Casting votes digitally: examining the Latvian national position on Internet voting
Date
2016
Authors
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
The following dissertation aims to examine the Latvian national position on Internet voting through the prism of governmental and non-governmental actors’ perspectives. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of the i-voting pre-conditions outlined in Kotka’s et al. analysis (2015) as well as the Estonian National Electoral Committee’s report E-System Overview (2005), the dissertation adopts the content analysis method to identify the main underpinnings of the governmental and non-governmental actors’ position on the issue as well as the factors that shape the national discourse. Through examination of 34 documents of the relevant actors issued in the period between February 2012 and December 2015, the dissertation proposes a framework of determining the national position by estimating and comparing the indexes of average connotations (IAC) for governmental and non-governmental actors. Relying on empirical findings emerging from the coding scheme framework, the study argues that the national position is influenced by concerns over trust and security factors and suffers from a high degree of incoherence due to discrepancies and mismatches in the governmental and non-governmental actors’ ways of forming their judgments in regard to the vital i-voting pre-conditions. Taking into account that there are currently no studies that analyse in-depth the i-voting situation in Latvia, the following dissertation brings both academic and policy-oriented contributions by laying out a new theoretical approach of looking at the issue of i-voting through the lens of the pre-conditions and their impact on forming the national position as well as providing recommendations on the future direction and prospects of the i-voting strategy in Latvia. Moreover, the study puts forward a model that could be tested and applied further in other EU Member States to verify the state of the development and readiness of the i-voting pre-conditions.