Germann etal krems

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Five Years of Internet Voting for Swiss Expatriates Krems, May 22, 2014 Micha Germann Flurin Conradin Christoph Wellig Uwe Serdült

Transcript of Germann etal krems

Page 1: Germann etal krems

Five Years of Internet Voting for

Swiss Expatriates

Krems, May 22, 2014

Micha Germann

Flurin Conradin

Christoph Wellig

Uwe Serdült

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• Internet voting in Switzerland

• Usage of the new remote voting channel

• Turnout effect

• Conclusions

Structure

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• Federalism strongly shaped the Swiss i-voting experiments

• Elections are a cantonal, in some cases even a communal matter

• Consequence: implementation was left to the cantons

• Independent set-up of three distinct online voting systems

in three ‘pilot’ cantons:

• Geneva (no pre-registration; 2003-2005, 2008-)

• Zurich (no pre-registration; 2005-2011)

• Neuchâtel (pre-registration; 2005-)

The Swiss I-Voting Roll-Out

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I-Voting Experiments for Residents

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• Initially exclusive focus on residents, expats were left out

• At least part of the expat community with strong interest in participating

in Swiss elections/referendum votes

• Postal voting with problems:

late dispatch of voting material, problems with postal delivery

• 2008: Neuchâtel becomes the first canton to extend the offer to expats

• The other two pilots follow suit in 2009/10

• Beginning in 2009, other cantons jump in too

• 2014: i-voting for expats in 12 cantons

The Swiss I-Voting Roll-Out II

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I-Voting Experiments for Expats (2008-)

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• The usage rate is an important argument in the political debate

• Assessment based on freshly collected data on usage of the internet voting channel in federal votes, 2004-2013

• Given the unrivalled high frequency of votes, some interesting patterns emerge, despite the short time period i-voting has been available

• Some caveats: • Figures for Neuchâtel’s residential voters include Swiss abroad up to June 2013

• Data for expatriate trials in four cantons is missing completely (ZH, GR, SH, & SO)

• Some deficits in data quality (Swiss abroad figures in AG, LU; NE, SG, & TG include expats outside the Wassenaar context, who have not been eligible to i-vote until recently)

Popularity of Online Voting Channel

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Online Voter Share among

Residential Voters (Annualized)

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Neuchâtel

Zurich

Geneva

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Higher share if no pre-registration required

Novelty effect

Interruptions are disruptive

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Online Voter Share among

Expatriate Voters (Annualized)

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Neuchâtel

Zurich

Geneva

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10

20

30

40

50

60

70

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Argovia Basel-City Berne Fribourg Geneva

Lucerne Neuchatel St. Gall Thurgau Zurich

Note: solid lines and dots denote Swiss abroad; dashed lines and hollow triangles Swiss residents

I-voting much more popular among expats

Except if pre-registration

No (or at least weaker) novelty effect

Clear upward trend

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• The extension to expats has been linked to hopes of boosting turnout

• At least in theory, i-voting lowers the cost associated with voting (especially for expatriates)

• Voting may not be possible for expatriates w/o i-voting at all (if voting materials arrive too late)

• Certainty that the vote is counted

• Sciarini et al. 2013 show that hopes have not materialized, at least not for Geneva’s residential voters

• On the other hand, Lutz (2012) reports a significant bivariate correlation in an unrepresentative survey of Swiss expats in the context of the 2011 federal elections

• What if we instead look at a longer time span and actual turnout levels?

Turnout Effect

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• Method: comparing turnout in i-voting and non-ivoting cantons using a

difference-in-difference type of logic

• Main problem: data sparsity

• Only 12/26 cantons collect expat turnout data

• In only 5 of the cantons we have data over a sufficiently long time span

• 2 i-voting cantons began to collect turnout data only after introduction of i-

voting (FR & NE) and 3 immediately before the introduction (SG, TG, & AG)

• 2 non-i-voting cantons began to collect turnout data only recently (VS & UR)

• Still, at least a tentative appraisal is possible

Turnout Effect II

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Turnout Effect III

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rnou

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2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

Year

w/o e-voting

with e-voting

Turnout effect (Basel-City vs. Vaud)

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small N

Cantons for which data is available may not be representative

Tentative finding

Turnout Effect VII

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Table 1: Effect of I-Voting Availability on Turnout in Two-Way Fixed Effects Models

5 Cantons 12 Cantons

I-Voting -.021 [ -.074, 032] .000 [-.04, .041] -.02 [-.05, .001] -.007 [-.034, .021]

Canton FEs X X X X

Vote dummies X X X X

Time Trends X X

Note: OLS coefficients with 95 per cent confidence interval in squared brackets; standard errors are

clustered at the cantonal level.

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• Given that it has already become their preferred mode of voting, i-voting for expatriates has been a relative success story

• Preaching to the converted?

• Hopes of turnout boosts may not materialize, but the jury is still out

• There are plans to broaden the roll-out

• I-voting for all expatriates by the 2015 federal elections

• Some non-pilot cantons want to include residents in their experiments

• Despite its relative success, and despite extension plans, online voting is under fire from multiple angles

Conclusion

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