#CeDEM13 Day3, PhD Colloquium, SE 3.5, Chair: Peter Parycek, Christina Hainzl

1. Exploring E-Voting for Participation
V. Vlachokyriakos, Culture Lab, Newcastle University

2. How can we design technologies to facilitate democratic practices?
Facilitating Democracy through Technology

3. Technology to facilitate access to the voting apparatus, fail to motivate participation
effectively.
Technology for Participation

4. E-Participation
Enhance citizens’ involvement in politics with the aid of technology
Provision of
information
Consultation
process
e-Deliberation
e-Campaigning
Action
e-Petition
e-Voting

5. Majoritarian
Madisonian
Deliberative
Non-Deliberative
Direct
Representative
Impact on Democracy
*
Fishkin,
James
S.
Democracy
and
delibera8on:
New
direc8ons
for
democra8c
reform.
Vol.
217.
New
Haven:
Yale
University
Press,
1991.
Figure: The forms of democracy*

6. Methodology: Technology probes*
Technology probes are a specific type of deployed research prototypes.
Social Science goal: To collect data about the use and users of technology in a real
world setting.
Engineering goal: To field-test the technology.
Design goal: Inspire users and researchers to think of new technology ideas by
reflecting upon the usage of the probes.
* Hutchinson, H. et al. 2003. Technology probes: inspiring design for and with families. Proceedings of the SIGCHI
conference on Human factors in computing systems (2003), 17–24.

7. Exploring the Design Space of Voting
Exploring the effects of voting attributes on participation

8. The Design Space of Voting*
* Vlachokyriakos, V. et al. 2013. Unpicking the design space of e-Voting for Participation. Conference for E-Democracy
and Open Government. (2013).
FAIRNESS
ELIGIBILITY
SECRECY
EXPRESSION
Suffrage
Vote Weighting
Accessibility
Verifiability
Coercion
Results Embargo
Nomination phase
Vote transferring
Vote revocation
Number of votes
Type of voting
The design space of voting
Polling duration

9. BallotShare: Exploring the Design space of Voting
Eligibility Fairness Secrecy Expression
Revocable votes ü ü
Negative voting ü
Open nomination ü ü
Public vote casts ü
Intermediate results ü
Ballot sharing ü ü ü
Multiple voting ü ü
Ballot transferring ü ü ü
Unpicking the design space of e-voting to explore the effect that some determinants of
behavior can have on voting behaviors and participation

10. BallotShare: Exploring the Design space of Voting
Staff and postgraduate students participated in polls ranging from social activities to
other spontaneous decisions such as naming research projects that were required.
Study
16 participants
5 weeks study
8 created polls à 5 weekly scheduled polls and 3 created by request
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Mean
Ac8ons
per
Par8cipant
Ac8ve
Par8cipants

11. 0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Percentage
Votes
Revoca8on
Comments
Share
ballots
Added
op8ons
BallotShare: Exploring the Design space of Voting
Features of the voting system and use

12. 13 completed questionnaires
10 semi-structured interviews
Themes emerged from hybrid thematic analysis:
• Efficacy: self-efficacy, collective efficacy the most influential construct of
participation
• Discussions: provoked participation, engaged participants with the
system
• Engagement: collocation of participants, discussions in the group
• Empowerment
• Tactics and influence
• Privacy and secrecy
• Voting attitudes
BallotShare: Exploring the Design space of Voting

13. Revisiting the relation between voting and deliberation.
Using e-voting to facilitate and provoke deliberation rather than as the ending point of
a deliberative process.
1. Workshops with members of the University of the Third Age (U3A) in the UK.
2. Collaborating with local communities in designing and testing technology for
participation and effective deliberation
Voting and Deliberation

14. Questions?