Electronic Voting in Opinions and Declarations of Young Lithuanians Aged 19–29 Years. Report on Preliminary Research

Abstract

The aim of the article is to present the preliminary results of a survey conducted among Lithuanian students on their opinion about i-voting and the possibility of implementing this alternative voting method in Lithuania. The main aim of the research was to answer the following research questions: What is the attitude of young Lithuanians towards voting via the Internet? What threats, benefits and challenges related to the potential implementation of i-voting in Lithuania are perceived by the surveyed group. The research showed that the respondents believe that the greatest barriers to the introduction of i-voting in Lithuania are: the threat of cybercrime, the possibility of violating the principle of secret voting, the lack of political will, the need to change the law; young voters would be willing to vote via the Internet and this could have a positive impact on the turnout among this group of voters; the complexity of the challenges related to implementing i-voting means that there is no chance of its quick introduction.