Voter Intention to Use E-Voting Technologies: Security, Technology Acceptance, Election Type, and Political Ideology

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study integrates characteristics of e-voting technologies, political contexts, and behaviors with the technology acceptance model (TAM) to empirically examine how security principles, election types, and political ideology influence overall user intention to use an e-voting system. Structural equation analysis and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression used on estimates of 228 surveys reveal that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, accuracy, and confidentiality have direct and indirect impacts on intention to use e-voting. While usefulness has statistically positive effects on voters' intention to use e-voting in different effects of political election types, political ideology does not drive user's adoption of the e-voting system. Keywords: Electronic votingsecuritytechnology adoption Notes 1. The data are available from the author upon request. In addition, the data will be uploaded on the Journal of Information Technology & Politics' Dataverse site (http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn /dv/jitp) upon publication. 2. One of the proposals is the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was passed in October 2002 to improve election administration, increase access for the disabled, and provide funding to replace older voting technologies with DREs and optical scan machines. These upgrades to election administration resulted in a dramatic increase in the use of e-voting machines since the passage of HAVA. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) survey (2007, p. 28) found that just 9.3% of the jurisdictions reported for the 2004 election, but this increased to 53.6% two years later for the 2006 election. 3. In our study, we will not take this availability principle into account because we will examine potential voters' intention to use an e-voting system given the assumption that it will be available, and the existing literature reveals that availability does not improve users' intentions to participate in electronic voting (CitationYao & Murphy, 2007). 4. According to the November 2008 official results of the Virginia State of Board of Elections, the total turnout rate was 74.54% (https://www.voterinfo.sbe.virginia.gov). However, college-educated youth were much more likely to vote, and furthermore, people with less than a high school diploma represented only 6% of the young voters, compared to 14% in the general population. Thus, the youth voter turnout in Virginia might be acceptable, larger than average 75.54%. 5. The race/ethnicity of this sample is similar to the university population as follows: White (70.2%), Black (4.6%), Hispanic (2.6%), Asian and international (14.2%), and unknown (8.4%) (available upon request). 6. Statistical evidence is available upon request.