Demographic Differences in Attitudes toward Remote Electronic Voting Systems

Web- and telephone-based remote electronic voting systems (REVS) offer a solution to the problems of manual counting, counting accuracy, timeliness of reporting results and reducing the inconvenience of voting. However, while access to telephones is ubiquitous, the unequal use and access to Internet technology across different demographic groups in the voting population is of concern. We sampled four different populations (college students, technologically-savvy parents, registered voters, and confirmed actual voters) to investigate if attitudes toward a REVS differ across age, race, income, employment status, education, and gender. We found that age was the only characteristic that unambiguously affected the preference of using a REVS over traditional booth voting, and the likelihood of using a REVS. Younger citizens were more likely to prefer an REVS. We also found that regardless of demographic category, most voters indicated a preference for using a Web-based over a telephone-based REVS.