New insights from Estonia

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New insights from Estonia

• Prof. Alexander H. Trechsel
• Council of Europe, Strasbourg, November 23-24
  2006

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What insights?
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Our study

• Specifically designed survey containing answers
  from 939 respondents who had the right to vote in
  the local elections
• Sample consisted of
• 315 e-voters
• 319 traditional voters
• 305 non-voters.

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Main findings (simple statistics)

• Gender neutral
• More attractive to younger voters (but)
• Minor mobilising effect on non-voters
• Politically non-neutral (but)

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Main findings (complex statistics)

• Some important non-results age, gender, income,
  education, rural-urban-cleavage are all
  irrelevant for explaining the choice of
  e-voting...
• No political effect of e-voting
• The crucial variables
• computing knowledge
• trust in the procedure

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Our recommendations for 2007

• ICT awareness is important -gt develop
• Diffuse the model (best practice)
• Inclusiveness (language)
• Develop electoral e-platforms
• Extend the voting period

Our recommendations for the CoE
RecommendationTHE SAME -gt PLUS
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Further recommendations

• Reversible e-voting
• Making the system and the process observable
• Substantive and ongoing research
• Use insights from e-voting to make traditional
  forms of voting more secure and user-friendly
  (spill-back effect)

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The full report is downloadable from
http//www.coe.int/T/E/Integrated_Projects/democr
acy/THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!

• Contact
• Prof. Alexander Trechsel
• European University Institute, Florence, Italy
• Alexander.Trechsel_at_eui.eu