An investigation into the usability of electronic voting systems for complex elections

Abstract

Many studies on electronic voting evaluate their usability in the context of simple elections. Complex elections, which take place in many European countries, also merit attention. The complexity of the voting process, as well as that of the tallying and verification of the ballots, makes usability even more crucial in this context. Complex elections, both paper-based and electronic, challenge voters and electoral officials to an unusual extent. In this work we present two studies of an electronic voting system that is tailored to the needs of complex elections. In the first study we evaluate the effectiveness of the ballot design with respect to motivating voters to verify their ballot. Furthermore, we identify factors that motivate voters to verify, or not to verify, their ballot. The second study also addresses the effectiveness of the ballot design in terms of verification, but this time from the electoral officials' perspective. Last, but not least, we evaluate the usability of the implemented EasyVote prototype from both the voter and electoral official perspectives. In both studies we were able to improve effectiveness, without impacting effi-This project (HA project no. 435/14-25) is funded in the framework of Hessen ModellProjekte, financed with funds of LOEWE Landes-Offensive zur Entwicklung Wissenschaftlichkonomischer Exzellenz, Frderlinie 3: KMU-Verbundvorhaben (State Offensive for the Development of Scientific and Economic Excellence).

Comparing “Challenge-Based” and “Code-Based” Internet Voting Verification Implementations

“…While the results of some studies revealed high satisfaction scores, they did not measure verification effectiveness in terms of the extent to which the participants were actually able to verify their votes. The evaluation of effectiveness was included in other studies, such as Pret-a-Voter and Scantegrity II [1,2], BingoVote [5], StarVote [3] and EasyVote [8]. While some of these studies report high rates of success in terms of verifications [3,8], the results of other studies [1, 2, 5] reveal several issues.…”

“…The evaluation of effectiveness was included in other studies, such as Pret-a-Voter and Scantegrity II [1,2], BingoVote [5], StarVote [3] and EasyVote [8]. While some of these studies report high rates of success in terms of verifications [3,8], the results of other studies [1, 2, 5] reveal several issues. These include misconceptions related to the verification process, leading to study participants being unable to complete the verification successfully.…”

“…All the screenshots provided in the paper are translated from German. The study itself was conducted in German 8. This was achieved by modifying the local hosts on the laptop.…”

What Did I Really Vote For? On the Usability of Verifiable E-Voting Schemes

“…Such evaluations include investigations into the usability of paper ballots, paper punch cards and lever machines [14,20,26]. Further studies [7,13,16,21,29,48] have focused on the usability of Direct Recording Electronics (DREs), the computers used for voting in polling stations. Smartphone-based systems have also been investigated [15].…”

OnionPIR: Effective Protection of Sensitive Metadata in Online Communication Networks

“…Moreover, building blocks of private and untraceable communication services could potentially also be reused in other privacy-critical applications that are currently under active research, such as electronic voting systems [BV14] or privacy-preserving location-based services [MCA06,HCE11,DSZ14].…”