Assessing the Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Electoral Integrity

Abstract

The question of whether or not the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICTs) into critical aspects of election administration would improve electoral integrity has been widely debated. While there are strong arguments on both sides, there has been very little systematic investigation. In this article, we examine whether the introduction of ICTs at multiple stages of the electoral process improves electoral integrity, using a multilevel mixed-effects ordered logit model. Based on cross-sectional data from 160 countries, we assess the use of ICTs in four aspects of the electoral process - voter registration, voter identification, election result processing, and publication of results - and test multiple variables to isolate the effect of ICTs on electoral integrity. Our findings indicate that countries using biometric ICT for voter identification at polling stations are more likely to have elections with higher levels of integrity. In contrast, we find that countries where election results are processed by an electronic tabulation system are more likely to have decreased levels of electoral integrity. In addition, we find that when we introduce a control variable on the margin of victory (or electoral competitiveness), the decreased levels of electoral integrity in countries using electronic tabulation are magnified, whereas the relationship with the use of biometric ICT data in polling stations becomes insignificant.