Electronic Voting and Democratic Issues: An Introduction

Abstract

The rapid spread of the Internet since the 1990s has led to high expectations for democracy. The Internet has been presented as a means to more transparency in political life and new forms of political communication. Especially with regard to elections, the core process of modern democracies, the Internet has promised concrete and speedy advantages (Slaton 1992). Online elections may simplify and speed up the electoral process and also reduce costs, and the counting of votes and presentation of results may be carried out faster and more reliably. The falling rates of electoral participation that have been observed in many Western democracies since the 1980s have triggered a search for new ways of stimulating voter interest in elections and politics, and the Internet has naturally been a focus of hope in this respect. Some even claim that electronic voting and other uses of the Internet may fundamentally change the nature of the democratic process as we have known it. Lower costs of political communication could, for example, herald a new dawn for direct democracy (Coleman 2001; Gibson 2001), and perhaps the ideals of discursive democracy may finally be realized in cyberspace. Public Man (Sennet 1977) may rise again. Through Internet participation and Internet protest, as was the idea of some protagonists, a new form of strong democracy may emerge (see Barber 1989, 1999; Tsagarousianu 1998).