<b>What do voters want from </b><b>an online voting experience?</b> Results from user testing of a prototype i-voting app

<p dir="ltr">The UK does not offer remote online voting (i-voting) now. But, as digital services and digital citizen-government interactions continue to grow, voting could be offered remotely online in future<i> </i>alongside postal and in-person ballots. So what might i-voting look like, and how might voters respond? What makes an i-voting experience positive or negative?</p><p dir="ltr">We designed a prototype voting app that mirrors the traditional ballot paper. We asked potential voters to use it, on three different digital devices, and compared it with the in-person experience. Our study involved a diverse sample of 32 people from the Brunel community who kindly gave their time to test the alternative voting mode and share their feedback and opinions with us.</p><p dir="ltr">Our key findings are:</p><ul><li>The prototype app was positively evaluated, both in terms of its design and layout, and the experience of navigating it to complete the voting task.</li><li>Convenience, ease of use, simplicity and accessibility were repeatedly mentioned as advantages of i-voting. Security and privacy concerns were mentioned frequently, but not always as prohibitively high risks.</li><li>Two thirds say they would opt for i-voting, if it were available.</li><li>On a ‘willingness to vote online’ scale of 0 to 10, our respondents gave an average score of 8.4.</li><li>Gaining first-hand experience of the app was associated with either maintaining or improving willingness to vote online – the ‘maintainers’ generally had a high initial willingness to vote online, while the ‘improvers’ were initially less keen.</li><li>If i-voting were to become an option in future, our respondents want to see stronger security and authentication features on an i-voting app, education to inform voters about how i-voting works, and transparency about data risks, actors involved, and the security measures in place to prevent fraud and malpractice.</li></ul><p dir="ltr">Further testing, on a larger scale, could usefully explore which voter groups might benefit most from the option of i-voting, and how design features and voter engagement could address security and data protection concerns.</p>