Online voting: Boon or bane for democracy?

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Lust, Aleksander

Affiliations: Department of Government and Justice Studies, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608, USA. E-mail: lusta@appstate.edu

Abstract: Estonia is the only country in the world where all voters can vote online in national elections. In the 2015 election, 31% of voters did so. This paper discusses the sociology and politics of online voting in Estonia. I first show that online voting is a partisan project. Liberal, conservative, and social democratic parties support online voting as a way of modernizing the electoral system, while populist and agrarian parties oppose it as a tool for political manipulation. I then show that online voting is demographically and politically biased. Online voters are more urban, richer, and better-educated than conventional voters and non-voters. The opposition left-populist Center Party receives fewer votes online than the governing market-liberal Reform Party. This is a bad thing for democracy and Estonia should discontinue online voting.

Keywords: Online voting, elections, bias, democracy, Estonia

DOI: 10.3233/IP-150373

Journal: Information Polity, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 313-323, 2015