E-voting adoption in many countries: A literature review
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/20578911211040584 |
| Author | Ikhsan Darmawan |
| Subject Matter | Review |
E-voting adoption in many
countries: A literature review
Ikhsan Darmawan*
Kent State University, USA
Abstract
Although the number of countries that have adopted e-voting has decreased lately, the number of
academic publications on e-voting adoption has increased in the last two years. To date, there is
no coherent narrative in the existing literature that explainsthe progress of the research one-voting
adoption. This article aims to answer the following research question: “How has research on the
topic of e-voting adoption progressed over the last 15 years?”The articleprovides a semi-systematic
review of 78 studiesthat were conducted from 2005 to 2020.In this article, I argue that although the
studies on e-voting adoption are dominated by a single case study, by research in the United States,
and by the positivist paradigm, scholars have employed the term “e-voting adoption”diversely and
the research on e-voting adoption has evolved to address more specific research questions.
Recommendations for the future agenda of research on e-voting adoption are also discussed.
Keywords
e-voting adoption, literature review, semi-systematic review
Introduction
Electronic voting
1
(e-voting) is a method of voting that is different from manual voting because in
an election with e-voting the voters cast their votes by employing electronic devices. Despite having
several drawbacks (for example, secrecy and security), e-voting has several strengths over manual
voting, such as its accuracy (Pan et al., 2012) and the reduction in time to count the results (Musa
Corresponding author:
Ikhsan Darmawan, Kent State University, Bowman Hall 302, Kent, Ohio 44242, USA.
Email: idarmawa@kent.edu
*He is also a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia.
1. “E-voting”is an abbreviation of “electronic voting.”In this article, e-voting is defined as the use of electronic devices to
vote with a machine, a computer, or the internet.
Review
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2021, Vol. 6(4) 482–504
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/20578911211040584
journals.sagepub.com/home/acp
and Aliyu, 2013). Moreover, with the risks of conducting elections with manual voting in difficult
times, such as during the Covid-19 pandemic, Rosacker and Rosacker (2020) suggest the employ-
ment of e-voting to ensure the right of people to vote. Rosacker and Rosacker (2020) add that usage
of e-voting aligns with the worldwide use of cellular phones. Therefore, researching e-voting adop-
tion is crucial to capture the phenomenon of e-voting as the current and potential future major mode
of voting in the changing world and societies.
Furthermore, two contrasting phenomena exist, where some countries in Europe (for example, the
United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Norway) have abandoned e-voting, whereas some countries
in Asia (i.e. Jordan, the Philippines, and India) have adopted it for their elections. In general, the
number of countries that have adopted e-voting has decreased from 43 countries in 2010 (ACE
Project, cited in Darmawan et al., 2014) to 33 countries in 2019 (International IDEA, 2019). Despite
the decreasing trend when it comes to e-voting adoption, the number of academic publications on
the topic of e-voting adoption
2
has increased in the last two years from one journal article in 2019 to
14 journal articles in 2020. The increasing interest in the study on e-voting adoption reflects an
urgency to provide insights on the existing studies as well as ideas for further research for researchers
on e-voting adoption. In other words, this article is important to facilitate the development of the
research on e-voting adoption.
Concerning the need for a review on e-voting adoption, scholars from various fields—political
science, public policy, and public administration—are addressing queries about e-voting adoption.
These scholars address the topic from divergent viewpoints with extensively different methods and
publish their findings in the academic outlets of their varied fields. This produces mixed and
diverse findings on the topic. To date, there is no coherent narrative in the existing literature that
explains the development and progress of the research on e-voting adoption. There is a study on
reviewing e-voting adoption by Gibson et al. (2016) that focuses only on internet voting, whereas
the current articleincludes both practices: internetand traditional e-voting. The inexistence of an aca-
demic publication that reviews both types of e-voting might have led the review by Gibson et al.
(2016) to become biased and incomplete. Furthermore, the body of research on e-voting adoption
mainly consistsof isolated case studies. To the best of my knowledge, this article is the firstcompara-
tive study reviewing the existing literature on e-voting adoption. In other words,this literature review
contributes to filling this lacuna by offering scholars an overview of the research on e-voting.
This article focuses on reviewing the literature on e-voting adoption from many countries in
order to apprehend the diversity of the adoption of e-voting in various case studies. For
example, it can answer the questions that could not be answered if so many countries were not
included, such as “Is the publication of research on e-voting adoption dominated by case studies
on a certain country or region?”or “Which countries or regions in the world need attention from
scholars on e-voting adoption as potential cases for future research?”In addition to that, the inclu-
sion of many countries aligns with the goal of this article in providing elaboration on the progress of
research on e-voting adoption over the last 15 years.
This article aims to answer the following research question: “How has research on the topic of
e-voting adoption progressed over the last 15 years?”It argues that although studies on e-voting
adoption are dominated by a single case study, by research in the United States, and by the positivist
2. In this article, e-voting adoption includes two scopes. First, e-voting adoption is the employment of e-voting as the
method to cast a vote by the election management body in an election using one or more devices. Second, it is the inten-
tion of individuals to use e-voting in elections. The scope of elections can be national, local, rural, or even campus.
Darmawan 483
To continue reading
Request your trial