We submit our results to two robustness tests (see appendix E). As already mentioned, institutional changes such as the introduction of new voting modes are not likely to exert their effects overnight (Trechsel 2007). In the present context, one must first learn how e-voting works before being able to use it regularly (Solvak and Vassil 2018). In other words, voting through the internet comes with some ‘entry costs’, as citizens have to go through a succession of identification and traceability checks. Therefore, we may assume that the effects of e-voting on turnout varies depending on the degree of familiarity with that new voting mode. The effects are presumably stronger among citizens who repeatedly had the opportunity to vote through the internet, than among those rarely exposed to it. Yet another effect is also plausible. The novelty of e-voting is also an asset. Voters may be eager to vote through the internet because they are interested in technological innovation or simply because they are sensitive to the newness of e-voting. In such a scenario, a ‘fashion effect’ would be at work, with voters resorting more to e-voting the first time it is offered to them.
To assess whether the exposure to or novel character of e-voting plays a role, we run an additional model including a count variable and a dummy variable: At each ballot, the count
variable calculates the number of votes (out of the five last votes) in which e-voting was offered to a given citizen; the dummy variable takes the value of 1 the first time (ballot) e-voting was offered to him/her, and 0 otherwise. Table in the appendix 2 show that there is no novelty effect: The parameter for the first e-voting opportunity is not different from zero. By contrast, the past experience with e-voting has a credible positive effect on the probability to vote. Nevertheless, and more importantly, the effects of the three main variables of interest (age, gender and past participation record) remain the same.
7. Conclusion
Thanks to a rich set of registered participation data covering 30 direct democratic votes and a period of eight years, our article contributes to the convenience voting literature, by highlighting whether offering e-voting as an additional voting channel fosters citizens' political participation. While according to existing studies e-voting does not have any measurable effect on aggregate turnout, our study breaks new ground by analyzing whether and to what extent e-voting influences participation among specific groups of citizens, and with which consequences for the equality of participation. Moreover, we test our hypotheses in a Swiss canton that has the most far-reaching experience with e-voting worldwide, and that allows for a conservative test of e-voting effects in a setting coming close to a quasi-experiment.
The main takeaway is that the availability of e-voting does have an influence on turnout, but that this influence holds for specific groups of citizens only. More specifically, our results highlight the crucial conditional role played by citizens’ participation profile. Offering e-voting in addition to postal and on-site vote increases participation among abstainers and – to a lesser extent – among occasional voters. The result that e-voting availability has mobilizing effects on peripheral voters is important. It is in line with Solvak and Vassil's (2016: 100-101) finding on the Estonian case, and it underlines the positive contribution of e-voting to the equality of participation. By the same token, it contradicts Berinsky's (2015) pessimistic view that e-voting produces a retention of habitual voters rather than a stimulation of unengaged citizens.
By contrast, according to our Swiss data offering e-voting as an additional voting channel does not have any effect on turnout among frequent voters. Given that they do already vote regularly, it is not surprising that they are insensitive to e-voting availability. This does not mean that those voters do not resort to e-voting, but if they do so they substitute it to other voting channels. From a normative viewpoint, this is in fact again reassuring, since this limits the risk that offering e-voting increases the inequality of participation, by fostering participation among those who already vote frequently.
Going one step further, our results help to specify the effects of the availability of e-voting on participation among usual abstainers and occasional voters. Here, the findings are more mixed from a normative perspective. First, e-voting does not contribute to lower the age gap in turnout between young and old cohorts. Among abstainers and – to a lesser extent – among occasional voters, the increase of participation associated with e-voting is smaller among young age cohorts than among old ones. The only category of seldom voters benefiting from the opportunity to vote through the internet is the oldest cohort of people born before 1930.
For this specific cohort – but for this specific cohort only – the convenience of e-voting has virtuous effects on the equality of participation.
A similar result holds for the difference in turnout between gender. Among abstainers and – again to a lesser extent – among occasional voters, offering e-voting increases participation significantly more among men than among women. For this specific category of occasional voters, offering e-voting thus tends to contribute to the inequality of participation between men and women.
The finding that the effects of the availability of e-voting are conditional on citizens' participation profile, i.e that these effects hold mainly for abstainers and seldom voters, breaks new ground. It may account for the fact that e-voting effects remained unnoticed in extant research. Yet our study is not without limitations. The first and main limitation is that we cannot demonstrate that the impact of e-voting availability on participation operates through the usage of internet voting, or through another voting channel. Further work, based on more sophisticated modelling strategy, is needed to assess the direct impact of e-voting on individual participation through internet voting. While transition models taking into account the voting mode would be helpful in that respect, they may raise severe computational issues
and model convergence problems, owing to the complexity of the related multinomial, multilevel models that such an analysis would require.
Another limitation of our study is that it does not take into consideration the effects of other ballot-related or campaign-related factors. While earlier studies showed that the mobilization of usual abstainers and occasional voters is highly dependent on campaign contacts and campaign intensity (Goldberg et al. 2019; Niven 2004; Parry et al. 2008), we find that it is also influenced by the availability of e-voting. This raises the question whether e-voting availability interacts with other campaign-related factors, e.g. whether e-voting effects on turnout are stronger when campaign is highly intense.
Finally, due to data limitations, i.e. due to the limited time period under consideration (8 years). we were unable not disentangle the age and cohort effects. Assuming e-voting will again be offered in the future, it will then be possible to study e-voting effects on a longer time-span. Relying on an age-period-cohort (APC) approach (e.g. Bell and Jones 2014 and 2015) would then help to disentangle the three age effects and to test, as we argued in this article, that these effects mainly relate to cohort effects.
While our study focuses on the Geneva canton, we believe that is has broader implications beyond Switzerland. Finding, as we do, e-voting effects in a context with such unfavorable starting conditions increases our confidence that such effects would also be at work – and would be even stronger – in contexts where e-voting would greatly simplify the voting process. With more countries introducing e-voting, the potential for comparative studies would also increase. Yet such a prospect is obviously conditional on the willingness of governments to offer e-voting. For the time being, security concerns and the fear that e-voting can be manipulated hinders its development. In Switzerland, security concerns have recently led the Federal government to put the e-voting experience on hold. This should nevertheless not discourage us from studying the effects of e-voting, which will certainly reappear sooner or later, possibly as a side-effect of the Covid-19 crisis.
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Appendix A: Ballots included in the analysis Date Level and type of vote (IN=initiative;
RF=referendum) 2009-09-27 Federal (2 RF) and Cantonal (6 RF) 50.9 % 10 / 45 2009-11-29 Federal (2 IN + 1 RF) and Cantonal (2 RF) 58.6 % 10 / 45 2010-03-07 Federal (1 IN + 2 RF) and Cantonal (1 RF) 49.7 % 11 / 45 2010-09-26 Federal (1 RF) and Cantonal (3 RF) 42.3 % 13 / 45 2010-11-28 Federal (2 IN + 1 RF) and Cantonal (4 RF) 55.3 % 13 / 45 2011-02-13 Federal (1 IN) and Cantonal (2 RF) 48.6 % 13 / 45
2011-05-15 Cantonal (1 IN + 4 RF) 40.3 % 45 / 45
2012-11-25 Federal (1 RF) and Cantonal (1 RF) 28.8 % 17 / 45 2013-03-03 Federal (1 IN + 2 RF) and Cantonal (1 IN + 1 RF) 47.5 % 17 / 45 2014-09-28 Federal (2 IN) and Cantonal (1 IN) 58.5 % 16 / 45 2014-11-30 Federal (3 IN) and Cantonal (1 IN + 1 RF) 52.3 % 16 / 45 2015-03-08 Federal (2 IN) and Cantonal (1 RF) 48.2 % 16 / 45 2015-06-14 Federal (2 IN + 2 RF) and Cantonal (1 RF) 46.4 % 16 / 45 2016-02-28 Federal (3 IN + 1 RF) and Cantonal (1 IN + 6 RF) 56.6 % 16 / 45 2016-06-05 Federal (3 IN + 2 RF) and Cantonal (2 IN + 3 RF) 52.9 % 16 / 45 2016-09-25 Federal (2 IN + 1 RF) and Cantonal (2 RF) 46.4 % 16 / 45
Several objects may be submitted to a popular vote on the same voting day. However, only one ballot paper (or electronic form) per voting day can be filled by citizens.
Appendix B: Data pre-processing and sampling.
The full data provided by the Statistical Cantonal Office (OCSTAT) and the Elections and Votes Service of the Geneva State covers the 1996-2018 period. We excluded citizens that have more than four gaps in the data, for whom we cannot calculate their past participation profile. This relates to a few citizens who disappear at some point from the data-set and reappear five or more ballots later (e.g. citizens who moved to another Swiss canton and came
The full data provided by the Statistical Cantonal Office (OCSTAT) and the Elections and Votes Service of the Geneva State covers the 1996-2018 period. We excluded citizens that have more than four gaps in the data, for whom we cannot calculate their past participation profile. This relates to a few citizens who disappear at some point from the data-set and reappear five or more ballots later (e.g. citizens who moved to another Swiss canton and came