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E-voting and non-resident citizens' voter turnout: A quasi-experiment in Ecuador

Abstract:

Over the last decades, e-voting has been used in a large number of countries and its impact on voter turnout has been closely scrutinized. Regardless, scholarly attention has largely focused on turnout in the domestic arena, and the link between e-voting and external voting have been scarcely explored. Based on a quasi-experimental design of the 2021 Ecuadorian elections, we investigate the effect of both on-site electronic voting and Internet voting on non-resident citizens' voter turnout. This paper shows that, while on-site electronic voting seems to have no significant impact on turnout, turnout of non-resident citizens using Internet voting significantly increased as compared to prior elections and to neighboring electoral districts.