Pandemic-proof elections: Did COVID-19 increase the use of Internet voting?

Abstract

COVID-19 forced governments to postpone elections, potentially jeopardizing the func-tionality of democratic societies by delaying regime legitimization. However, theoretically, In-ternet voting, as a mode of absentee voting, can easily overcome the pandemic circumstances by reducing the electorate's voting costs, yet the connection was not discovered. Hence, in this re-search, we decided to shed light on how COVID-19 affected voting costs and Internet voting usage, especially across at-risk groups. As a result, we explored that in the state with homogeneous i-voting diffusion, COVID-19 did not impact paper-voting and i-voting turnout, in general, and amidst the elderly population as well. First of all, these findings illustrate the existence of a saturation point in the technology acceptance rate. Additionally, the article discusses the theo-retical-empirical conceptualization of voting costs and the causal mechanism of the pandemic and turnout.