What forms of E-voting are used today?

The term "electronic voting" or "e-voting" for short can actually refer to many different types of technologies. We have discussed many facets of e-voting over the course of the last three years, but we now feel the need to return and visit the term "electronic voting." This should be particularly insightful for those of you who are new to reading this blog.

"Electronic voting" can refer to technology that is used to cast the actual vote, as well as technology that is used to tabulate or count the votes. "E-voting" can also sometimes be used in the context of transmitting the information related to the ballots and votes from voting places to central offices.

The most common use of the term "e-voting" would refer to the concept of using a computerized voting machine with electronic ballots rather than using more traditional paper ballots that are marked with a pen or pencil and tabulated manually. The voting machines are usually referred to as DREs or direct-recording electronic machines. The term "Electronic Voting Machine" or "EVM" is also sometimes used.

There are multiple types of DREs that are currently being used around the world. Some DREs use a touchscreen where the voter casts his or her ballot by pressing the appropriate button on the display. Other DREs may involve buttons, wheels or keys next to a computer screen for voters to cast their ballots. Direct-recording electronic voting machines are typically used under the supervision of government representatives or independent electoral authorities.

Varying types of electronic voting machines may be more accessible to different populations. In the case of a touchscreen display, the words can be enlarged for voters who have trouble reading the smaller print on traditional paper ballots. This can also allow for ballots to be displayed in multiple languages for areas where voters may be more comfortable reading instructions in different languages.

Electronic voting may also include remote electronic voting. This would be the case where the voter can act independently without having to go physically to a specific voting place, as the ballot can be cast remotely. This includes voting over the Internet at a computer or using a mobile phone, either through the mobile web or by sending a text message. Less commonly, votes may also be cast via Internet-connected televisions using special channels and technology. Remote e-voting has also been called i-voting, largely because the votes are typically cast over some sort of Internet connection.

The use of electronic voting in the context of counting up all the ballots has a longer history than the use of DREs and other electronic forms of casting a vote. For example, some paper ballots may be punch cards. What this means is that when a voter casts his or her ballot, the punch card can be entered directly into the counting machine that can then automatically read the ballot and add the vote to the final tabulation. Similarly, optical scan machines can use an electronic reader to record the vote rather than having a human volunteer or official record each individual vote. This can be far more efficient and take far less time than the manual counting of votes. Since there is still a paper ballot, it is easier if there needs to be a re-count or an audit for a set of ballots.

E-voting continues to gain popularity all around the world. It is being used in varying levels of capacity in such countries as Venezuela, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Philippines, Brazil, India and the United States.

Automation in Kenya: a hurried implementation is never a good idea

Image: EveryStockPhoto

Although it is true that automation solves many problems in the electoral field, this does not mean that just about any e-voting system will work. Taking the leap to automation requires a close examination of the potential providers, and one of the main aspects to keep in mind for choosing one is the provider’s experience. Kenya’s electoral blunder serves as an example why.

As mentioned on an earlier post, the bout of violence Kenya endured in 2007 prompted the country to hastily adopt an electronic voting system. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) set up an election’s results transmission system based on SMS that was meant to speed up the final stages of the electoral process and enhance security. Biometric authentication was also incorporated into the modernization process. This year’s election was expected to be the most modern in Africa and beyond.

However, this new platform proved to be no better than the manual method from earlier years. Kenyans’ fears of a new round of chaos materialized when every single stage of the automated process failed. First of all, the conditions under which elections were generally held in the country were not taken into account. As a result, not even the most basic of requirements for automation, electricity, were available, as some of the classrooms used as polling stations were not equipped with power sockets.

Then the biometric authentication kits failed to recognize voters’ fingerprints, forcing officials to turn to paper records and manual registration to carry on with the election and slowing down the electoral process considerably. As if this were not enough, the server employed to transmit results to the central tallying center from 33,400 polling stations became overloaded and crashed, and the electoral body had to revert to manual counting. Safaricom, the communications supplier hired for this final stage, had advised IEBC to hold a large-scale drill before going live, but the electoral body disregarded the recommendation with dire consequences. In the end, the announcement of Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory took place over a week after the elections.

It is commendable that a country wants to resort to e-voting to stop fraud and make its elections more agile and transparent. However, automation is a very delicate procedure that is prone to failure when not carried out properly. There are many points where Kenya’s providers incurred in negligence and aggravated an already fragile democracy. The lack of previous infrastructure studies and the lack of drills and pilot tests in minor electoral events are amongst the most serious mistakes made by the e-voting providers. In short, Kenya’s botched election was an example of sheer improvisation.

Electronic elections in the Philippines, Brazil, and Venezuela have been successful because their providers have been conscious of the need to analyze a country’s infrastructure and idiosyncrasy before incorporating automation into its electoral system. The implementation process in these countries has been gradual and supported by numerous pilot tests and audits, thus being able to offer smooth elections that gain people’s trust in the new technology. The urge for automation cannot win over the urge for an electoral system that works.

Kenya’s electoral catastrophe is a lesson for other countries to learn: When it comes to modernizing a country’s electoral platform, there is no room for haste.

How electronic voting led to better infant health in Brazil

Photo: Freedigitalphotos

Today we’ll share some thoughts about Thomas Fujiwara’s paper “Voting Technology, Political Responsiveness, and Infant Health: Evidence from Brazil.

Before 1996, when Brazil first implemented e-voting, about a fifth (23%, according to the 1991 census) of the adult population was illiterate. 

Yet the election system involved written paper ballots. Which meant this large number of people (most of whom couldn’t afford even primary education) couldn’t fill them in and cast their vote correctly.

This lead to a huge number of “residual” votes that couldn’t be assigned to any particular candidate – meaning that effectively many poor people were unable to select politicians who might help them. In fact electronic voting was introduced to save time and money counting votes but had the unintended consequence of making voting easier for these ‘forgotten’ citizens. 

According to Thomas Fujiwara in his paper, the introduction of candidate pictures and color –coded commands to the voting process – thanks to voting machines – was a turning point. Because it suddenly meant Brazil’s illiterate and poor had a voice. 

It also helped, as noted by the BBC, that a numeric interface (similar to the one used in telephones, something even an illiterate person knows how to handle) was used. 

Voters only needed to press the number for the candidate they wanted to support, and if they weren’t able to recognize written numbers, they could take notes with them to the voting station to select the right button. 

Then a picture of the candidate they selected was shown and through color-coded buttons they could approve or cancel their vote. 

So now, even those who can’t read are able to vote for their candidates of choice. And, since voting is compulsory in Brazil, there are even options to cast a blank or a void vote. 

Thanks to technology, now everybody is able to cast their vote, to make their voice heard, and to be sure that their vote goes to the choice they selected. 

This increased participation, and as a new pool of votes from the country’s illiterate poor could now be counted (instead of just being voided, like in the past).

In response, Brazilian parties and politicians decided to start investing more on issues that directly improved the lives of these less fortunate people. 

In particular, Fujiwara’s paper found out that after the implementation of e-voting, there was a rise all across Brazil in the investment in public health care. 

The author’s research found that there have been a growing number of prenatal visits and a decline in low-weight births in uneducated (and thus, the poorest) mothers, while this numbers didn’t change for middle or high-income women (who are more prone to attend private health institutions).

Since e-voting was implemented progressively throughout Brazilian states, Fujiwara could compare numbers from different regions at different times and see that indeed, e-voting caused these improvements to the health care of the poorest.

This means that, thanks to e-voting, Brazilian politicians are tending to the poorest people’s needs, as this new voting system brought light to an otherwise ignored (and big) part of the population that now has an effective way to claim their rights.

2012: An electoral year in retrospective

Image: Freedigitalphotos

2012 was an exciting year for electronic voting and for democracy in general. Many countries around the world gathered their citizens around the polling stations, some of them using the advantages of electoral technology. Let’s take a look at some of the electoral highlights of the year:

March: Putin gets reelected in Russia

Amid accusations of fraud, Vladimir Putin was reelected Prime Minister of the Russian Federation with 60% of the votes. The NGO Golos, defender of transparency during elections, denounced more than 3,500 irregularities committed during the electoral event. The ruling party’s initiative to install more than 200,000 webcams at polling stations to gain credibility backfired because these actually registered several acts of bribery, ballot stuffing, carousel fraud, and misuse of voting coupons.

April: Burma moves forward on the road to democracy

Burma held parliamentary elections for the first time after 50 years of military oppression. Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who headed the fight for democracy in the country, warned about the setbacks that would emerge during the electoral event, such as damaged ballot cards and names missing from the register. These obstacles are typical of elections held with manual voting methods.

June: Mongolia debut a new voting system for Parliamentary elections

Mongolians went to the polls to select seventy six parliament seats using a new voting system: 2,446 Precinct-Count Optical Scanners (PCOS) were used across 1,905 precincts. In spite the benefits brought forth by automation, problems with the deployment and implementation of the voting technology, raised controversies regarding the validity of the result.

July: Elections in Mexico carried out with questionable electoral technology

Mexico was ready to take the leap from manual to automated voting last year, but leaving the automation process to an incompetent company was a huge mistake that threatened to leave the Latin American country completely devoid of the opportunity to modernize its electoral platform.

October: Brazil and Venezuela demonstrate the power of e-voting

Media outlets all around the world commended Venezuela for its use of electoral technology during their last presidential elections. Meanwhile, Brazil took the challenge of leading more than 140 million voters to the polling places to assign more than 5,500 posts through e-voting, and the challenge was swiftly overcome. These two countries offered proof that vote automation is crucial to carry out multiple elections at the same time with fast and reliable results.

November: USA reelects Obama

Americans attended the polling stations to reelect their incumbent president. Amid the confusing use of different voting methods between constituencies (encompassing both manual and electronic voting), and an audit system that is not exempt from failure, people elected Barack Obama for a second term. 

December: Ghana elects its President amid technical snags

Ghana embraced the modernization of its elections by implementing biometric authentication at the polling centers, but technical glitches led to long delays in some areas. In a tight race, incumbent president John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress defeated its rival Nana Akufo-Addo.

In 2013 we will be watching as nations around the world walk into the modernization of their elections and the improvement of their democracies.

USA vs. Brazil – Two models of election administration

Brazil will have municipal elections next month
(Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)

Brazil and the United States of America are the two most populated countries in the Western hemisphere. Between them, they add up to more than 510,400,000 million people, out of which approximately 380,000,000 are of voting age. Together with India, they formed the pioneering triad in the adoption of voting technology during the last score of the previous century. Another curious similarity is the fact that each of both nations is a federation of states with a republican form of government, which implies that the different states forming these republics have a considerable amount of sovereignty.  

In spite of coincidences, the way these republics conduct elections is radically different. The long debate between centralization vs. decentralization of the public administration is easily palpable when analyzing the way in which elections have been carried in Brazil and the US for the last twenty years. 

Since its founding fathers joined efforts to declare independence in 1776, the United States has made of the empowerment of each province, county, jurisdiction, or state to decide its future a point of honor. As a result of the decentralization of decision making, the nation has approximately 4,600 jurisdictions administering elections. Each State has its own rules as to how to best register voters, who is eligible to participate in elections, what the voting system is to be used, etc. Ten years ago, the country was using simultaneously all of the available technologies across the 51 States: punch cards, lever machines, optical scanners, and direct recording electronic voting machines. Vendors had scarce parameters to follow, and election officials lacked the preparation or necessary training to properly manage their relations with technology providers. As time passed, the US electoral administration system showed significant weaknesses. For example, during the 2000 General Election, the country had to wait over a month to have the Supreme Court declare the winner.  This incident triggered considerable reforms from Congress and the White House. To enhance accuracy, efficiency and transparency of elections, the Help America Vote Act was signed into law by President Bush in 2002. As a result, punch cards and lever machines were replaced with better technology; access to voting was improved for citizens with disabilities, and the Electoral Assistance Commission (EAC) was created. This step towards centralization (EAC) has rendered positive results, but since the EAC can only make recommendations to jurisdictions and states, and cannot force them to comply, the impact has not been sufficient. 

In the other side of the spectrum appears the giant from the South. Brazil chose to centralize decision making for election related matters as early as 1932. Since, a single authority has overseen the compliance with laws and regulations across the 16 states that comprise the federation. This high degree of discretion paved the way for seamless election automation in Brazil. The Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE), Brazil's highest election administration agency, introduced computerized tallying of results in 1982, automation of voter registration in 1985, and adopted a unique Electronic Voting platform for the entire nation in 1996. Critics of the Brazilian election administration system point out the lack of sufficient citizen participation in decision making. Several studies have been signaling the need to upgrade voting machines to include a Voter-Verified Paper Trail. The printing of a receipt reflecting what a voting machine has recorded, would allow voters to verify that their choices are duly registered and counted accordingly.

The centralization vs. decentralization debate is far from over.  However, when it comes to election administration, the general tendency is to centralize decision making. Venezuela, which is another country with remarkable developments in terms of automation and conducting elections, can be an interesting case to study. The Consejo Nacional Electoral is a government agency with a rank theoretically as high as that of the Judiciary, Legislative, or Executive powers. With such preeminence of the electoral agency, and due to the highly auditable end-to-end automated election system in use, Venezuela has dramatically improved the transparency, accuracy and efficiency of its elections.

Jennifer McCoy Discusses E-voting

Jennifer McCoy, director of the Carter Center's Americas Program, spoke about Colombia's recent decision to implement e-voting for the Colombian digital magazine Razón Pública. This is what she had to say (in Spanish):

(If you cannot see the embedded video, you can find it here.)

Here is a translation of her declaration:

"When a society decides to change its voting system, it is important that there is a lot of consultation with political parties, and that there is transparency. Transparency is the most important thing here. Educating and informing voters is also very important, so that they understand the new systems and these can be implemented effectively.

However, if there is no transparency and no information, there can be problems of lack of understanding, suspicion, etc.

Estonia has already adopted an Internet-based voting system. It is interesting to find that there actually are developing countries that have adopted automated voting systems. India, for example, and Brazil, where voting has been almost completely automated. Bolivia has no e-voting, but biometric identification of its citizens was implemented there last year.

In short, it is possible for developing countries to use high-tech voting systems."

The History of E-Voting in Brazil

Picture: alexdecarvalho

Some people have said that Brazil is ahead of its time when it comes to the country's electoral process. Indeed, the South American nation is widely regarded as a leader when it comes to electronic voting, but it's not like Brazil suddenly fell into this role overnight. The evolution of e-voting in Brazil has taken place over the last couple of decades with each progressive step moving into greater levels of both security and automation.