Numerous countries are heading toward digital infrastructures. In particular this new technology promises to help support methods for elections. However, one should be careful that such an infrastructure does not hinder the voting and representation issues. On the contrary, it should support those issues and help citizens have a clearer picture of the underlying mechanisms. This paper deals with the limits of voting procedures as they are described in classical collective choice theory and reflects on ways to aggregate (...) electronic votes stemming from various individuals that would be at the same time democratic, decisive and rational which is not feasible when candidate rankings alone are taken into account. This paper shows how electronic voting procedures could improve the situation by introducing preference-based votes. (shrink)

This paper reports the introduction of electronic handsets, like those used on the television show 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' into the teaching of philosophical logic. Logic lectures can provide quite a formidable challenge for many students, occasionally to the point of making them ill. Our rationale for introducing handsets was threefold: to get the students thinking and talking about the subject in a public environment; to make them feel secure enough to answer questions in the lectures because (...) the system enabled them to do this anonymously; and to build their confidence about their learning by their being able to see how they were progressing in relation to the rest of the students in the class. We have achieved all of these and more. Our experience has revealed that the use of handsets encourages a more dynamic form of student interaction in an environment - the lecture - that can, in the wrong hands, be utterly enervating, but they also provide an opportunity for the lecturer to respond to students' difficulties at the time when they really matter. In this paper, we discuss our case of rapid adoption, our grounds for judging it a success, and what that success seems to have depended on. (shrink)

This paper examines and illustrates the process of setting technical intercommunication standards through a case‐study taken from the electronic voting industry. It begins by addressing the large number of types of standards and the many ways in which they are created. The tensions between the speed to market, stakeholder involvement, the mode of production and the legitimacy of a standard are explored. The modes of standards production are then presented in a linear model. The preceding discussion sets the (...) context for a case which presents attempts to standardise the large number of competing electronic voting solutions. The importance of which actors back and influence a standard’s development up to successful adoption is exposed. The vital role government can play in preventing a standards market failure is raised and recommendations are offered on how governments can improve their contributions to standardisation. (shrink)

Much of the theoretical work on strategic voting makes strong assumptions about what voters know about the voting situation. A strategizing voter is typically assumed to know how other voters will vote and to know the rules of the voting method. A growing body of literature explores strategic voting when there is uncertainty about how others will vote. In this paper, we study strategic voting when there is uncertainty about the voting method. We introduce (...) three notions of manipulability for a set of voting methods: sure, safe, and expected manipulability. With the help of a computer program, we identify voting scenarios in which uncertainty about the voting method may reduce or even eliminate a voter's incentive to misrepresent her preferences. Thus, it may be in the interest of an election designer who wishes to reduce strategic voting to leave voters uncertain about which of several reasonable voting methods will be used to determine the winners of an election. (shrink)

If voting systems are to be trusted, they not only need to preserve both secrecy (if requested) and accuracy, but the mechanisms that preserve these features should be transparent, in the sense of being both cognitively understandable and accessible. Electronic voting systems, much as they promise accuracy in counting, and on top of being criticized for their insufficient protection of secrecy, violate the transparency requirement.

In the context of computational social choice, we study voting methods that assign a set of winners to each profile of voter preferences. A voting method satisfies the property of positive involvement (PI) if for any election in which a candidate x would be among the winners, adding another voter to the election who ranks x first does not cause x to lose. Surprisingly, a number of standard voting methods violate this natural property. In this paper, we (...) investigate different ways of measuring the extent to which a voting method violates PI, using computer simulations. We consider the probability (under different probability models for preferences) of PI violations in randomly drawn profiles vs. profile-coalition pairs (involving coalitions of different sizes). We argue that in order to choose between a voting method that satisfies PI and one that does not, we should consider the probability of PI violation conditional on the voting methods choosing different winners. We should also relativize the probability of PI violation to what we call voter potency, the probability that a voter causes a candidate to lose. Although absolute frequencies of PI violations may be low, after this conditioning and relativization, we see that under certain voting methods that violate PI, much of a voter's potency is turned against them - in particular, against their desire to see their favorite candidate elected. (shrink)

WeChat is not only a mobile application with many innovative features but is also representative of China’s electronic revolution. It is compatible with more than 90% of smart phones and has become an indispensable tool for daily use. People are captivated by various types of WeChat voting and canvassing activities, but little research has investigated whether such voting is based on guanxi or justice. Are people truly willing to vote on WeChat? Is WeChat voting an effective (...) means of acquaintance marketing? In this research, three studies were conducted. First, 656 respondents were surveyed, and the results showed that more than 90% of WeChat users have participated in WeChat voting and that their voting behaviour is based on guanxi. Second, an online questionnaire was administered to 731 subjects, and the results were statistically analysed to determine whether voting behaviour is motivated by guanxi or by justice. The results showed that people’s behaviour deviates from their intention. Third, 676 subjects were investigated, and logistic regression was used to model and analyse the characteristics of voting participants. The many interesting findings reveal that men show more ‘empathy’ than women and that men are more likely to vote on WeChat based on reciprocity and intimacy. In addition, older people emphasize emotion, whereas students are more interested in fostering connections for the future. Inappropriate WeChat voting behaviour does not facilitate promotional marketing, damages the reputation of the company and reduces customer loyalty. These findings provide theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions to strategies for effective acquaintance marketing. (shrink)

We note a range of interesting and challenging points which take forward the discourse around the ethics of sharing patient data. Of most note are criticisms of our jury recruitment and methods; questioning how we can engender trust and support from the wider, uninformed public when we only have the view of a small informed public; asking what work needs to be done to ethically transfer data from a clinical care setting to that of research; suggesting that dynamic consent with (...) opt-outs could be an avenue for allowing patients more control over the use of their medical data for research; and asking how we bridge from ‘is’ to ‘ought’. The first criticisms to be addressed focus on the recruitment and methods of our jury, raised by Carter.1 She suggests that the selection of participants, using a population distribution of responses to a data-sharing question, resulted in a jury too positively oriented to data sharing at the outset. Further, she suggests that we counted individual votes rather than allowing the jury to come to a collective position, that jurors were not asked to prioritise the common good, that we present a lack of data from the jury’s deliberations, and as a result, there is a difficulty with evaluating the reasoning and authenticity of deliberation. Regarding recruitment of our jury, our stated aim, which we acknowledge is not shared by all juries, was to achieve a sample which broadly matched what we would expect if …. (shrink)

Utilizamos una herramienta de gamificación, un sistema de votación electrónica, en una asignatura a nivel universitario. Analizamos si el uso de dicha herramienta en las actividades de la evaluación continua repercutió o no en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje, concretamente, en los resultados del examen final. Para ello recopilamos datos sobre las características del alumnado potencialmente influyentes en el rendimiento académico que estudiamos aplicando técnicas de análisis de datos descriptivas e inferenciales. El resultado muestra que el alumnado puede llegar a incrementar (...) hasta en casi 2 puntos su nota, según su ratio de aciertos con el sistema de votación electrónica. (shrink)

Purpose The manner in which people, businesses and governments perform is changing because of the spread of technology. Digitalization of governments can be considered a necessity as we are now entering the era of the Internet-of-Things. The advantages and disadvantages of electronic governments have been examined in several research studies. This study aims to examine the attitudes of decision-makers towards e-government. The research aims are as follows: to determine the problems related with e-government usage, to establish the factors which (...) decrease the usage of e-government services and to propose recommendations for the effective application of e-government practices. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative research has been used for the study. Participants were chosen by the snowball sampling method, and face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with all decision-makers. In-depth interviews are more efficient and enable the acquisition of better qualitative information, in-depth knowledge and statistics, as the distance between the interviewer and interviewee is reduced. Questions asked can be categorized under two sections, where the questions in the first section are related to the decision-maker’s management style/managerial proposition, and in the second section, technological questions are asked in terms of the preferred communication method and the decision-makers’ attitudes towards e-government practices. Findings Decision-makers perceive electronic government to be important, while the level of importance is observed to be different among the decision-makers. Chronic problems exist in many countries, such as nepotism, where the decision-makers have conflicting arguments about e-government and the resulting effect on nepotism. Furthermore, the study also indicates that decision-makers are aware of the importance of mobile government, although they acknowledge that more time is required, as their country is still developing. Electronic voting is also perceived to be important, although the decision-makers believe that security and privacy issues need to be solved before related projects can be initiated. Originality/value This research can be a benchmark study for the decision-makers of small island developing states by means of e-government. The impediments preventing the effective application of e-government practices are also discussed in the study. This study will be useful to highlight the triggers and obstacles for e-government development in the context of a developing country. Internet penetration has increased significantly since the 2000s, and therefore, decision-makers need to consider the shift in citizens’ behaviour, such as the high usage of smartphones and the emergence of the Internet-of-Things. (shrink)

PurposeThe aim of the research described was to identify reasons for differences between discourses on electronic voting in the UK and The Netherlands, from a qualitative point of view.Design/methodology/approachFrom both countries, eight e‐voting experts were interviewed on their expectations, risk estimations, cooperation and learning experiences. The design was based on the theory of strategic niche management. A qualitative analysis of the data was performed to refine the main variables and identify connections.FindingsThe results show that differences in these (...) variables can partly explain the variations in the embedding of e‐voting in the two countries, from a qualitative point of view. Key differences include the goals of introducing e‐voting, concerns in relation to verifiability and authenticity, the role of the Electoral Commissions and a focus on learning versus a focus on phased introduction.Research limitations/implicationsThe current study was limited to two countries. More empirical data can reveal other relevant subvariables, and contribute to a framework that can improve our understanding of the challenges of electronic voting.Originality/valueThis study shows the context‐dependent character of discussions on information security. It can be informative for actors involved in e‐voting in the UK and The Netherlands, and other countries using or considering electronic voting. (shrink)

In information security research, perceived security usually has a negative meaning, when it is used in contrast to actual security. From a phenomenological perspective, however, perceived security is all we have. This paper develops a phenomenological account of information security, in which a distinction is made between revealed and reveiled security instead. Linking these notions with the concepts of confidence and trust, the paper provides a phenomenological explanation of the electronic voting controversy in the Netherlands.

Model checking techniques for communication protocols usually are phrased in terms of processes, basically labelled arcs in a labelled transition system. We propose to lift checking for such protocols to a more abstract level by analysing the protocols as composite communicative actions, with a communicative action viewed as a mapping on an appropriate class of epistemic models. As an example, we analyse an anonymous broadcast protocol (Chaum’s well-known dining cryptographers protocol) and an electronic voting protocol.

Educational institutions have a responsibility not only to provide a solid theoretical background on scientific phenomena, but to also frame them within the wider social context and highlight their numerous ethical implications. It is fundamental that tomorrow’s scientists be encouraged to develop an informed and critical approach towards scientific issues that, as in the case of animal experimentation, bring undeniable advantages to our society while carrying highly controversial moral implications. However, despite the considerable social and scientific relevance of the use (...) of animal models in biomedical research, there is a scarcity of scholarly literature exploring the topic from a pedagogical standpoint. The case study presented in this paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of role play simulation in promoting critical understanding of the use of animal models in biomedical research and its ethical implications. A simulation was set up in which first year undergraduate students took the role of delegates to a conference purportedly organised by the United Nations Ethics Office. The simulation included two electronic voting sessions, an open debate, and a keynote lecture. Post-session feedback indicated that most students found the simulation more engaging than a conventional lecture. A comparison of self-assessment questionnaires compiled at the start and at the end of the session indicated that students’ understanding of, and confidence in, the topic of animal experimentation had considerably increased after taking part in the simulation. (shrink)

Educational institutions have a responsibility not only to provide a solid theoretical background on scientific phenomena, but to also frame them within the wider social context and highlight their numerous ethical implications. It is fundamental that tomorrow’s scientists be encouraged to develop an informed and critical approach towards scientific issues that, as in the case of animal experimentation, bring undeniable advantages to our society while carrying highly controversial moral implications. However, despite the considerable social and scientific relevance of the use (...) of animal models in biomedical research, there is a scarcity of scholarly literature exploring the topic from a pedagogical standpoint. The case study presented in this paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of role play simulation in promoting critical understanding of the use of animal models in biomedical research and its ethical implications. A simulation was set up in which first year undergraduate students took the role of delegates to a conference purportedly organised by the United Nations Ethics Office. The simulation included two electronic voting sessions, an open debate, and a keynote lecture. Post-session feedback indicated that most students found the simulation more engaging than a conventional lecture. A comparison of self-assessment questionnaires compiled at the start and at the end of the session indicated that students’ understanding of, and confidence in, the topic of animal experimentation had considerably increased after taking part in the simulation. (shrink)

In information security research, perceived security usually has a negative meaning, when it is used in contrast to actual security. From a phenomenological perspective, however, perceived security is all we have. This paper develops a phenomenological account of information security, in which a distinction is made between revealed and reveiled security instead. Linking these notions with the concepts of confidence and trust, the paper provides a phenomenological explanation of the electronic voting controversy in the Netherlands.

There is a common problem in artificial intelligence (AI) and information security. In AI, an expert system needs to be able to justify and explain a decision to the user. In information security, experts need to be able to explain to the public why a system is secure. In both cases, an important goal of explanation is to acquire or maintain the users’ trust. In this paper, I investigate the relation between explanation and trust in the context of computing science. (...) This analysis draws on literature study and concept analysis, using elements from system theory as well as actor-network theory. I apply the conceptual framework to both AI and information security, and show the benefit of the framework for both fields by means of examples. The main focus is on expert systems (AI) and electronic voting systems (security). Finally, I discuss consequences of the analysis for ethics in terms of (un)informed consent and dissent, and the associated division of responsibilities. (shrink)

Can new technology enhance purpose-driven, democratic dialogue in groups, governments, and societies? Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, technology designers, and practitioners. Since some of the most exciting innovations have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, work in this growing field has often failed to reflect the full (...) set of perspectives on online deliberation. This volume is aimed at those working at the crossroads of information/communication technology and social science, and documents early findings in, and perspectives on, this new field by many of its pioneers. -/- CONTENTS: -/- Introduction: The Blossoming Field of Online Deliberation (Todd Davies, pp. 1-19) -/- Part I - Prospects for Online Civic Engagement -/- Chapter 1: Virtual Public Consultation: Prospects for Internet Deliberative Democracy (James S. Fishkin, pp. 23-35) -/- Chapter 2: Citizens Deliberating Online: Theory and Some Evidence (Vincent Price, pp. 37-58) -/- Chapter 3: Can Online Deliberation Improve Politics? Scientific Foundations for Success (Arthur Lupia, pp. 59-69) -/- Chapter 4: Deliberative Democracy, Online Discussion, and Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly) (Robert Cavalier with Miso Kim and Zachary Sam Zaiss, pp. 71-79) -/- Part II - Online Dialogue in the Wild -/- Chapter 5: Friends, Foes, and Fringe: Norms and Structure in Political Discussion Networks (John Kelly, Danyel Fisher, and Marc Smith, pp. 83-93) -/- Chapter 6: Searching the Net for Differences of Opinion (Warren Sack, John Kelly, and Michael Dale, pp. 95-104) -/- Chapter 7: Happy Accidents: Deliberation and Online Exposure to Opposing Views (Azi Lev-On and Bernard Manin, pp. 105-122) -/- Chapter 8: Rethinking Local Conversations on the Web (Sameer Ahuja, Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, and Andrea Kavanaugh, pp. 123-129) -/- Part III - Online Public Consultation -/- Chapter 9: Deliberation in E-Rulemaking? The Problem of Mass Participation (David Schlosberg, Steve Zavestoski, and Stuart Shulman, pp. 133-148) -/- Chapter 10: Turning GOLD into EPG: Lessons from Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism for Electronic Rulemaking and Other Ventures in Cyberdemocracy (Peter M. Shane, pp. 149-162) -/- Chapter 11: Baudrillard and the Virtual Cow: Simulation Games and Citizen Participation (Hélène Michel and Dominique Kreziak, pp. 163-166) -/- Chapter 12: Using Web-Based Group Support Systems to Enhance Procedural Fairness in Administrative Decision Making in South Africa (Hossana Twinomurinzi and Jackie Phahlamohlaka, pp. 167-169) -/- Chapter 13: Citizen Participation Is Critical: An Example from Sweden (Tomas Ohlin, pp. 171-173) -/- Part IV - Online Deliberation in Organizations -/- Chapter 14: Online Deliberation in the Government of Canada: Organizing the Back Office (Elisabeth Richard, pp. 177-191) -/- Chapter 15: Political Action and Organization Building: An Internet-Based Engagement Model (Mark Cooper, pp. 193-202) -/- Chapter 16: Wiki Collaboration Within Political Parties: Benefits and Challenges (Kate Raynes-Goldie and David Fono, pp. 203-205) -/- Chapter 17: Debian’s Democracy (Gunnar Ristroph, pp. 207-211) -/- Chapter 18: Software Support for Face-to-Face Parliamentary Procedure (Dana Dahlstrom and Bayle Shanks, pp. 213-220) -/- Part V - Online Facilitation -/- Chapter 19: Deliberation on the Net: Lessons from a Field Experiment (June Woong Rhee and Eun-mee Kim, pp. 223-232) -/- Chapter 20: The Role of the Moderator: Problems and Possibilities for Government-Run Online Discussion Forums (Scott Wright, pp. 233-242) -/- Chapter 21: Silencing the Clatter: Removing Anonymity from a Corporate Online Community (Gilly Leshed, pp. 243-251) -/- Chapter 22: Facilitation and Inclusive Deliberation (Matthias Trénel, pp. 253-257) -/- Chapter 23: Rethinking the ‘Informed’ Participant: Precautions and Recommendations for the Design of Online Deliberation (Kevin S. Ramsey and Matthew W. Wilson, pp. 259-267) -/- Chapter 24: PerlNomic: Rule Making and Enforcement in Digital Shared Spaces (Mark E. Phair and Adam Bliss, pp. 269-271) -/- Part VI - Design of Deliberation Tools -/- Chapter 25: An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design (Todd Davies, Brendan O’Connor, Alex Cochran, Jonathan J. Effrat, Andrew Parker, Benjamin Newman, and Aaron Tam, pp. 275-292) -/- Chapter 26: Online Civic Deliberation with E-Liberate (Douglas Schuler, pp. 293-302) -/- Chapter 27: Parliament: A Module for Parliamentary Procedure Software (Bayle Shanks and Dana Dahlstrom, pp. 303-307) -/- Chapter 28: Decision Structure: A New Approach to Three Problems in Deliberation (Raymond J. Pingree, pp. 309-316) -/- Chapter 29: Design Requirements of Argument Mapping Software for Teaching Deliberation (Matthew W. Easterday, Jordan S. Kanarek, and Maralee Harrell, pp. 317-323) -/- Chapter 30: Email-Embedded Voting with eVote/Clerk (Marilyn Davis, pp. 325-327) -/- Epilogue: Understanding Diversity in the Field of Online Deliberation (Seeta Peña Gangadharan, pp. 329-358). -/- For individual chapter downloads, go to odbook.stanford.edu. (shrink)

With the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), global researchers were confronted with major challenges. The German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON) was launched in fall 2020 to effectively leverage resources and bundle research activities in the fight against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We analyzed the setup phase of NAPKON as an example for multicenter studies in Germany, highlighting challenges and optimization potential in connecting 59 university and nonuniversity study sites. We examined the ethics application (...) process of 121 ethics submissions considering durations, annotations, and outcomes. Study site activation and recruitment processes were investigated and related to the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections. For all initial ethics applications, the median time to a positive ethics vote was less than two weeks and 30 of these study sites (65%) joined NAPKON within less than three weeks each. Electronic instead of postal ethics submission (9.5 days (Q1: 5.75, Q3: 17) vs. 14 days (Q1: 11, Q3: 26), p value = 0.01) and adoption of the primary ethics vote significantly accelerated the ethics application process. Each study center enrolled a median of 37 patients during the 14-month observation period, with large differences depending on the health sector. We found a positive correlation between recruitment performance and COVID-19 incidence as well as hospitalization incidence. Our analysis highlighted the challenges and opportunities of the federated system in Germany. Digital ethics application tools, adoption of a primary ethics vote and standardized formal requirements lead to harmonized and thus faster study initiation processes during a pandemic. (shrink)

The first topic of concern is anonymity, specifically the anonymity that is available in communications on the Internet. An earlier paper argues that anonymity in electronic communication is problematic because: it makes law enforcement difficult ; it frees individuals to behave in socially undesirable and harmful ways ; it diminishes the integrity of information since one can't be sure who information is coming from, whether it has been altered on the way, etc.; and all three of the above contribute (...) to an environment of diminished trust which is not conducive to certain uses of computer communication. Counterbalancing these problems are some important benefits. Anonymity can facilitate some socially desirable and beneficial behavior. For example, it can eliminate the fear of repercussions for behavior in contexts in which repercussions would diminish the availability or reliability of information, e.g., voting, personal relationships between consenting adults, and the like. Furthermore, anonymity can be used constructively to reduce the effect of prejudices on communications. Negative aspects of anonymity all seem to point to a tension between accountability and anonymity. They suggest that accountability and anonymity are not compatible, and they even seem to suggest that since accountability is a good thing, it would be good to eliminate anonymity. In other words, the problems with anonymity suggest that individuals are more likely to behave in socially desirable ways when they are held accountable for their behavior, and they are more likely to engage in socially undesirable behavior when they are not held accountable. I am not going to take issue with the correlation between accountability and anonymity, but rather with the claim that accountability is good. To examine this problem, let's look at a continuum that stretches from total anonymity at one end, and no anonymity at all at the other end. At the opposite extreme of anonymity is a panopticon society. The panopticon is the prison environment described by Foucault in which prison cells are arranged in a large circle with the side facing the inside of the circle open to view. The guard tower is placed in the middle of the circle so that guards can see everything that goes on in every cell. In a recent article on privacy, Jeffrey Reiman, reflecting on the new intelligent highway systems, suggests that we are moving closer and closer to a panopticon society. When we contemplate all the electronic data that is now gathered about each one of us as we move through our everyday lives- intelligent highway systems, consumer transactions, traffic patterns on the internet, medical records, financial records, and so on- we see the trend that Reiman identifies. Electronic behavior is recorded and the information is retained. While actions/transactions in separate domains are not necessarily combined, it seems obvious that the potential exists for combining data into a complete portfolio of an individual's day to day life. So it would seem that as more and more activities and domains are moved into a IT-based medium, the closer we will come to a panopticon society. A panopticon society gives us the ultimate in accountability. Everything an individual does is observable and therefore available to those to whom we are accountable. Of course, in doing this, it puts us, in effect, in prison. The prison parallel is appropriate here because what anonymity allows us is freedom; prison is the ultimate in lack of freedom. In this way the arguments for a free society become arguments for anonymity. Only when individuals are free will they experiment, try new ideas, take risks, and learn by doing so. Only in an environment that tolerates making mistakes will individuals develop the active habits that are so essential for democracy. In a world without information technology, individuals have levels or degrees and various kinds of anonymity and consequently different levels and kinds of freedom. Degrees and kinds of anonymity vary with the domain: small town social life versus urban social life, voting, commercial exchanges, banking, automobile travel, airplane travel, telephone communication, education, and so on. Drawing from our experience before IT-based institutions, we might believe that what we need is varying levels or degrees and kinds of anonymity. This seems a good starting place because it suggests an attempt to re-create the mixture that we have in the physical, non-IT-based world. Nevertheless, there is a danger. If we think in terms of levels and degrees of anonymity, we may not see the forest from the trees. We may not acknowledge that in an electronic medium, levels and kinds of anonymity mean, in an important sense, no anonymity. If there are domains in which we can be anonymous but those domains are part of a global communication infrastructure in which there is no anonymity at the entry point, then it will always be possible to trace someone's identity. We delude ourselves when we think we have anonymity on-line or off-line. Rather, what we have both places is situations in which it is more and less difficult to identify individuals. We have a continuum of situations in which it is easy and difficult to link behavior to other behavior and histories of behaviors. In the physical world, we can go places and do things where others don't know us by name and have no history with us, though they see our bodies, clothes, and behavior. If we do nothing unusual, we may be forgotten. On the other hand, if we do something illegal, authorities may attempt to track us down and figure out who we are. For example, law enforcement officials, collection agencies, those who want to sue us may take an active interest in removing our anonymity, ex post facto. Think of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols-the men who apparently bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. Much of what they did, they did anonymously, but then law enforcement officials set out to find out who had done various things, e.g., rented a car, bought explosives, etc. The shrouds of anonymity under which McVeigh and Nichols had acted were slowly removed. Is this any different than behavior on the internet? Is there a significant difference in the kind or degree of anonymity we have in the physical world versus what we have in an IT-based world? The character of the trail we leave is different; in the one case, its an electronic trail; while in the other it involves human memories, photographs, and paper and ink. What law enforcement officials had to do to track down McVeigh is quite different from tracking down an electronic law breaker. Also, the cost of electronic information gathering, both in time and money, can be dramatically lower than the cost of talking to people, gathering physical evidence, and the other minutia required by traditional detective work. We should acknowledge that we do not and are never likely to have anonymity on the Internet. We would do better to think of different levels or kinds of identity. There are important moral and social issues arising as a result of these varying degrees and kinds of identity. Perhaps the most important matter is assuring that individuals are informed about the conditions in which they are interacting. Perhaps, even more important is that individuals have a choice about the conditions under which they are communicating. In the rest of this paper we explore a few examples of levels and kinds of identity that are practical on the Internet. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages that we see for these "styles" of identity for individuals, and we examine the costs and benefits of these styles for society as a whole. (shrink)

The first aim of the article is to present the lineage of party organizations integrating several "classical" approaches. Therefore a second aim is to set up a structural model able to catch the evolution of any typeof modern party organization.One assumes that Party Structure is an invariable element which subsumes several organizational translations. Same are protopartisan translations : leagues, armed and unarmed f actions, parliamentary groups. Some are partisan translations : modern party organizations. This assumptions means a corollary: organizations tend (...) to adapt to the kind of party competition they have to afford in order to have accessto governmental power. The model combines the assumptions in a two dimensional matrix.The first dimension is concerned with the organization's major historical goal. It takes three values : a) to elect of MP's ; b) to promote a Weltanschauung; c) to elect the President.The second deals with mobilization and takes three values : adapted 1 ° to the age of «Registration Societies» ; 2° the age of «One man, one vote system» ; 3° the post McLuhan age of electronic media.The combination of the dimensions gives three lineages: Cadre Parties including Notability Parties, Voters Parties and Indirect Parties; Mass Parties including Activist Parties and Social Integration Parties; MachineParties. (shrink)

The strengths and weaknesses of federalism have been debated for centuries. But one major possible advantage of building decentralization and limited government into a constitution has been largely ignored in the debate so far: its potential for reducing the costs of widespread political ignorance. The argument of this paper is simple, but has potentially important implications: Constitutional federalism enables citizens to “vote with their feet,” and foot voters have much stronger incentives to make well-informed decisions than more conventional ballot box (...) voters. The informational advantage of foot voting over ballot box voting suggests that decentralized federalism can increase citizen welfare and democratic accountability relative to policymaking in a centralized unitary state.Ballot box voters have strong incentives to be “rationally ignorant” about the candidates and policies they vote on because the chance that any one vote will have a decisive impact on an electoral outcome is vanishingly small. For the same reason, they also have little or no incentive to make good use of the information they do possess. By contrast, “foot voters” choosing a jurisdiction in which to reside have much stronger incentives to acquire information and use it rationally; the decisions they make are individually decisive. (shrink)

In light of South Park's parody of the election process, this chapter engages with the questions such as How important was Stan's vote? Would the vote have been more valuable had the final margin of victory been closer? Also, how important is a vote that is between only two viable and equally unsavory options? by looking at how the power to vote has been extended in the United States over the past 200 years. The chapter discusses the voting irregularities (...) that arose in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. It considers the problem of choice within a two‐party system, given the South Park PETA member's comment that every election is “always between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich.”. (shrink)

BackgroundThe research shows a growing trend in using an electronic platform to supplement or replace traditional paper-based informed consent processes. Instead of the traditionally written informed consent document, electronic informed consent may be used to assess the research subject’s comprehension of the information presented. By doing so, respect for persons as one of the research ethical principles can be upheld. Furthermore, these electronic methods may reduce potential airborne infection exposures, particularly during the pandemic, thereby adhering to the (...) beneficence and nonmaleficence principle. This scoping review aims to identify the ethics related criteria that have been included in electronic informed consent processes and to synthesize and map these criteria to research ethics principles, in order to identify the gaps, if any, in current electronic informed consent processes.MethodsThe search was performed based on internet search and three main databases: PubMed, SCOPUS and EBSCO. PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews : Checklist and Explanation guideline was used to report this work.ResultsOf 34 studies that met the inclusion criteria, 242 essential original constructs were collated, and 7 concepts were derived. Digital content showed the highest percentage of collated original constructs followed by accessibility, comprehension engagement, autonomy, confidentiality, language, and parental consent. Twenty-five new items were synthesized for eConsent criteria which may provide guidance for ethical review of research involving eConsent.ConclusionThe current study adds significant value to the corpus of knowledge in research ethics by providing ethical criteria on electronic informed consent based on evidence-based data. The new synthesized items in the criteria can be readily used as an initial guide by the IRB/rec members during a review process on electronic informed consent and useful to the future preparation of a checklist. (shrink)

Recent political developments cast doubt on the wisdom of democratic decision-making. Brexit, the Colombian people's (initial) rejection of peace with the FARC, and the election of Donald Trump suggest that the time is right to explore alternatives to democracy. In this essay, I describe and defend the epistocratic system of government which is, given current theoretical and empirical knowledge, most likely to produce optimal political outcomes—or at least better outcomes than democracy produces. To wit, we should expand the suffrage as (...) wide as possible and weight citizens’ votes in accordance with their competence. As it turns out, the optimal system is closely related to J. S. Mill's plural voting proposal. I also explain how voters’ competences can be precisely determined, without reference to an objective standard of correctness and without generating invidious comparisons between voters. (shrink)

In judgment aggregation, unlike preference aggregation, not much is known about domain restrictions that guarantee consistent majority outcomes. We introduce several conditions on individual judgments su¢ - cient for consistent majority judgments. Some are based on global orders of propositions or individuals, others on local orders, still others not on orders at all. Some generalize classic social-choice-theoretic domain conditions, others have no counterpart. Our most general condition generalizes Sen’s triplewise value-restriction, itself the most general classic condition. We also prove a (...) new characterization theorem: for a large class of domains, if there exists any aggregation function satisfying some democratic conditions, then majority voting is the unique such function. Taken together, our results provide new support for the robustness of majority rule. (shrink)

What limits should there be on the areas of life that are governed by market forces? For many years, no one seriously defended the buying and selling votes for political elections. In recent years, however, this situation has changed, with a number of authors defending the permissibility of vote markets. One popular objection to such markets is that they would lead to a tyranny of wealth, where the poor are politically dominated by the rich. In a recent paper, Taylor :313–328, (...) 2017. doi: 10.1007/s11158-016-9327-0) has argued that this objection can be avoided if certain restrictions are placed on vote markets. In this paper we will argue that this attempt to rebut an argument against vote markets is unsuccessful. Either vote markets secure their purported benefits but then they inevitably lead to a tyranny of wealth, or they are restricted so heavily that they lack the features that have been claimed to make vote markets attractive in the first place. Using Taylor’s proposal as a test case, we make the more general claim that vote markets cannot avoid the tyranny of wealth objection and bring about their supposed benefits at the same time. (shrink)

The issue of voting rights for older children has been high on the political and philosophical agenda for quite some time now, and not without reason. Aside from principled moral and philosophical reasons why it is an important matter, many economic, environmental, and political issues are currently being decided—sometimes through indecision—that greatly impact the future of today’s children. Past and current generations of adults have, arguably, mortgaged their children’s future, and this makes the question whether (some) children should be (...) granted the right to vote all the more pressing. Should (some) children be given the right to vote? Moreover, does the answer to this question depend on civic education, on whether children have been deliberately prepared for the exercise of that right? These are the questions that will occupy us in this article. Our answer to the first will be that older children—children roughly between 14 and 16 years of age1—ought to be given the right to vote. (shrink)

Should voting be compulsory? This question has recently gained the attention of political scientists, politicians and philosophers, many of whom believe that countries, like Britain, which have never had compulsion, ought to adopt it. The arguments are a mixture of principle and political calculation, reflecting the idea that compulsory voting is morally right and that it is will prove beneficial. This article casts a sceptical eye on the claims, by emphasizing how complex political morality and strategy can be. (...) Hence, I show, while there are good reasons to worry about voter turnout in established democracies, and to worry about inequalities of turnout as well, the case for compulsory voting is unpersuasive. (shrink)

There have been two parallel views regarding the role of voting in deliberation. The first is that deliberation before the fabrication of balloting was completely devoid of voting. The second is that voting is, not just part of deliberation, but is standard to deliberation. I argue in this article that neither of these views is correct. Implicit voting has always existed across time and space but only as a last resort in the event of a failure (...) of natural unanimity. What is relatively modern is the establishment of what I call explicit voting, namely, balloting, outside deliberation and often without deliberation. I also distinguish between natural and artificial unanimities, and clarify that artificial unanimities are products of implicit voting. I demonstrate these clarifications with some examples of deliberation. I deploy these clarifications to rid a certain debate of confusion regarding the precise role of voting in consensual deliberation. (shrink)

What is the moral value of formal democratic decision-making? Egalitarian accounts of democracy provide a powerful answer to this question. They present formal democratic procedures as a way for a society of equals to arrive at collective decisions in a transparent and mutually acceptable manner. More specifically, such procedures ensure and publicly affirm that all members of a political community, in their capacity as autonomous actors, are treated as equals who are able and have a right to participate in collective (...) decision-making. Recently, a number of authors have raised what I describe as the ‘no impact’ objection. This objection focuses on the egalitarian emphasis on autonomy to cast doubt on the moral value of formal democratic procedures. It holds that individual participation in formal democratic decision-making has no impact on the eventual result, and therefore cannot be understood as an exercise in autonomy. Consequently, the ‘no impact’ objection claims that the moral value of formal democracy cannot be explained with reference to an egalitarian ideal of ‘rule by the people’. In this article, I refute this objection by complementing an egalitarian account of democracy with an account of basic autonomy. (shrink)

What is wrong with participating in a democratic decision-making process, and then doing something other than the outcome of the decision? It is often thought that collective decision-making entails being prima facie bound to the outcome of that decision, although little analysis has been done on why that is the case. Conventional perspectives are inadequate to explain its wrongness. I offer a new and more robust analysis on the nature of voting: voting when you will accept the outcome (...) only if the decision goes your way is an act of bad faith: you are not taking part in a ‘process that decides what we will do’. This analysis sheds light on understanding the intrinsic nature of voting and what we are doing when we make decisions collectively. (shrink)

Much ink has been spilled in the last years on whether voting is a duty that citizens ought to discharge in a democracy that aspires to be acceptably just. In this essay, I concentrate on whether a moral duty to participate in elections logically entails that people ought to vote simpliciter or well. I propose that voting well – i.e. with information and a sense of justice – is the electoral duty that we should value. Voting as (...) such is not – at least, not if we care about the substantive quality of democratic outcomes, not only about equality of participation. As a matter of fact, voting well seems to be a more adequate form of political participation than simply voting under varied normative conceptions of democracy, as I will show. At the same time, while we can't freely choose not to follow a moral duty to vote well just because we're not inclined to do so, we have to allow for the possibility that some individuals will not be in a good position to act on it. I conclude by discussing admissible reasons for this inability with respect to our citizenship responsibilities. (shrink)

Written not by a journalist or politician but rather by a theology professor with a Ph.D. in New Testament studies, Voting by the Bible: The Economic and Foreign Policy Issues begins with the assumption that God intended the Bible to give guidance to every area of life£including how governments should function. Derived from author Wayne Grudemþs magisterial Politics£According to the Bible, this book highlights those economic and foreign-policy issues that have dominated political debate recently. Throughout, author Wayne Grudem supports (...) political positions that would be called more 'conservative' than 'liberal.' However, 'it is important to understand that I see these positions as flowing out of the Bible's teachings rather than positions I hold prior to, or independently of, those biblical teachings,' he writes. 'My primary purpose in the book is not to be liberally or conservative, or Democrat or Republican, but to explain a biblical worldview and a biblical perspective on issues of politics, law, and government.' Concise yet carefully argued, this book is a must-read for any Christian concerned about current debates over the economy, the size and role of government, and the best way forward out of the current recession. Not every reader will agree with the book's conclusions. But by grounding his analysis deeply on Scripture, Grudem has equipped Christians to better understand and respond to some of today's key political debates wisely and in a manner consistent with their primary citizenship as members and ambassadors of the kingdom of God" -- Publisher description. (shrink)

Self-interest voting is irrational when it has even a small cost, but it can be rational for those who care about others; its expected utility (EU) may exceed its cost. For cosmopolitan voters (those who care about outsiders), the EU of voting increases with the number of affected others. The EU of voting for the good of the world now and in the future can thus be large. In some cases, the EU of parochial voting (e.g., (...) considering only one's nation) may not cross the cost threshold, but cosmopolitan voting can cross it. I apply these principles to various kinds of voting. And I compare voting to charity. Voting has the advantage of enlisting the coercive power of the state, but charity can be more focused on effective policies. I discuss campaign contributions, and I conclude with a discussion of the existence of utilitarian voters. (shrink)

This paper argues for the legalization of vote markets. I contend that the state should not prohibit the sale of votes under certain institutional conditions. Jason Brennan has recently argued for the moral permissibility of vote selling; yet, thus far, no philosopher has argued for the legal permissibility of vote selling. I begin by giving four prima facie reasons in favour of legalizing vote markets. First, vote markets benefit both buyers and sellers. Second, citizens already enjoy significant discretion in their (...) use of their vote, including the ability to use their vote in ways antithetical to justice and the public interest. Third, vote markets are relevantly similar to other democratic practices that are legally permissible. Fourth, vote markets enable elections to better reflect the intensity of citizens’ preferences. Next, I reply to two counter-arguments. The first contends that vote markets will increase the political power of the wealthy; the second contends that votes must be used in the serv.. (shrink)

There are various ways to reach a group decision on a factual yes–no question. One way is to vote and decide what the majority votes for. This procedure receives some epistemological support from the Condorcet Jury Theorem. Alternatively, the group members may prefer to deliberate and will eventually reach a decision that everybody endorses—a consensus. While the latter procedure has the advantage that it makes everybody happy, it has the disadvantage that it is difficult to implement, especially for larger groups. (...) Besides, the resulting consensus may be far away from the truth. And so we ask: Is deliberation truth-conducive in the sense that majority voting is? To address this question, we construct a highly idealized model of a particular deliberation process, inspired by the movie Twelve Angry Men, and show that the answer is ‘yes’. Deliberation procedures can be truth-conducive just as the voting procedure is. We then explore, again on the basis of our model and using agent-based simulations, under which conditions it is better epistemically to deliberate than to vote. Our analysis shows that there are contexts in which deliberation is epistemically preferable and we will provide reasons for why this is so. (shrink)

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are interactive online tools designed to assist voters by improving the basis on which they decide how to vote. In recent years, they have been widely adopted, but their design is the subject of ongoing and often heated criticism. Most of these debates focus on whether VAAs accurately measure the standpoints of political parties and the preferences of users and on whether they report valid results while avoiding political bias. It is generally assumed that if (...) their methodology is sound, then VAAs can be seen as strengthening the democratic process. But as we argue in this chapter, the setup of VAAs raises basic questions of normative democratic theory as well. Insofar as VAAs are supposed to improve the functioning of the democratic process, it must be clarified in what sense they aim to make a contribution, before it even makes sense to discuss their effectiveness at doing so. -/- VAAs are often intended to enhance the democratic process by one or all of the following: (I) informing voters about the policy standpoints of political parties (or individual candidates), (2) increasing voter turnout, and (3) ensuring that the composition of parliaments more accurately reflects the political attitudes of the electorate. In the next three sections, we discuss three central bones of contention in current democratic theory that are crucial to these ways in which VAAs typically take themselves to contribute to strengthening the democratic process: -/- 1. Questions about citizen competence: What forms of competence do citizens need to have, and to what extent, for a democracy to function properly? -/- 2. Questions about political participation: What forms and extent of participation are vital to democracy? -/- 3. Questions about democratic representation: How should the relation between the elected and the electorate be understood? -/- For each issue we aim to show, first, how the design and setup of mainstream VAAs are tacitly structured by a specific conception of the democratic aim at issue and, second, what some alternative positions on these questions are within contemporary political theory. In the final section, we will discuss some of the implications of this analysis for the responsibilities of VAA developers, and particularly for the procedural neutrality to which they are typically committed. Our conclusion will be that once these issues are identified, developers of VAAs should either argue in favour of their views on democratic competence, participation and representation, or they should rethink the design of VA As in ways that move beyond their current assumptions, or both. (shrink)

In his recent article in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 'The Paradox of Voting and Ethics of Political Representation', Alexander A. Guerrero argues it is rational to vote because each voter should want candidates they support to have the strongest public mandate possible if elected to office, and because every vote contributes to that mandate. The present paper argues that two of Guerrero's premises require correction, and that when those premises are corrected several provocative but compelling conclusions follow about the (...) rationality of voting and duties of elected officials: (A) Voting is typically rational for the members of a political party’s base; (B) Voting is often (but not always) irrational for “swing” voters (i.e. independent voters who are not affiliated with any political party, as well as “undecided” voters who are considering voting across party lines); and (C) Elected officials have a moral duty to respond to changing levels of popular support once in office, as indicated by properly monitored and corroborated public opinion polls of constituents, functioning more as delegates the lower their level of popular support. Finally, I suggest that the last of these conclusions has wide-ranging implications for political ethics. I illustrate these implications by focusing on the questions -- under debate in the 2016 US Presidential election cycle -- of whether a sitting President has a moral duty to nominate or not nominate a new Supreme Court justice during his or her final year in office, and similarly, whether US Senators have a moral duty to obstruct, or not obstruct, confirmation of the President’s eventual nominee. (shrink)

Combines a theoretical interest in the mathematics of voting procedures with practical interest in the circumstances in which votes are cast. The most important results in the theory of voting are surveyed, and the differences between the principal types of voting procedures are explained.

This article considers two of the methodological steps in a Community of Philosophical Enquiry: developing the questions and voting on the questions. Both of these practices are enacted by the 8-9 year old children who are the participants in a philosophical enquiry, which I facilitated at a government primary school in South Africa. Matthews (1994) reminds us that children as philosophical thinkers/doers have been left out of the dominant narratives about children and childhood. A question that guides this research (...) is where is the place for philosophical questions (developed by children) and the kind of philosophical thinking/drawing/creating/being for child (and adults) in schools? How do we make space for such questioning–so that the richness of these pedagogical encounters can really matter and make a difference to the teaching and learning taking place? Gandorfer in an interview with Barad (2021), suggests that critical thought “is to encounter what is unrecognizable and imperceptible, yet sensible and constructive of sense without separating it from the physical world” (p. 20). I would agree and apply this to the critical thoughts of child. This thinking is not located in the child, in their mind and does not emerge only through the thoughts, child verbalises. A critical posthumanism theory/practice analysis ensures that as researcher, I do not stand outside of the research peering in at a distance. Similarly the children, the questions, the voting and the enquiries are not separate from the world, they are all already entangled with the world. When the children are voting on the questions, this performs as a pedagogy of interruption (Michaud, 2020). As the facilitator, I do not know which question will receive the largest number of votes for the philosophical enquiry. This makes possible an emergent curriculum in its be(com)ing. Toby Rollo’s (2016) formulations about child as political agent and not just moral agent and the implications for more democratic and just schooling are theorised in this paper through the act of the children voting on the questions. I argue that children are not just excluded from participating in decisions about what and even how they are learning at school but from most pedagogical practices in classrooms and schools. I show how the children creating the questions and voting on the questions can be democratic practices with political and moral implications in a community of philosophical enquiry. (shrink)

The research reported here was the first empirical examination of strategic voting under the Sequential Voting by Veto (SVV) voting procedure, proposed by Mueller (1978). According to this procedure, a sequence of n voters must select s out of s+m alternatives (m=n=2; s>0). Hence, the number of alternatives exceeds the number of participants by one (n+1). When the ith voter casts her vote, she vetoes the alternative against which a veto has not yet been cast, and the (...) s remaining non-vetoed alternatives are elected. The SVV procedure invokes the minority principle, and it has advantages over all majoritarian procedures; this makes SVV a very desirable means for relatively small groups to make collective decisions. Felsenthal and Machover (1992) pointed out three models of voting under SVV: sincere, optimal, and canonical. The current research investigated, through laboratory experiments, which cognitive model better accounts for the voters' observed behavior and the likelihood of obtaining the optimal outcome as a function of the size of n (when s=1). The findings suggest that while voters under SVV use all three models, their choice is conditioned by group size. In the small groups (n=3), the canonical mode was a better predictor than the sincere model. In the larger groups (n=5), the sincere model was a better predictor than the canonical model. There is also evidence of players' learning during the experiment. (shrink)

Prevailing opinion—defended by Jason Brennan and others—is that voting to change the outcome is irrational, since although the payoffs of tipping an election can be quite large, the probability of doing so is extraordinarily small. This paper argues that prevailing opinion is incorrect. Voting is shown to be rational so long as two conditions are satisfied: First, the average social benefit of electing the better candidate must be at least twice as great as the individual cost of (...) class='Hi'>voting, and second, the chance of casting the decisive vote must be at least 1/N, where N stands for the number of citizens. It is argued that both of these conditions are often true in the real world. (shrink)

Scholars exploring the logic of Rousseau's voting rules have typically turned to the connection between Rousseau and the Marquis de Condorcet. Though Condorcet could not have had a direct influence on Rousseau's arguments about the choice of decision rules in "Social Contract," the possibility of a connection has encouraged the view that Rousseau's selection of voting rules was based on epistemic reasons. By turning to alternative sources of influence on Rousseau--the work of Hugo Grotius and particularly that of (...) Samuel Pufendorf--a moral, and not purely epistemic, logic of rules governing collective decision making emerges. For Rousseau, as for Pufendorf, the proper choice of voting rule can elicit the appropriate attitude of an individual with respect to the decision of the whole, and can support the morally significant activity of acknowledging error upon discovering that one has voted against the general will. (shrink)

Two prominent relational egalitarians, Elizabeth Anderson and Niko Kolodny, object to giving people in a democratic community differential voting weights on the grounds that doing so would lead to unequal relations between them. Their claim is that deviating from a “one-person, one-vote” scheme is incompatible with realizing relational egalitarian justice. In this article, I argue that they are wrong. I do so by showing that people can relate as moral, epistemic, social, and empirical equals in a scheme with differential (...) voting weights. I end the article by showing that from the perspective of relational egalitarianism, it is sometimes true that differential voting weights are more just than equal voting weights. (shrink)