This paper explores how the technologies U.S. election officials depend on also challenge their work. Every election, misleading narratives stem from errors that occur while using election technology, threatening election official safety and eroding faith in elections. We seek to understand the impact of these challenges directly from worker perspectives. This paper presents a qualitative analysis using combined interview and survey data from a total of 50 election officials representing 20 states. Our findings present design as a substantial factor in mistakes when using election technology, but other obstacles, like lack of funding and technical support, also strain operations. We show how election technology design can lead to harms for election officials and connect those harms to their negative effects on democracy. Our work emphasizes the potential for researchers in human-centered computing to support U.S. election officials-and democracy-by working towards better usability across election technologies.
Every year, citizens across the U.S. participate in democracy through the seemingly simple act of voting. In reality, voting is a highly complex ecosystem. Constitutionally, the states are responsible for elections. Rather than a single set of election rules, election rules exist for each of the 3,000+ counties in the...
Gretchen A. Macht· IISE Annual Conference &...· 0 citations
The growing political participation of women in Indian democracy has rendered the electoral process more inclusive and robust. In particular, the significant rise in the voter turnout of women in Bihar over the last decade has made the study of their voting behavior—and the factors influencing it—highly important. This...
Aditya Raj, Anwar Jawed· The Journal of Social Studie...· 0 citations
This study engages in a machine learning analysis of the relationship between valence under
digital messages (positive vs. negative messages), engagement actions (likes and retweets), over
the performance of presidential election contenders during the United States Presidential
Election-2024 on Twitter/X. Using Natural...
Vedant Pandey· International journal of soc...· 0 citations
Deception in political discourse is tantamount to psychology, and existing research definitely lacks a precise psychological framework analyzing how strategic lies can be extremely effective in political messaging of the highest order. The research problem includes treating deception as merely a line, as confirmed by t...
Nur Al Huda Sumantp, Ridwan Rasool Alhaq· Al-Biruni Journal of Humanit...· 0 citations
Confidence in the conduct and results of American elections has declined and polarized along party lines in recent years. Can a nonpartisan public information campaign featuring election officials enhance trust in elections when delivered to skeptical voters during a contentious political contest? We analyze a preregis...
Thad Kousser, Seth J. Hill, Neil Malhotra et al.· Science Advances· 0 citations
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