How an election can be safely planned and conducted during a pandemic: Decision support based on a discrete event model

Abstract In 2020, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic caused major limitations for any aspect of social life and in specific for all events that require a gathering of people. While most events of this kind can be postponed or cancelled, democratic elections are key elements of any democratic regime and should be upheld if at all possible. Consequently, proper planning is required to establish the highest possible level of safety to both voters and scrutineers. In this paper, we present the novel and innovative way how the municipal council and district council elections in Vienna were planned and conducted using an discrete event simulation model. Key target of this process was to avoid queues in front of polling stations to reduce the risk of related infection clusters. In cooperation with a hygiene expert, we defined necessary precautions that should be met during the election in order to avoid the spread of COVID-19. In a next step, a simulation model was established and parametrized and validated using data from previous elections. Furthermore, the planned conditions were simulated to see whether excessive queues in front of any polling stations could form, as these could on the one hand act as an infection herd, and on the other hand, turn voters away. Our simulation identified some polling stations where long queues could emerge. However, splitting up these electoral branches resulted in a smooth election across all of Vienna. Looking back, the election did not lead to a significant increase of COVID-19 incidences. Therefore, it can be concluded that careful planning led to a safe election, despite the pandemic.Author summary Why was this study done? <jats:list list-type="bullet">The ongoing COVID-19-Pandemic poses a risk for elections, as these could lead to another spread of the disease.Additional hygiene measures, which are inevitable if the election is conducted, could lead to long queues in front of the polling stations on election day.What did the researchers do and find? <jats:list list-type="bullet">We describe the defined additional hygiene measures.We modeled the whole election process, including the new hygiene concept, to show where extensive queues could form on the election day.We show that thanks to the additional hygiene measures, the election actually did not cause a temporary upswing of the epidemic.What do these findings mean? <jats:list list-type="bullet">Thanks to careful planning, it is possible to safely hold an election during such a pandemic.Our simulation contributed to a safe and smooth election.However, it should be stated, that these findings hold for elections in Austria, where long queues in front of polling stations are comparably rare and short..

Medienart:

Preprint

Erscheinungsjahr:

2022

Erschienen:

2022

Enthalten in:

bioRxiv.org - (2022) vom: 25. Mai Zur Gesamtaufnahme - year:2022

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Weibrecht, Nadine [VerfasserIn]
Rößler, Matthias [VerfasserIn]
Bicher, Martin [VerfasserIn]
Emrich, Štefan [VerfasserIn]
Zauner, Günther [VerfasserIn]
Popper, Niki [VerfasserIn]

Links:

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doi:

10.1101/2021.07.17.21260634

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

XBI032246374