2017-april-june/global-lessons-estonia-s-tech-savvy-government (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Sanger, D.E., Perlroth, N., and Barnes. J.E. (2021) ‘As Understanding of Russian Hacking Grows, So Does Alarm’, The New York Times, 3 January. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/02/us/politics/russian-hacking-government.html (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Segaard, S.B., Baldersheim, H., & Saglie, J. (2013) ‘The Norwegian trial with internet voting: results and challenges.’ Available at: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=4658860 (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Schlaufer, C. (2020) ‘Why do nondemocratic regimes promote e-participation? The case of Moscow’s active citizen online voting platform.’ Governance, 34(3): pp.821-836.
Schryen, G. (2004) ‘Security aspects of Internet voting.’ Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Science. Hawaii, USA, pp.1-9.
Schryen, G. and Rich, E. (2009) ‘Security in Large-Scale Internet Elections: A Retrospective Analysis of Elections in Estonia, The Netherlands, and Switzerland.’ IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 4(4): pp.729-744.
Sciarini, P. et al. (2013) ‘Etude du vote par internet dans le canton de Genève.’ Available at: https://cdc-ge.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/evotingrapportunige0.pdf (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Scott, T. (2020) ‘Why electronic voting is still a bad idea.’ Available at: https://www.markpack.org.uk/160622/why-electronic-voting-is-still-a-bad-idea-tom-scott/ (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Serdült, U. and Trechsel, A.H. (2006). ‘Ergänzende Dokumentation: Umfrage bei Stimmberechtigten der Zürcher Gemeinden Bertschikon, Bülach und Schlieren anlässlich des Pilot-versuchs zum Vote électronique vom 27. November 2005.’ Bern: Bundeskanzlei. Available at: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/135593/ (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Sharma, S. (2020) ‘Can’t change my political disaffection! The role of political disaffection, trust, and resistance to change in internet voting.’ Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance, 22(2): pp.71-91.
Solop, F. (2001). ‘Digital Democracy Comes of Age: Internet Voting and the 2000 Arizona Democratic Primary Election.’ PS: Political Science & Politics, 34(2), pp.289-293.
Solvak, M. and Vassil, K. (2015) ‘Indifference or indignation? Explaining purposive vote spoiling in elections.’ Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 25(4): pp.463-481.
Solvak, M. and Vassil, K. (2016) E-voting in Estonia: Technological diffusion and other developments over ten years (2005-2015). Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu.
Solvak, M. and Vassil, K. (2017) ‘Could Internt voting halt declining electoral turnout? New evidence that E-voting is habit forming.’ Policy & Internet, 10(1): pp.4-21.
Spada, P. et al. (2015) ‘Effects of the Internet on participation: Study of a public policy referendum in Brazil.’ Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 13: pp.187-207.
Stone, P. (2020) ‘Cyber attacks and electronic voting errors threaten 2020 outcome, experts warn’, The Guardian, 2 January. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/02/elections-2020-cyber-attacks-democrats-experts (Accessed: 6 May 2023)
Teffer, P. (2017) ‘Build trust before you introduce e-voting, says Estonian president.’ Available at: https://euobserver.com/digital/138394 (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Trechsel, A.H. and Vassil, K. (2010) ‘Internet voting in Estonia: a comparative analysis of four elections since 2005: report for the Council of Europe.’ Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe.
United States Census Bureau. (2017) ‘Voting in America: A look at the 2016 Presidential election.’ Available at: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/p20-580.html (Accessed 6 May 2023).
Unt, T., Solvak, M. and Vassil K. (2017) ‘Does Internet voting make elections less social? Group voting patterns in Estonian e-voting log files (2013-2015).’ PLoS One, 12(5): pp.1-13.
U.S. Vote Foundation. (2015) ‘The future of voting: end-to-end verifiable Internet voting: Specification and feasibility study.’ Available at: https://www.usvotefoundation.org/E2E-VIV (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Vassil, K. and Weber, T. (2011) ‘A bottleneck model of e-voting: Why technology fails to boost turnout.’ New Media & Society, 13(8): pp.1336-1354.
Vassil, K. et al. (2016) ‘The diffusion of Internet voting: Usage patterns of Internet voting in Estonia between 2005 and 2015.’ Government Information Quarterly, 33(3): pp.453-459.
Vicens, A.J. (2019) ‘Online voting is a really, really bad idea.’ Available at: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/11/online-voting-problems/ (Accessed: 6 May 2023).
Wang, B. et al. (2015) ‘DDos attack protection in the era of cloud computing and software-defined networking.’ Computer Networks, 81: pp.308-319.
Wang, K. et al. (2017) ‘A review of contemporary e-voting: Requirements, technology, systems and usability.’ Data Science and Pattern Recognition, 1: pp.31-47.
Warkentin, M. et al. (2018) ‘Social identify and trust in Internet-based voting adoption.’ Government Information Quarterly, 35(2): pp.195-209.
Willemson, J. (2018) ‘Bits or paper: which should get to carry your vote?’ Journal of Information Security and Applications, 38: pp.124-131.
Wolchok S. et al. (2012) ‘Attacking the Washington DC Internet voting system’, in A.D. Keromytis (ed.) Financial Cryptography and Data Security 16th International Conference. Kralendijk, Bonaire: Springer, pp. 114–128.
Yamatomo, M. and Kushin, M.J. (2014) ‘More harm than good? Online media use and political disaffection among college students in the 2008 election.’ Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(3): pp.430-445.
Zissis, D. and Lekkas, D. (2011) ‘Securing e-government and e-voting with an open cloud computing architecture.’ Government Information Quarterly, 28(2): pp.239-251.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Copyright (c) 2023 Alice Shen; Yingqiu Kwang
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright holder(s) granted JSR a perpetual, non-exclusive license to distriute & display this article.
