Electronic Voting in Belgium: A Legitimised Choice?

Abstract

Computer voting was introduced in Belgium in 1994. Paradoxically, no action had been taken to ascertain the opinion of electors confronted with this original method of voting. This article verifies the social and empirical dimensions of legitimacy of this new method through several empirical indicators used in a survey conducted on the occasion of the federal elections of 18 May 2003: (a) how easy/difficult it was for electors to vote on a computer; (b) to what extent they trust voting on a computer; (c) if they have a philosophical/social opposition to voting on a computer.

The Impact of New Technologies on Voter Confidence in Latin America: Evidence from E-Voting Experiments in Argentina and Colombia

“…Even if this were not the case, the fact that ease of use of automated voting systems has been shown to be correlated with trust (Delwit, Kulahci, & Pilet, 2004;Delwit et al, 2005) could determine that the adoption of these new technologies might undermine confidence in elections among older and less educated voters, contravening one of the main reasons behind the introduction of e-voting in Latin America.…”

“…2 Nonetheless, the introduction of new voting technologies in Latin America also poses a series of challenges for voters and electoral authorities in the region. Computerized voting requires some degree of familiarity with technology, and voters who lack this familiarity may face problems when casting their ballots (Delwit, Kulahci, & Pilet, 2005;Oostveen & van den Besselaar, 2005). In addition, some authors have argued that the adoption of computerized voting in a context of large socioeconomic differences could reinforce the digital divide and skew the vote in favor of particular groups of electors (Rodrigues-Filho et al, 2006).…”

“…For instance, in his analysis of the 2008 U.S. election, Stewart (2009) found that roughly 95 percent of Americans using e-voting machines were "very" or "somewhat" confident that their vote was counted as cast. Similarly, Delwit et al (2005) reported that about 89 percent of Belgian citizens in 2003 trusted voting on a computer. It must be noted, however, that these studies also report equally high-or even higherconfidence rates in other voting methods and, more generally, in election administration and procedures.…”

“…Most scholars point to a positive influence of education and familiarity with technology on the perceived reliability of e-voting Avgerou et al, 2009;Stewart, 2009). Nonetheless, using exit polls from Belgium's 2003 federal election, Delwit et al (2005) found that a considerable proportion of highly educated voters distrusted automated voting procedures. Similarly, Oostveen and van den Besselaar (2004) suggest that voters with higher computer skills might be more aware of the potential vulnerabilities of ICTs and therefore less trusting of e-voting than the rest.…”

“…Given that previous research has found a positive relationship between voter confidence and usability of automated voting systems (Delwit et al, 2004(Delwit et al, , 2005, we also fit two bivariate probit models that allow us to account for this potential correlation as well as take advantage of additional information gathered in the specific surveys administered in each pilot. Besides voter confidence, the second dependent variable in these models is based on participants' dichotomous responses to a usability question included in the two surveys.…”