Abstract
Electoral ergonomics pertains to the interface between electoral psychology and electoral design. It moves beyond traditional models of electoral organisation that often focus on mechanical effects or changes to who actually votes to investigate the ways in which different forms of electoral organisation will switch on and off various electoral psychology buttons (in terms of personality, memory, emotions and identity) so that the very same person’s electoral experience, thinking process, and ultimately electoral behaviour will change based on the design of electoral processes. This article illustrated this phenomenon based on two case studies, one which showed that young people seemed more likely to vote for radical right parties if they voted postally than in person at the polling station based on panel study evidence from the UK, and another which showed that the time citizens deliberate about their vote varied from 1 to 3 depending on whether they were asked to vote using materialised or dematerialised mono-papers or poly-paper ballots. The article suggested that electoral ergonomics, as the interface between electoral psychology and election design, exceeded the sum of its parts.
Highlights
At a time when several electoral outcomes have shocked societies has led electoral science to renew our understanding of the psychology of voters
This effort to refresh our models of electoral psychology are most necessary and valuable, but in this article, we suggested that to fully capture those effects, we need to understand the interface between voters’ psychology and the quasi-infinite variations in electoral organisation and arrangements, which may trigger different psychological reactions even when they have been assumed to be neutral by institutional designer
The average propensity to vote for extreme right parties pre-election was 10.9% higher for young voters aged 18–24 who ended up voting in a polling station than those who voted postally
Summary
At a time when several electoral outcomes have shocked societies has led electoral science to renew our understanding of the psychology of voters. From the victories of Brexit and Donald Trump in 2016 to the earthquake to the French party system since the 2017 French Presidential election, and the succession of elections unable to deliver parliamentary majorities in Spain, Israel and the UK in recent years, there has been a sense that most contemporary avenues of electoral investigation—be they sociological, economic or even contextual are not explaining the full picture of electoral behaviours that few would have predicted even a few years ago This effort to refresh our models of electoral psychology are most necessary and valuable, but in this article, we suggested that to fully capture those effects, we need to understand the interface between voters’ psychology and the quasi-infinite variations in electoral organisation and arrangements, which may trigger different psychological reactions even when they have been assumed to be neutral by institutional designer. We empirically investigated the claim that supposedly affects neutral design choices have effects on citizens’ electoral experience and behaviour, focusing on two case studies: postal voting and extremist voting, paper design and electoral deliberation and decision time
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