CEAPS VASP Brown Bag - Sri Nuryanti: “The Role of IT in the Election: The Fieldwork Report of the Election in Virginia 2021”

According to Democracy Index released by The Economist Intelligence Unit based in UK, it says that in the world, there is a declining trend of democracy. There is a growing assumption that the problem lays is in building popular confidence to implement democracy caused by the trust deficit happening in many countries towards the key players and institutions. Therefore, there are some thoughts to increase the confidence and political participation of the citizens. In turn, it will increase the level of democracy statuses. To do the above purpose, one of the debates is to increase political participation by having an election with the help of IT. However, the use of e-election technology is still harvesting the pros and cons. The pro will argue that the use of paperless technology will ease any burden of wrong delivery of ballot paper, will reduce human error and money politics, etc. Somehow people who agree to the use of IT will encompass the long process of manual election, from the use of IT in compiling the voter’s data, registration, and verification of political party, e-voting, and e-counting technology. All of those processes in implementing the electoral cycle, if using the information technology will ease the process and preventing human error. While the cons will see that they mostly argue on the ability and trust of voters to use it, as well as the way to challenge the result based on e-voting election. The argument is that due to the development of IT, the number of people who trust the works of machinery is increasing enormously, such as in using the atm, or banking process. However, some may argue that using IT in an election still needs more effort to harvest people's trust. To answer the above pros and cons, this paper is aimed also at discussing the feasible technology that has been used at election in Virginia 2021, and its technical and political implications on it.

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Dr. Sri Nuryanti is a recipient of the Fulbright Visiting Scholars Program, a Senior Researcher at the Center for Politics, Indonesian National Research and Innovation Body, and former Indonesian Election Commissioner 2007-2012.