Internet voting and the secret ballot in Norway: principles and popular understandings

ABSTRACT

The secret ballot is considered a central feature of democratic elections, but its practical implications may be contested when Internet voting (and remote voting in general) is introduced. How do citizens understand the principle of the secret ballot in practice? The issue was brought to the fore in a trial with Internet voting that was conducted in 12 Norwegian municipalities for the 2013 parliamentary election. Based on a representative population survey, we explore how Norwegian voters approached the principle of the secret ballot in the context of Internet voting. A large majority supported the general principle, but the picture became more nuanced when it was put to the test of concrete situations. Unless the situation involved coercion or undue influence, many people were willing to accept that voting can be observed by others – even if this was a breach of legal regulations.

Acknowledgements

The article is based on an evaluation that was conducted in the 2013 Norwegian trial with Internet voting (Segaard et al. 2014). An earlier version was presented at the 23rd IPSA World Congress of Political Science, Montréal, 19–24 July 2014, and at a seminar at the Institute for Social Research, Oslo, 26 September 2014. We would like to thank the seminar participants and the journal's reviewers for valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹For more information, see the regulations for the Internet voting trial (FOR-2013-06-19-669).

²Thanks is due to Christian Bull at the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government for information about the changes in the i-voting system.

³For more details about the survey design, see Segaard et al. (2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation.