科技促進民主？民眾對推動電子投票與民主發展的關聯性分析

Does Technology Promote Democracy? Analysis of the Public's Perception of the Relevance of Democratic Development with Adopting Electronic Voting

莊文忠(Wen-jong Juang)

《臺灣民主季刊》 18卷1期 (2021/03) Pp. 83-140

摘要

繼全球民主化的浪潮之後，因應資訊科技的蓬勃發展，公共服務的電子化業已是世界各國政府所致力推行的運動，而電子投票是同時具有民主化與電子化的意涵，期能透過提供便利、可靠的投票方式，降低公民參與政治的成本和提高公民參與的普及度和平等性。雖然不少國家已有具體實施電子投票的經驗，不過，電子投票的操作過程與具體成效，在理論與實務方面也仍有不少爭辯，在我國民主政治發展逐漸鞏固與深化的階段，這是一個十分值得吾人關注與探究的議題。本研究從資訊科技與民主促進的視角切入，探討電子投票的推動與民主政治發展之間的關係，除理論觀點的論證外，也進行實證研究的評估。本文以科技接受模型（technology acceptance model）為基礎探究三個研究問題：（1）社會大眾對電子投票的特性認知與評價為何？（2）社會大眾支持電子投票與否，主要是受到哪些因素所影響？（3）社會大眾認為電子投票的導入對民主政治的發展是否有所幫助？其背後又有哪些重要的解釋因素？本研究透過電話民意調查分析發現：多數民眾仍偏好現行的紙本投票方式；支持推動電子投票的解釋因素由高而低分別是電子投票的便利性、可信任度、公平性和參與度；支持電子投票和推動電子投票可促進臺灣民主發展之間是互為因果關係；而電子投票的參與度、可信任度和便利性則是解釋推動電子投票與我國民主政治發展的顯著因素，此可作為我國後續推動電子投票，與民眾進行政策溝通的參考。

關鍵字

電子投票 ； 電子化民主 ； 政治參與 ； 數位落差 ； 民主政治

並列摘要

Following the global democratization, in response to the vigorous development of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the digitalization of public services has been a campaign promoted by governments around the world. Among them, electronic voting(e-voting) has the meaning of both democratization and digitalization. Reliable voting methods reduce the cost of voter participation in politics and increase the popularity and equality of voter participation. Although many countries have experience in implementing e-voting, the operation process and results of e-voting still have a lot of controversy in theory and practice. Taiwan is in the stage of consolidating and deepening democracy. This is a topic worthy of our attention and inquiry. This research explores the relationship between the promotion of e-voting and the development of democracy from the perspective of ICTs for advancing democracy. In addition to the demonstration of theoretical viewpoints, we also conduct empirical evaluation in this study. This research based on technology acceptance model to explore three main questions: (1) What is the public's perception and assessment of the characteristics of e-voting? (2) What factors affect whether the public supports e-voting or not? (3) Does the public think that the introduction of e-voting will help the development of democratic politics? What are the reasons behind it? This study found through telephone polls that most people still prefer the current paper voting method. Those supported e-voting list their reasons as: convenience, reliability, equality, and participation (ranked from high to low). There is a causal relationship between supporting e-voting and adopting e-voting to promote the development of Taiwan's democracy. Furthermore, participation, reliability and convenience of e-voting are the significant factors that explain the promotion of e-voting and the development of democracy in Taiwan. Those findings are useful for the government to promoting e-voting and communicating with the public.

並列關鍵字

electronic voting(e-voting) ； electronic democracy(e-democracy) ； political participation ； digital divide ； democracy

參考文獻

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