How Devices Transform Voting
Wolter Pieters · Information technology and law series/Information technology & law series · 2011
In this contribution, I analyze how electronic voting shapes democratic forms of voting from the perspective of technological mediation. First of all, I introduce the requirements that are generally accepted to apply to the voting process. I then zoom in on the history of electronic voting in the Netherlands, explain how the country finally abolished electronic voting, and recast the problems encountered in terms of implicit requirements. I then generalize the notion of implicit requirements to include broader forms of changes in human experience and existence, by referring to the philosophical work on technological mediation. Applying this theory to electronic voting, especially Internet voting, I identify challenges that we need to face, should electronic voting come back on the political agenda. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.