Voter Confidence in Context and the Effect of Winning

A number of recent studies examine how confident voters are that their ballots are counted as intended in U.S. federal elections from 2000 to 2004. One consistent finding of these studies is that, relative to Democrats, Republican voters tend to be more confident that their ballots are counted correctly. However, it is also the case that in terms of the national outcomes of the 2000 and 2004 elections, Republicans were victorious. Additionally, research suggests that in the 2004 election voters who cast a paper ballot are more confident relative to those who vote using an electronic device. Although these results fit nicely into the 2000 and 2004 elections, we hypothesize that future research of voter confidence should interpret voter confidence within the context of the election. This hypothesis, and the particular context of the 2006 election, gives rise to two testable hypotheses. First, we hypothesize that the effect of partisanship on voter confidence is conditional on which party wins the election. Thus, we anticipate that, relative to Republicans, Democrats will experience greater gains in confidence following the 2006 election. Since the 2004 election, greater adoption of voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) devices allows us to analyze the context of the technological debate regarding voting technology. The second hypothesize we test is that voter access to a VVPAT device leads to higher rates of confidence among electronic voters. Using a panel dataset containing self-reported confidence levels before and after the 2006 election, we find empirical evidence that voter confidence is influenced by the context of the election. First, we find a positive and significant winner's effect; voter confidence is higher for individuals who voted for the winning candidate. Second, we find that voters who cast ballots on an electronic voting machine with a VVPAT device exhibit higher rates of confidence following the 2006 election when compared to electronic voters who do not have access to VVPAT devices. Finally, in measuring the change in confidence rates before and after the election we find no significant difference in the change in the confidence rates between electronic voters with access to a VVPAT device and voters who cast a paper ballot.John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New Yor

Electoral Context and Voter Confidence: How The Context of an Election Shapes Voter Confidence in the Process

A number of recent studies examine how confident voters are that their ballots are counted as intended in U.S. federal elections from 2000 to 2004. One consistent finding of these studies is that, relative to Democrats, Republican voters tend to be more confident that their ballots are counted correctly. However, it is also the case that, in terms of the outcomes of the 2000 and 2004 elections at the national level, Republicans were victorious. Research also suggests that, in the 2004 election, voters who cast a paper ballot are more confident relative to those who vote using an electronic device. Although these results fit nicely into the 2000 and 2004 elections, we argue that future research of voter confidence should interpret voter confidence within the context of the election. The particular context of the 2006 election, gives rise to two testable hypotheses. First, we hypothesize a winner’s effect exists where following the election voters who cast their ballot for the winning candidate are more confident that their vote was counted accurately. The second hypothesize we test is that voter access to a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) device leads to higher rates of confidence among electronic voters. Using a panel dataset containing self-reported confidence levels before and after the 2006 election, we find empirical evidence that voter confidence is influenced by the context of the election. First, we find a positive and significant winner's effect; following the 2006 election voter confidence is higher for individuals who voted for the winning candidate. Second, we find that voters who cast ballots on an electronic voting machine with a VVPAT device exhibit higher rates of confidence when compared to electronic voters who do not have access to VVPAT devices. Finally, when measuring the change in confidence rates before and after the election, we find no significant difference in the change in the confidence rates between electronic voters with access to a VVPAT device and voters who cast a paper ballot.Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Projec

The Past, Present, and Future of American Election Security: A Survey

The widespread adoption of computerized systems around the turn of the century as a means of more efficiently conducting elections introduced more issues than these computer systems were intended to address. Though many of these flaws were not considered for years or decades after the introduction of digital election infrastructure, it has recently become apparent that a minimal emphasis was placed on securing these systems. As a result, the election hardware on which America conducts its elections today is largely insecure and antiquated. This has sparked a series of recommendations for modern technological systems to take the place of older, insecure machines. Often, however, the novel approaches to election security neglect some of the most important attributes of a trustworthy election such as an authoritative paper trail and the requirement of voter privacy. As a result, many proposed solutions offer no more security or trustworthiness than the status quo. In this paper, we present the background for -- and security of -- the current state of US election technology. We use this background to consider propositions for futuristic election schemes, and examine these against the characteristics of a secure, trustworthy election.Key Words: US Elections, Election Security, End to End Verifiability, Blockchain Votin

How to innovate Korean election by emerging technology

The core element of democracy is elections. Modern elections not only cost a lot of money to conduct elections, but we also bear a lot of social costs when the election is questioned. For this reason, the US and European countries have been considering ways to innovate by introducing IT in elections. Electronic voting refers to all types of voting in which electronic voting such as DRE used in electoral registration, voting, and counting, in addition to Internet voting. Compared to traditional paper voting, electronic voting has many advantages such as reducing costs, enabling faster tallying, and increasing reliability by making it transparent. At the 2018 Congressional Hearing, which was raised over suspicion of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the United States was concerned about the effect of election interference by hostile parties, so voting through the Internet was not considered. Nevertheless, in Estonia, which introduced internet elections in national elections in 2007, and France, which introduced internet voting only for overseas citizens in the 2017 presidential election, Internet voting has resulted in increased voter turnout. In this study, the requirements for electronic voting, practical cases around the world, and failure cases are reviewed, and innovative voting methods in Korea are suggested. Considering Korea's laws and the environment, we will look at how to use an electronic voting machine for in-person voting and how to apply Internet voting for oversea citizen

Federal Voluntary Voting System Guidelines: Summary and Analysis of Issues

This report begins with a discussion of the historical context of the VVSG, followed by a summary of the guidelines and a discussion of each of the issues identified above. However, there are many specific issues, such as whether wireless communications should be permitted, that are not covered here. The report also briefly summarizes relevant legislative proposals in the 109th Congres

Collaborative Public Audit of the November 2006 General Election

We hope that this Audit Report will assist the Ohio Secretary of State, all Ohio local Boards of Election, election reform organizations, and other election officials nationwide in seeing how an independent audit process can be created and function at the local level. Additionally, we hope the public will recognize that this Report contains the kind of information that all election administrative agencies need to better achieve the public charge for producing accurate election results and to facilitate sound improvements in election administrative practices

Collaborative Public Audit of the November 2006 General Election

We hope that this Audit Report will assist the Ohio Secretary of State, all Ohio local Boards of Election, election reform organizations, and other election officials nationwide in seeing how an independent audit process can be created and function at the local level. Additionally, we hope the public will recognize that this Report contains the kind of information that all election administrative agencies need to better achieve the public charge for producing accurate election results and to facilitate sound improvements in election administrative practices

Election Security Is Harder Than You Think

Recent years have seen the rise of nation-state interference in elections across the globe, making the ever-present need for more secure elections all the more dire. While certain common-sense approaches have been a typical response in the past, e.g. ``don't connect voting machines to the Internet'' and ``use a voting system with a paper trail'', known-good solutions to improving election security have languished in relative obscurity for decades. These techniques are only now finally being implemented at scale, and that implementation has brought the intricacies of sophisticated approaches to election security into full relief. This dissertation argues that while approaches to improve election security like paper ballots and post-election audits seem straightforward, in reality there are significant practical barriers to sufficient implementation. Overcoming these barriers is a necessary condition for an election to be secure, and while doing so is possible, it requires significant refinement of existing techniques. In order to better understand how election security technology can be improved, I first develop what it means for an election to be secure. I then delve into experimental results regarding voter-verified paper, discussing the challenges presented by paper ballots as well as some strategies to improve the security they can deliver. I examine the post-election audit ecosystem and propose a manifest improvement to audit workload analysis through parallelization. Finally, I show that even when all of these conditions are met (as in a vote-by-mail scenario), there are still wrinkles that must be addressed for an election to be truly secure.PHDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163272/1/matber_1.pd

Post-Election Audits: Restoring Trust in Elections

With the intention of assisting legislators, election officials and the public to make sense of recent literature on post-election audits and convert it into realistic audit practices, the Brennan Center and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at Boalt Hall School of Law (University of California Berkeley) convened a blue ribbon panel (the "Audit Panel") of statisticians, voting experts, computer scientists and several of the nation's leading election officials. Following a review of the literature and extensive consultation with the Audit Panel, the Brennan Center and the Samuelson Clinic make several practical recommendations for improving post-election audits, regardless of the audit method that a jurisdiction ultimately decides to adopt