Support for digitising the ballot box: A systematic review of i-voting pilots and a conjoint experiment

Abstract

Governments across the globe have been actively engaged in pilots aimed at implementing i-voting, which facilitates voting via the internet. I-voting innovations, such as those widely institutionalised in Estonia, Canada, and Switzerland, represent a modernising policy innovation that can increase the convenience of electoral participation and can also safeguard against the temporal suspensions of elections, such as those witnessed in several states during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst the wider implementation of i-voting has made some process, it has received mixed public support, mostly due to fears over its integrity. In this paper, we ask: what features of i-voting attract public support and inspire trustworthiness in its implementation? We answer this using a pre-registered conjoint experiment fielded in the UK, where we derive attributes from a comprehensive systematic review of existing literature and case studies of real-world implementation. Consistent with a rational-choice model of voting, reforms that are more convenient and have substantive reported benefits, specifically reforms that promise increases in participation, enjoy higher support. Electoral integrity remains an important factor in citizens support for, and trust in, i-voting: across the board, i-voting is perceived as less trustworthy than in-person voting, and proposals that may positively influence the risk of fraud are strongly rejected. Against pre-registered hypotheses, we do not find significant subgroup heterogeneity, for instance regarding satisfaction with internet coverage or the current electoral process, nor do we find significant variation based on past levels of engagement with alternative (convenience) options to in-person voting or indeed partisanship.