E-Engaging on Electoral democracy in Uganda: A Correlational Study

Abstract

Limited citizen participation in elections, politics, and leadership remains a governance challenge globally especially in Low developed countries like Uganda. Citizens have over time through traditional methods, been encouraged to participate in elections; however, without internet use, no meaningful participation may be achieved. Electoral democracy has been one of the cornerstones of democracy all over the world. Without free, inclusive, fair, transparent, open, and credible elections being conducted, with meaningful representation of the people, the power of the people cannot be achieved. The objective/ purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the effect of E-Engaging on Electoral democracy in Uganda. This study took both the quantitative paradigm and qualitative approach, thus the adoption of mixed methods research in order to capture the conflicting ideas of reality with more focus on the quantitative approach. A correlational research design was adopted and a sample size of 472 respondents was selected. The Pearson Correlation Coefficient tests were used for the hypotheses. The results show that there exists a statistically significant and positive association between E-engaging and electoral democracy, based on Pearson’s correlation coefficients. The study recommends that there is a need to design easily downloadable mobile applications that can be utilised for online campaigns, online voter education and online voting. These should however, be first sampled like in a university election before being used in a general election to rule out their effectiveness and efficiency. These should also have internal security systems designed for the security of the ballot papers if it is for online voting in order to reduce the levels of voter bribery, ballot stuffing, delayed delivery of electoral materials and vote rigging.