Use of Technology in the Election Process: Who Governs?

Abstract

There have been major concerns about the role of technology in elections, as highlighted by debates in different countries such as the U.S., the Netherlands, and Norway. One area of concern is that a lot of the equipment is not owned by the public sector - but there has been barely any research on election technology ownership in a comparative perspective. This article reports new data from an international survey of electoral management bodies (EMBs) (N = 78) with data from 72 countries. There are large differences between countries in the number and kinds of technology they use in the election process. An important finding is that even though most countries use some form of election technology, the use of election technology for actual voting (voting computers or Internet voting) is relatively rare. In terms of the difference between independent and governmental model EMBs, independent EMBs seem to be more "in control"of the technology used. This means that they are more likely to have a decisive role in the decision-making process and to have ownership of the technology and provide the technological support for it. These findings signal that the introduction of technology does not seem to have a negative impact on the independent position of EMBs. This means that EMBs that have a formal independent position are also in most cases independent from other actors in the election process, such as other governmental agencies and vendors, when it comes to the use of technology.