There is a tendency to digitalize everything. The demand for digital transition is far from being exhausted and the advent of UX design as a sine qua non for good product design accelerates this image that modernity and efficiency are still linked to the digital world.

UX design is much more than just screen design. We can tend to forget that when we read job ads for UX designers.

UX design is above all the conception of an experience taking into account a maximum of aspects in the interaction of humans with machines. Many UX designers change their titles and become system designers. Designing a system means performing a UX analysis that focuses on the interactions between humans and machines to achieve a goal set by a system.

The UX design methodology could be applied to the tax system to optimize its filling and relieve the citizens from stress. In general, all administrative systems lack a good user-centered design.

When studying the field and the users, it is not uncommon to realize that digitizing a system is not the best possible solution. Low-tech solutions can be optimized and outperform their digital equivalent. To realize this, we must also take into account the relationship between man and machine. The interaction between man and machine is not neutral and a lot of thoughts and information must be taken into account.

At the time of excessive digitalization, the old-fashioned voting systems with small papers are a plebiscite for the conservation of low tech.

The current machines

The citizens of democratic countries are regularly called to the polls to express their votes. Then follows a trip to a polling station, a more or less long queue, showing one’s ID and taking the papers with the names of the candidates written on them, isolating oneself and putting the paper of one’s choice in an envelope, then putting the envelope in a closed box under the watchful eye of an assessor

At first glance, this whole system seems tedious. Having to physically move to a given place while everything is done remotely today, proving one’s identity and waiting for someone to confirm that one is in the right polling station, and especially the archaic use of paper and envelopes.

We tried to digitalize the voting. Every day, votes are cast on social networks such as Twitter and everything is automated.

But to elect the president of a country we can’t just use a tweeter poll. Several solutions have been implemented around the world.

The first solution is the most successful: in Estonia, voters can send their vote via an official application by using a sim card specially used for voting. If you still have to go to get the sim card in person somewhere before the election day, you don’t have to wait in line and there is no excuse not to vote if you are on vacation.

The second method is to use the electronic voting system mainly for the counting of votes. In this case, the voting is done in the same way as traditionally, except that the papers are replaced by a machine.

In some cases, the machine will print a paper with a code representing the candidate that will be slipped into a ballot box to compare the numbers recorded by the machine and those in the ballot box.

These solutions pose two problems:

First of all, they only partially solve the inconvenience of voting. In any case, it is necessary to go to the place where the machine is located to get a sim card. It is not as if you can do everything spontaneously from a computer or a phone.

The second is trust in the machine. Leaving the counting of votes to a machine implies leaving it in the hands of a tool without being able to verify what is happening.

We can never be 100% sure that all the votes have been counted, that a choice displayed on the screen goes to the chosen candidate and not to another, the code that runs in the machine cannot be permanently accessible and in any case, the majority of voters would be unable to understand what the code means.

Governments realized that the digitization of the voting system is not perfect, that it involves risks of hacking, of not taking into account the votes, so the paper stayed.

UX designers could spend a lot of time on the issue to bring solutions to all the problems of moving and tracking votes but the proven solution of paper seems to remain the best.

Beyond the issue of digitalizing, the voting experience is not just about putting a name in an envelope. Voting is a civic act. It is a duty that we instill in our youth by making them aware of the sacrifices our ancestors made so that they could have the right to vote.
To move is a duty and a responsibility shared by the collective, it is the proof that citizens have their say, that their voice is heard even if their ideas do not reach power.

It is the same for all the organizations of the vote. It is volunteer citizens who give their time to organize the offices. The counting is done by other volunteers who do not necessarily know each other and are organized in groups to ensure that the ballots are valid and that no errors are made in the counting.

If this sounds obvious, it could very well be state representatives dispatched to organize the polling stations and count the votes. The citizens would then have to trust their state and conspiracy theories would be born.

The gain of electronic voting systems today is very small compared to the symbol of participation in democratic life that they provide. Their use could be of interest for people unable to move around, such as in retirement homes or hospitals. In this case, the machines would improve participation in democratic life.

If electronic voting is to be implemented, the major challenge for designers will be to find a solution so that citizens feel that their voice is taken into account and allow them to participate in the political life of their country. At a time when abstention is more and more present, electronic voting seems to be the solution to overcome the refusal to move, but it is probably the tree that hides the forest