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Voting and political information gathering on paper and online

Published: 02 April 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Electronic voting is slowly making its way into American politics. At the same time, more voters and potential voters are using online news and political information sources to help them make voting choices. We conducted a mock-voting study, using real candidates, issues, and campaign materials. Political information was browsed either online or on paper, and participants marked electronic ballots either while they browsed or later, in a separate step. Our initial data shows that voters prefer electronic browsing although they are no faster or slower with paper materials. Voters felt that they understood the issues best when they voted during browsing, and they felt most confident about their decisions when they studied electronic campaign materials alongside an active electronic ballot.

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Dillon, A. (1992). Reading from paper versus screens: A critical review of the empirical literature. Ergonomics, 35(10), 1297--1326.
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Larson, L. and Raine, L. (2002). The rise of the e-citizen: How people use government agencies' web sites. Pew Internet & American Life Project Report, April 3. 2002. http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/pdfs/PIP_Govt_Website_Rpt.pdf.
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Lau, R. and Redlawsk, D. (2001b). An experimental study of information search, memory, and decision making during a political campaign. In Kuklinski, J. Ed. Citizens and politics: Perspectives from political psychology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
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Madden, M. (2003). America's online pursuits: The changing picture of who's online and what they do. Pew Internet & American Life Project Report, Dec. 22. http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=106.
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O'Hara, K., & Sellen, A. (1997). A comparison of reading paper and online documents. Proceedings of CHI'97: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: ACM Press, 335--342.
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  • (2010)Digital governmentAnnual Review of Information Science and Technology10.1002/aris.2010.144044011544:1(317-364)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2010
  • (2009)A new framework for analyzing political newsProceedings of the 10th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research: Social Networks: Making Connections between Citizens, Data and Government10.5555/1556176.1556241(328-329)Online publication date: 17-May-2009
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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CHI EA '05: CHI '05 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
      April 2005
      1358 pages
      ISBN:1595930027
      DOI:10.1145/1056808
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Published: 02 April 2005

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      Author Tags

      1. digital government
      2. electronic voting
      3. user studies
      4. voter support system

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      View all
      • (2019)A Review of Research on Participation in Democratic Decision-Making Presented at SIGCHI Conferences. Toward an Improved Trading Zone Between Political Science and HCIProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/33592413:CSCW(1-29)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2019
      • (2010)Digital governmentAnnual Review of Information Science and Technology10.1002/aris.2010.144044011544:1(317-364)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2010
      • (2009)A new framework for analyzing political newsProceedings of the 10th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research: Social Networks: Making Connections between Citizens, Data and Government10.5555/1556176.1556241(328-329)Online publication date: 17-May-2009
      • (2008)Design research in digital governmentProceedings of the 2008 international conference on Digital government research10.5555/1367832.1367847(73-81)Online publication date: 18-May-2008
      • (2008)Drop-Down DemocracyProceedings of the Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences10.1109/HICSS.2008.131Online publication date: 7-Jan-2008
      • (2007)An Observational Study of Voters on the InternetProceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences10.1109/HICSS.2007.70Online publication date: 3-Jan-2007

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