APDSI and Piaget launch national survey on electronic voting
APDSI (Portuguese Association for the Development of the Information Society) is promoting, in partnership with the Piaget Institute, a national survey on what the Portuguese think about electronic voting.
Launched on May 5th, the survey, carried out in online format, will be open until May 21st. The objective is to assess citizens’ adherence and confidence in electronic voting, in order to provide useful information to the various agents and public authorities with an interest in the theme, be it the Government and Assembly of the Republic, political parties, the National Election Commission, universities and their research centers, or entities that develop technology for electronic voting.
If you had the possibility to choose between face-to-face and electronic voting, which one would you choose? Do you agree with electronic voting on mobility (by mobile phone, tablet or computer)? Or do you think it is an unnecessary risk to take that weakens democracy? Do you think it is easier to fraud with votes left in a ballot box in a gym or in a data center? These and other questions are the subject of the survey, which is, in reality, a challenge launched to the Portuguese in order to know their opinion on the topic.
The promoters ‘purpose is to collect, in just over 15 days, a sample as representative as possible, both in size and in terms of the respondents’ characteristics, considering the time window available and the format in which the survey was launched.
The survey is part of the APDSI activity plan that invited its associate Piaget Institute to participate in the project from the beginning, following its development until the public presentation of the final results. Piaget was thus involved in the construction and design of the project, in the design of the questionnaire and will be the entity responsible for analyzing the data. It is a work that is being developed through the professors and researchers that integrate the research unit of the Piaget Institute that is directly linked to the project, LabEST – Laboratory for Entrepreneurship, Society and Technology.
Participation in the survey is open to any citizen of legal age who can do so through the link https://pt.surveymonkey.com/r/voto_eletronico. Response time is less than 5 minutes and responses are anonymous and confidential.
The results of this research will be publicly presented on May 27, in an online event promoted by APDSI, to be carried out through the zoom platform, starting at 6 pm. The session, called “MeetOn‘ The Electronic Vote – Challenges and Opportunities ’” will be attended by a panel of experts who will discuss the implications of electronic voting. Those interested in participating in this session can register through the link https://pt.surveymonkey.com/r/meeton-apdsi-voto-eletronico.
The eventual adherence to electronic voting has been the object of the world and in its various aspects (from the start, in person and not in person) of multiple tests and pilot experiences. Its implementation aims, above all, to speed up the voting and counting operations, to improve the management of the process itself with a view to achieving efficiency gains, to maintain or increase the guarantees of security and credibility of the entire process and, at the same time, seek to combat some causes of abstentionism that, in the Portuguese case, have been accentuated in some electoral acts.
In Portugal, and until now, four electronic voting experiences have been developed, all of them non-binding. At the international level, Estonia and Brazil are two of the best-known cases of implementation of electronic voting, as well as the United States with regard to the Republican primaries.
