Page 244 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Information Technology and Political Engagement
The effects of electronic voting on turnout involve fundamentally
different theoretical problems than other questions associated with the
Internetandpolitics.Internetvotingisnotaphenomenonofinformation
abundance. Instead, it is a phenomenon of lowered transaction costs for
voting itself. While Internet voting makes the singular act of voting easier
and less “costly” in a Downsian sense, it does not necessarily contribute
directly to changes in the informational context of politics. It therefore
has more in common with mail balloting and registration requirements
such as the “motor voter” provisions than with candidate web sites, new
forms of collective action, or the new environment for news.
On that basis, efforts have been made to model the possible effects
of Internet voting on turnout. R. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler
analyzed registration requirements across states and also Oregon mail
balloting, coming to several conclusions. 58 First, as the cost of regis-
tering to vote falls, the total number of voters rises, while the turnout
rate among registered voters falls. Second, the number of people vot-
ing rises for both high socioeconomic status (SES) and low SES citizens.
While the rate of increase is greater for high SES, the larger pool of low
SES nonvoters means that in total numbers, more low-SES citizens are
drawn to the ballot box by lowered registration requirements. In Oregon,
reduced voting costs through mail balloting had little overall effect on
voting rates, and exerted no stimulus to vote among disinterested citi-
zens. The previously cited Arizona experiment confirmed the enormous
SES bias in Internet access, although lack of individual-level data creates
ecologicalinferenceproblemsandlimitstheopportunitytotestwhotook
advantage of Internet voting and who did not. Alvarez and Nagler suggest
that people higher on the SES scale will likely have a disproportionately
high propensity to take advantage of Internet voting, even were it made
universally available to all citizens. On the other hand, the larger pool of
low SES citizens among nonvoters means that on balance, Internet voting
could in the long run reduce the SES gap, were it to become universally
available. However, in the short run, they conclude that Internet voting
is an exclusive activity for the highly engaged.
It will likely be several years before sufficient data from “Internet elec-
tions” exist to test these hypotheses thoroughly. Certainly, we know more
about how new information technology affects traditional voting than
about the dynamics of voting through information technology. While it
58
R. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler, “The Likely Consequences of Internet Voting
for Political Representation,” paper prepared for the Internet Voting and Democracy
Symposium at Loyola Law School, Oct. 26, 2000, Los Angeles, Calif.

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