Pandemic-proof elections: Did COVID-19 increase the use of Internet voting?

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29379/jedem.v17i4.1024

Keywords:

Absentee voting, COVID-19, Estonia, Internet voting, Voting costs

Abstract

COVID-19 forced governments to postpone elections, potentially jeopardizing the functionality of democratic societies by delaying regime legitimization. However, theoretically, Internet voting, as a mode of absentee voting, can easily overcome the pandemic circumstances by reducing the electorate's voting costs, yet the connection was not discovered. Hence, in this research, we decided to shed light on how COVID-19 affected voting costs and Internet voting usage, especially across at-risk groups. As a result, we explored that in the state with homogeneous i-voting diffusion, COVID-19 did not impact paper-voting and i-voting turnout, in general, and amidst the elderly population as well. First of all, these findings illustrate the existence of a saturation point in the technology acceptance rate. Additionally, the article discusses the theoretical-empirical conceptualization of voting costs and the causal mechanism of the pandemic and turnout.

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Author Biographies

Bogdan Romanov, University of Tartu, Estonia

Bogdan Romanov is a Junior Research Fellow and PhD candidate at the ECePS ERA Chair in e-Governance and Digital Public Services at the University of Tartu, Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies. He is a graduate with cum laude of the “Democracy and Governance” MA program at the University of Tartu; the thesis project was devoted to the COVID-19 policy stringency responses. Additionally, apart from healthcare public policy, his academic specialization is i-voting in various contexts, e.g., authoritarianism, electoral autocracies, and similar topics revolving around e-governance and e-participation. Previously, he worked as a Quantitative Developer at a financial company.

Mihkel Solvak, University of Tartu, Estonia

Mihkel Solvak is an associate professor in technology studies at Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu in Estonia. He is currently active as a manager and researcher at the Center of IT Impact Studies (CITIS). His research focuses on the usability of machine learning in designing and building pro-active digital services that act as either decision-support tools for civil servants or behavior-predicting services to be used in prevention work. He also does research on the diffusion and usage patterns of e-services and electronic elections using process-generated log data analysis, sensor, and registry data. Mihkel Solvak has previously published on electronic elections, electoral behavior, and patterns in legislative be-havior. He utilizes a wide range of statistical and data mining techniques in his research and teaches quan-titative and statistical techniques at the University of Tartu

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Published

31.12.2025

How to Cite

Romanov, B., & Solvak, M. (2025). Pandemic-proof elections: Did COVID-19 increase the use of Internet voting?. JeDEM - EJournal of EDemocracy and Open Government, 17(4), 1–42. https://doi.org/10.29379/jedem.v17i4.1024

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 4 (2025): Ongoing Papers

Section

Research Papers

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Bogdan Romanov, Mihkel Solvak

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.


JeDEM is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal (ISSN: 2075-9517). All journal content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 DEED Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International