How do the Swiss Perceive Electronic Voting? Social Insights from an Exploratory Qualitative Research

Fragnière, Emmanuel; Grèzes, Sandra; Ramseyer, Randolf

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-30625-0_7

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The aim is to identify the main social characteristics that enable the social acceptance of residential micro-smart grids. The chosen research strategy is based on the principles of ethnography [17]. Here, the aim is to describe and explain the social context of the respondents as they describe it.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving the Social Acceptability of Microgrids

Fragniere,

Sandoz,

Abdenadher

et al. 2023

2023 IEEE Renewable Energy and Sustainable E-Mobility Conference (RESEM)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The smart grid will have to occupy a prominent place in people's lives in the years to come, as the renewable energy mix desired by all governments implies a change of role from consumer to prosumer (contraction of the consumer to producer) of electricity. The adoption of micro smart grid technology, which links solar panels, batteries, and inverters to smart meters and power regulation algorithms, by a community (e.g., a residential sector), cannot be done automatically. This is what we studied in Switzerland, based on a qualitative survey (12 semistructured interviews and 4 focus groups) to understand the psychological and social barriers, which prevent people from integrating such a technology. The results show that restraining forces are more important than driving forces and therefore that governments need to tackle the problem of social acceptance of smart grids before focusing on mainly technological aspects in their long-term energy and environmental policies.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving the Social Acceptability of Microgrids

Fragniere,

Sandoz,

Abdenadher

et al. 2023

2023 IEEE Renewable Energy and Sustainable E-Mobility Conference (RESEM)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…That is, the risks, which are associated with banal rigging, are still more real with electronic voting than with the traditional paper ballot system. After all, the psychological aspects in accepting e-voting more as social rather than technological phenomena could play a crucial role in understanding the prospects of the technology to be advanced further, regardless of the country context (Mpekoa and van Greunen, 2017;Fragnière et al, 2019). Thus, the adoption of e-voting, despite its great advantages, could result in political debates that decrease trust in the election as a voter loses a sense of confidence that his or her vote is now counted correctly.…”

Section: Politicization Of E-voting Rejectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politicization of e-voting rejection: reflections from Kazakhstan

Kassen

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose Despite certain political, organizational, technological and socioeconomic benefits that e-voting brings, governments around the world are beginning one by one to denounce its further use in the electoral process. In this regard, the paper aims to analyze reasons that led to the discontinuation of e-voting, resorting to the case of Kazakhstan, a transitional post-soviet country, which actively used the technology in 2004-2011, as a poster child of the global trend, elaborating on key political, socioeconomic, organizational and technological risks that could be associated with the possible return of this innovation in future elections. Design/methodology/approach The research is based on the combination of context and policy analysis, as well as focus groups studies and semi-structured interviews. The context analysis was aimed to understand various political and socioeconomic benefits in adopting e-voting in Kazakhstan. The policy analysis was useful in identifying implementation strategies of the government in promoting e-voting. The focus groups were helpful in understanding the perspectives of various audiences on e-voting. The semi-structured interviews were carried among independent developers in regard to the potential software products that could be used to propose new solutions in the area, including by experimenting with various blockchain platforms. Findings Analyzing the lessons from Kazakhstan, one can conclude that e-voting was introduced and used for several years by authorities in this country for certain economic and organizational benefits, but later they had to reject it and return to traditional paper ballot due to lack of confidence from the non-governmental sector in the capacity of public sector to ensure the integrity of e-voting procedures. As a result, building trust and applying innovative approaches should be a priority for policymakers in the area, if they wish to return to this technology, especially in adopting new presumably more reliable solutions based on blockchain technologies. Research limitations/implications The primary data that was collected by the author from field studies were indexed, refined and presented in a special matrix in a separate section, which were interpreted in the discussion session. These data could be used by other scholars for further interpretation and analysis in their own studies, setting new research agendas and testing hypotheses. This is a single case study research, which is focused on the analysis of reasons that led to the denunciation of e-voting in Kazakhstan, which results could be extrapolated mostly to similar transitional post-totalitarian settings. Practical implications The study can be used to inform ways of how to improve the current e-voting platforms, especially in ensuring better security and transparency of the systems, which could be useful for developers who work on blockchain-driven solutions. Social implications The results of the case study research and expert opinions expressed by various software developers in the e-government areas, which were presented in the paper, could be used by both an academic community and practitioners in understanding better a wide range of political, organizational, economic, social and technological drivers, risks and new opportunities in promoting e-voting technology as a trust generating social phenomenon. Originality/value The paper proposes the first case study of reasons that led to the discontinuation of e-voting in the context of such a typical transitional, post-totalitarian and post-soviet society as Kazakhstan, providing new insights into a wide range of political, regulatory, socioeconomic, organizational and technological aspects of related policy decision-making and implementation strategies adopted by public institutions in this country.

show abstract

“…Digitization affects all sectors of society. However, it is still slow to change our democratic processes since it is very much related to the notion of social rather technological acceptance (Almarashdeh and Alsmadi, 20217;Fragnière et al, 2019). Its benefits have been underlined, however, as it helps unite citizens who want to make their voices heard and to force governments to be more transparent and accountable (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To this end, a first phase of fieldwork was conducted, including interviews with different voter profiles and specific observations of use made by voters of current official documents. In particular, we relied on the findings of two recent qualitative surveys on e-voting (Fragnière et al, 2019) and e-participation (Fragnière et al, 2020) in Switzerland. Based on the collected information collected, a scenario ("storyboard") of the augmented reality experience was drawn around a service blueprinting representing all the possible interactions of the voter with his/her mobile phone as an interface.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%