Investigating Transparency Dimensions for Internet Voting

Abstract

While Internet voting is argued to have the potential to improve election processes, concerns about security risks remain one of its main adoption barriers. These concerns are furthermore aggravated by the lack of transparency of Internet voting systems that are often perceived as a “black box”. Moreover, there is a research gap in conceptualizing the idea of transparency and in studying voters’ attitudes towards transparency in Internet voting. In this work, we aim to address this gap by (1) Conducting a systematic literature review, from which we identified five dimensions of transparency; (2) Developing a questionnaire (Transparency Dimensions of Internet Voting, TDIV) to assess voters’ attitudes regarding the correlation of these dimensions with transparency; and (3) Conducting an online study (N = 500) to investigate voters’ attitudes towards transparency in Internet voting. We conclude that providing information about the security of the Internet voting system; testing it by independent experts for security vulnerabilities prior to the election; monitoring the election process and verifying its integrity; and providing a remedy for security breaches while holding the responsible parties accountable, are perceived by voters as important, and enhance transparency in Internet voting systems.