E-Voting Usability Study

For our master’s thesis, my thesis partner and I studied the usability, trust, and efficacy of detecting vote manipulation in e-voting systems. We explored different methods of vote verification that use verification codes in the context of general elections. Tracking code-based vote verification enables voters to verify their electronic vote after casting it, ensuring that their vote has not been corrupted. However, this additional step in the voting process presents challenges related to both security and usability, which we aimed to address in our study by examining the users' trust and user experience when using auch e-voting systems.

We specifically examined two types of verification codes: one where voters partially select their own verification code and another where the code is completely generated by the system. Voters can use their unique code to anonymously verify that the vote stored in the system matches their actual vote. To conduct a usability study with international voters, we designed and developed e-voting system prototypes using React. These prototypes were based on feedback from a previous study we conducted with Danish voters.