Internet Voting as Additional Channel for Legally Binding Elections: Challenges to Voting Processes Re-engineering

With the general decline of voter turnout in established democracies around the world, several countries have started to look into adding alternative means of voting, including Internet and postal voting resulting in complex multi-channel elections. However, research into the governance thereof remains limited.
The aim of this project is to conduct empirical research into the why such offerings are being undertaken and how they influence and change the voting process and governance thereof, as well as answering the question how the adding/removing of Internet voting and other channels impacts overall costs thereof.
To answer these questions an exploratory case study on the basis of an interdisciplinary theoretical framework incl. (1) election administration, (2) business process reengineering and (3) activity-based costing, will be conducted. The novel approach will result in a new understanding how elections with Internet voting are being run and how it affects their costs.

Principal Investigator: Prof. Robert Krimmer