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Designing the Vote: an Exploration of Electronic Voting As a Tool for Political Participation

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Designing the Vote: an Exploration of Electronic Voting As a Tool for Political Participation Designing the Vote: An Exploration of Electronic Voting as a tool for Political Participation Vasileios Vlachokyriakos B.Sc., M.Sc. (Hons) A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computing Science School of Computing Science Newcastle University March 2016 1 Abstract This thesis describes my attempt to envisage electronic voting as a tool for political en- gagement by challenging the conventional understanding of the role of technology in democracy as only facilitating ‘politics’ referring to the means, structures and mecha- nisms that enable governing. This entails the reappropriation of voting as a tool that embeds methods for dissent to be democratically manifested, and the discovery of novel ways with which voting systems can be designed to encourage citizen involvement in political processes; from setting up polls and political canvassing to voting and political deliberation. I materialize this novel conceptualization of voting by introducing a design framework that enables us to rethink the capacities of systems to support various democratic contexts. We instantiate this framework for the design and development of novel voting prototypes that we later deploy in collaboration with local communities in Newcastle upon Tyne and Cambridge in order to gain an understanding of how their affordances and contextual parameters influence political participation. As a result, in this thesis we present a number of case studies incorporating new designs, empirical methods and findings that begin to explore this conceptualisation of voting as a tool for political engagement. More specifically, we explore: (i) the reappropriation of voting as not only supporting the doing of politics, but also the participation of the in- volved stakeholders in a political process; (ii) the capacities of voting systems that enable this profound citizen participation to be materialised in local contexts and the possible change that might result from this; and (iii) the contextual parameters affecting citizen engagement in voting such as the system’s ownership and the authority to drive political agendas. In doing so, we offer new insights into the potential of voting to support political engagement and participation. 2 Acknowledgments The work presented in this PhD thesis would not have been possible without the advice and help of many very smart people. I would like to express particular thanks to Patrick Olivier for his support and inspiration throughout these years in Culture Lab. Also special thanks must go to Paul Dunphy who helped me see information security and e-voting from a different perspective, Rob Comber whose expertise allowed me to explore voting from its sociological outlook, and Nick Taylor who gave me a first indication of what HCI in voting means. I benefitted from their expertise and experience immeasurably. Thank you to Karim Ladha and Dan Jackson who developed the hardware and firmware described in this thesis and supported me with their technical expertise. I would also like to thank my hosts in Microsoft Research Cambridge Alex Taylor and Tim Regan who in addition to Siân Lindley allowed me to work on a substantial e-voting related project in Cambridge. To my colleagues in Culture Lab (recently renamed Open Lab), thank you so much for your advice, motivation and friendship over the past few years. I hope you know that I am grateful for your conceptual and technical contributions throughout these years. You reminded me a number of times that there are more important things in life beyond work that can easily be found in the nearest pub or on a squash court. Special thanks must go to Clara Crivellaro who through our discussions gave me a concrete example of how dissent can be constructively manifested, and Anja Thieme whose input helped with the thematic analysis and research undertaken in Chapter 7. Finally, thanks must go to my parents who supported me so that I could go to university and come to Newcastle in the first place. Thank you all. 3 Contribution Statement This PhD contains work undertaken in collaboration with a number of people from New- castle University, Open Lab and Microsoft Research Cambridge. In the chapters in which such collaborative work is reported, the contribution of these people is clearly indicated with references and footnotes. More specifically, Karim Ladha (Newcastle University) designed and developed the hardware and firmware described in Chapter 6, while Dan Jackson (Newcastle Univer- sity) developed the decoding algorithm for downloading the data of the devices described in the same chapter. Also, the case study reported in Chapter 7 was undertaken in collaboration with Microsoft Research Cambridge as part of the Tenison Road project. The BullFrog devices and Phys- ical Charts were developed and designed by a team of developers in Microsoft including Tim Regan and David Sweeney (for more information see [1]). The Tenison road project was led by Alex Taylor (Microsoft Research) and Siân Lindley (Microsoft Research) who in addition to Anja Thieme (Newcastle University) contributed to the work presented in Chapter 7 by giving me their valuable insights and comments. 4 Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………2 Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................... 3 Contribution Statement .................................................................................................. 4 Contents…………………………………………………………………………………5 List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………10 List of Tables……………………………………………………………………….….13 Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................................ 14 1.1. Research Questions .......................................................................................................... 16 1.1.1 How do we design for politics and the political in voting? ....................................... 16 1.1.2 How do systems’ affordances affect participation in voting? ................................... 17 1.1.3 How do contextual parameters affect participation in voting? .................................. 18 1.2. Summary of Contributions ............................................................................................... 19 1.3. Research Approach .......................................................................................................... 20 1.4. Methodological Inquiry .................................................................................................... 23 1.5. Research Journey and Thesis Structure ............................................................................ 24 1.6. Prior Publications ............................................................................................................. 28 Chapter 2. Politics and the Political in Voting ........................................................... 30 2.1. Design and Politics ........................................................................................................... 31 2.2. Design for Democracy and Participation ......................................................................... 34 2.2.1 Representative and Direct Participation .................................................................... 35 2.2.2 Participatory and Deliberative Democracy ............................................................... 38 2.2.3 Agonistic Pluralism ................................................................................................... 42 2.3. Misinterpreting Voting as Participation ........................................................................... 45 2.4. The Evolution of Participation through Voting ............................................................... 46 5 2.4.1 Oral Voting ................................................................................................................ 46 2.4.2 Paper and Mechanical Voting ................................................................................... 49 2.4.3 Digital Voting ............................................................................................................ 51 2.4.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 52 2.5. Summary .......................................................................................................................... 53 Chapter 3. The Application of Technology in Voting ................................................ 55 3.1. Security ............................................................................................................................ 56 3.1.1 Security Evaluations .................................................................................................. 56 3.1.2 Security Implementation ........................................................................................... 58 3.1.2.1 Using public and private keys .......................................................................................................... 58 3.1.2.2 Detaching parts of the ballot ............................................................................................................. 59 3.1.2.3 Using online cryptograms ................................................................................................................. 60 3.1.2.4 Reading voter verifiable papers/audio audit trails ...........................................................................
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