Voter-centered design

Abstract

Electronic voting support systems should not focus only on ballot casting and recording. Instead, a user-centered perspective should be adopted for the design of a system that supports information gathering, organizing and sharing, deliberation, decision making, and voting. Relevant social science literature on political decision making and voting is used to develop requirements. A design concept is presented that supports extended information browsing using combined filtering from ballot materials and voter profiles. The system supports information sharing and participation in electronic dialogues. Voters may interweave information browsing, annotation, contextualized discussion, and ballot markup over extended time periods.