Argentina eyes election automation for 2017

The Argentine government is looking to overhaul the country's electoral system ahead of the 2017 elections.

Topping the proposed electoral reform agenda is poll automation, which many Argentines believe has become an imperative after manual voting failed in 2015. The proposed reforms, which have yet to reach Congress, also includes a wide array of issues such as campaign financing and a revamp of election calendars. 

This move by Mauricio Macri's government is seen by observers as an encouraging response to the problems encountered during the first round of the 2015 presidential elections when the manual system collapsed. The issues with the paper-based system were so widespread and serious that a comprehensive reform became a campaign platform for Macri. 

The lack of an efficient system to process votes has long beset Argentina leading provinces such as Salta and Cordoba to adopt their own technology solutions.

In 2015, the Province of Buenos Aires used a sort of ballot printing and scanning technology that had been used in Salta since 2009. Although the technology helped count the votes, many technology experts were wary of the system's security features.

An article published in La Nacion-a leading Argentine outlet-, provides detailed information on the different problems found in this particular system. Although authorities have downplayed the effects of the incidents, the technology continued to be under the scrutiny of IT experts.

During the recent ekoparty Security Conference, the system used in Salta also came under heavy fire from IT practitioners  Barrera Oro and Javier Smaldone who worried about the system's lack of transparency and insufficient security. 

According to the Buenos Aires Herald, the system that is being proposed in the draft bill resembles the system in question, which has led some stakeholders to call for more consultation.

The reform proposal faces months of intense debates in the Congress before it can be passed into a law. The proponents would also need to work closely with the academe and election technology experts to craft a solution tailored to the country's complex requirements. Yet many are optimistic that the proposal is a step in the right direction in achieving the country's long-time goal of having credible elections.

Scytl fails again in Ecuador

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Last year, in 2013, Ecuador awarded Spanish-based Scytl a $7.8 million contract to automate tallying, processing and publishing results for provinces with manual voting – some 160,000 polling station reports.

In these presidential elections, the incumbent, Rafael Correa won by such a big margin (34%) that the CNE could rely on quick counts to provide partial results.

His supporters celebrated victory as soon as one hour after the polls closed. As a result, the local press completely overlooked the fact that Scytl’s data processing actually took weeks.

In the 2014 elections that have just taken place in Ecuador, the story is different. The same company, the same problem, but it is a sectional election with eleven million voters selecting thousands of candidates. Margins are narrow and quick counts and exit polls are not enough.

Since the polls on February 23, authorities have been postponing announcing the results. A few days ago, with only 75% of results processed, they asked for more time.

Osman Loraiza, a representative from Scytl, acknowledged the failure of their system in Ecuador. However, their website is still regarding their participation as a success. It remains to be seen whether the press will overlook the failure this time.  

The CNE has already announced it will sanction Scytl. Authorities will wait until this crisis is finished to decide how to proceed. 

Electoral authorities from Ecuador are now left with the herculean task of completing the counting, announcing results and convincing public opinion that those are a true expression of the popular vote.

Fortunately, it is not all bad news for the election technology industry. On election day, and only 70 minutes after polls closed, results were available in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas. The e-voting technology deployed by Smartmatic yielded excellent results. Also, in Azuay, were the CNE automated the counting of votes using Magic Software Argentina (MSA) technology, results were also published that same night.  

Canada abandons Internet voting and goes back to manual elections

Toronto. Image: FreeDigitalPhotos

Canada has halted its plans to carry out an Internet voting pilot in 2015, in spite of earlier signs of approval of this electoral method. The decision is allegedly due to budget cuts, as Elections Canada has been subjected to a loss of $7.5 million per year. 

Security was another reason Canada’s electoral body refrained from moving forward. Although they had had some success in previous experiences with Internet voting, the risk of massive tampering and identity theft are still an issue. 

Unfortunately, turning back to manual voting is far from an ideal solution as irregularities have been documented in previous elections.

The electoral body of the North American country has acknowledged that irregularities have actually been found in manual voting. After the 2011 federal poll, it was discovered that election officers had made more than 500 serious procedural errors, and paperwork was deficient in more than 165,000 cases. Having weighed between two unreliable options, wouldn’t it be time to think of one that really works? With voting machines, Canada would have a real chance of holding fully auditable elections, devoid of human error, instead of switching back to a system that has been admittedly faulty.

Implementing voting machines would actually be the way to reduce the organization costs of upcoming polls, now that the electoral body cites budget constraints as grounds for returning to manual voting. Even though the initial implementation of an e-voting platform is a high investment, it represents savings in the long run. For example: voting machines do not require paper ballots, which cost millions of dollars to produce each time. If there is a sudden change in the electoral event, touchscreen devices make it easier to make the necessary adjustments without further investment.

Canada shut the door to automation for no other reason than not having exhausted all possibilities. Safe, reliable electoral technology is still out there, waiting to be implemented and to radically improve people’s participation in Democracy.

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.

Presidential Elections in Czech Republic: manual registration of candidates poses a threat to democracy

Prazsky Orloj. Photo: George Groutas

This January, the citizens of Czech Republic were able to vote for their president for the first time. Until Vaclav Klaus, former president who had to step down after serving his maximum two terms, this post used to be appointed by the members of both parliamentary chambers. Although the Czech presidency is largely ceremonial —though important for foreign policy and government formation—, the electoral exercise brought to light the failures of implementing manual voting methods, not only at the ballot level but all the way up to candidate registration.

Nine candidates competed in the first round. Since none of them obtained more than 50% of the votes, the two with the most votes went for second round. These were Miloš Zeman, former prime minister, and Karel Schwarzenberg, an aristocratic foreign affairs minister. In the end, Zeman was elected president. Analysts from FairVote.org point out that Czech Republic’s implementation of a new democratic exercise can be considered successful, although improvements could be done. However, it is not only the act of voting that signals whether an election was successful or not. In this case, suffrage was almost halted long before the polling stations opened.

According to Martin Ehl, political analyst and editor of the foreign affairs section in the Czech newspaper Hospodářské Noviny, the elections were at risk of failure due to a problem with candidate registration that was not addressed on time. The law approving popular voting was sanctioned all too quickly and made candidate registration confusing. Politicians aspiring to the post were even appealing to the Constitutional Court in order to have the law overturned. The election had to go on without some of the intended candidates, as they were not able to register properly.

The mistakes entailed by haste cannot be tolerated in the name of democracy. Failures such as the ones detected during the candidate registration process in Czech Republic contribute to turn democracy into a pale reflection of the true will of the people, as not all sectors of the population are represented in an incomplete list of presidential candidates.

It might be too early to demand a lot from Czech Republic, but since their very first stint in democratic elections almost failed completely, the government should start considering the possibility of implementing a more secure electoral system. What better option, then, than the complete automation of the electoral processes, from candidate registration to polling, scrutiny, and transmission of the results. The nation already took the brave decision of bringing politics closer to the people, now it’s time for it to guarantee the transparency of suffrage at all levels.

E-voting will attest its value again in 2013

Image: Everystockphoto

Guiding the world through the path of automation is no easy task. Some countries have yet to learn some hard lessons with the use of archaic manual methods. In order for the nations to finally modernize their electoral systems, they need proof that e-voting is really the way to go. Last year we saw some impressive models of the effectiveness of voting technology —and the ineptitude of manual voting—, which should be enough to convince anybody of the need for electoral automation. However, it doesn’t stop there. Here are some of the aspects where e-voting will confirm its worth once again in 2013.

Reliability

Elections like the ones we saw last year in Russia, Ghana and Zimbabwe exposed the frailty of manual voting methods. With paper ballots, voters cannot be sure that their preference will be reflected in the results of the polls. Zimbabwe has a second chance to carry out a transparent electoral event now that it will be holding presidential elections this year, but since these will be carried out with manual methods, we might as well be expecting the same dreaded results that came out from last year’s internal referendum, if not worse. The recurrence of crimes such as ballot stuffing and identity theft breaks people’s trust in their electoral institutions. E-voting eliminates these problems easily. 

Speed

Elections need their results to be released to the public immediately after the closure of polling stations. The longer the announcement of final outcomes is delayed, the more the voters are prone to suspect their fairness. The chaos that took over the elections in Honduras should serve as a cautionary tale for other countries, as the final numbers for their November 18 primary elections were not known yet by the end of that month. This failure to deliver results on time could be immediately linked with corruption, which is unacceptable. Electoral technology does not allow for these inexplicable lags, as final results can be made public a few hours after closing the election. 

Security

Bringing back the Russian example, it is incredibly easy to breach security in manual elections. The implementation of transparent ballot boxes and more than 180,000 security web cameras did nothing to prevent the blatant occurrence of carousel voting and ballot stuffing during the March 2012 presidential elections. It becomes obvious then that any effort to eradicate electoral corruption paired with the use of manual methods is destined to fail.

Auditability 

When it comes to set an example about how audits can guarantee transparency to an electoral process, no country comes better than Venezuela. During last year’s Presidential election more than 16 audits certified the correct performance of the system before and after the election: from the voting machines, electronic ballots, and the biometric voter authentication system, to the transmission and totalization of the results. 

Accuracy 

For a voting system, accuracy is essential during the phases of voting, counting and transmission of results, so that the intention of every voter is respected and taken into account. Last year, Mongolians had the chance to employ an e-voting system that promised to be fast and reliable. However, the use of the Precinct-Count Optical Scanners (PCOS) developed by Dominion registered major inconsistencies between the electronic results in some precincts and the audits carried throughout, casting doubts about the credibility of the results.

2013 brings a new set of chances for electronic voting to attest its superiority over the dated and even dangerous manual voting methods. We hope to see more nations choose to successfully automate their elections in order to preserve the reliability, speed, accuracy, auditability and security of their electoral events.

E-voting, ready for any contingency

Image: xandert

Countries with an automated voting system can always trust that their election days will run smoothly. Millions of people attending thousands of polling stations all throughout the nation may sound like an uncontrollable situation, but the reliability of voting automation makes it possible to turn elections into a safe and easy exercise for citizens and authorities alike. Moreover, if something unexpected happens shortly before the event and a modification in schedules or candidate lists becomes necessary, e-voting is ready to adapt to these abrupt changes. This is one more of its many advantages over manual voting methods.

A country’s political panorama is not exempt from contingencies that can alter the course of its electoral calendar. For example, a candidate could be abruptly forced to abandon the electoral race, or a major event could force the government to suspend elections and hold them on another day. For manual voting, this would be a tragedy, as logistics demand enough anticipation for the printing and deployment of material in the different polling places. A sudden change would translate into the loss of millions of dollars in wasted material, and reprogramming the event would take a long time before everything is ready one more time.

E-voting, on the other hand, offers alternatives that are adaptable to last-minute changes. DRE machines do not need paper ballots, as voters make their choice on a touchscreen and information is stored electronically. Therefore, if something were to change in terms of options for candidates, the only thing to do would be to reprogram the voting machines with the new candidate list. This obviously takes much less time than having to produce a whole new batch of paper ballots, not to mention its cost-effectiveness.

It is worth mentioning, though, that the ease with which voting machines can be tailored to emergency modifications does not mean that the information they carry after ballots are cast can be modified as well. Voting machines are equipped with advanced encryption software that shields them from any attempt to interfere with elections. Besides, after the machines are delivered at the polling stations and tested for zero votes, they can only be activated by each voter through a biometric authentication device. This way, security and transparency are always guaranteed.

Elections carried out through manual voting must somehow trust that nothing will deviate from the established plan in order to keep their schedule and material intact. Unforeseen events that become a threat to manually performed polls are mere bumps on the road for electronic voting, always reliable and up to any challenge.

Speed of automated polls counters fraud

The longer it takes for election results to be determined, the larger the window given to fraudsters to tamper with the results. While accuracy is the primary benefit of e-voting, speed is another compelling reason for automating a country’s electoral system.

Prior to its first automated polls in 2010, a prolonged period of indeterminacy was the norm in Philippine elections. Counting took days, and canvassing weeks or even months. In the precinct level, this encouraged fraud tactics such as ballot box-snatching. In the canvassing level, the problem got even worse where a tactic called “dagdag-bawas” (vote padding-vote shaving) was frequently employed by corrupt politicians to dramatically alter the results in their favor.

Dagdag bawas is the process of increasing the votes of a candidate by shaving the votes of the other candidates. This usually happens when canvassing precinct level counts into municipal counts, municipal counts into provincial counts, and from provincial counts into national counts. Since the alteration is exponential, the results can indeed be radically altered.

The slow manual system likewise put the Board of Election Inspectors (BEIs) at great risk of intimidation, injury and even murder.

The introduction of the PCOS machine in 2010 gave the Philippine electoral system a major credibility boost. Initial results were delivered just mere hours after the polls closed and many local officials were proclaimed as winners soon after.

The morning after the elections, Filipinos already had a clear indication of who their next president would be. A major presidential aspirant conceded two days which came as a pleasant surprise for Filipinos used to bitter wrangling which dragged on for months.

A few months after the elections, the survey firm Social Weather Station reported that an overwhelming 75% of Filipinos were satisfied with the automation project, citing speed as one of the major factors.

From Manual to Automated Voting: How the PCOS is making the transition smoother for Filipinos

César Flores, CEO of Smartmatic Asia Pacific, delivers PCOS machines in 2010 (Reuters)

Voters in countries undergoing a shift from manual to electronic voting often feel a deep ambivalence towards it. On the one hand, they are eager to embrace automation, knowing that it is the future of democracy. On the other hand, their long familiarity with the paper ballot has conditioned them to be more demanding in terms of the system’s auditability.

Because of this, many regard the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines to be too big of a leap. DRE presents voters with a touch-screen which displays the names of the candidates. Voters do not write or shade anything but simply press an onscreen button to select their candidate. Even with a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) which gives a printed interpretation of the voter’s choice, voters who are used to recording their votes indelibly onto a tangible paper ballot may still feel a little uneasy.

It is for this reason that the OMR or the Optical Mark Reader has found favour among countries in transition. This system involves the voter shading ovals on a paper ballot which he then feeds into an optical scanner. The tangible paper ballot may be used in a manual audit which imbues the whole process with the needed layer of credibility.

This phenomenon has been observed in the Philippines, which in 2010 held its very first automated general elections. While the Filipinos realized the need to go automated to eliminate the decades-old problem of electoral fraud, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) believed that Filipinos were not yet ready to give up the paper ballot. As a compromise, the election body decided to lease from Smartmatic a variety of OMR called the Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS).

In spite of some minor technical details that need to be addressed, the elections were widely regarded as a success with many voters considering it to be most credible polls the country has ever had. The Commission was so impressed with the performance of the PCOS that it has decided purchase the machines, intending to use them for at least ten more years.

The Hidden Costs of Manual Elections

Image by Jeff Stahler

One of the arguments most frequently used by detractors of electronic voting is its alleged high cost. Although automation certainly implies a significant initial investment in voting machines, critics often fail to see the economies of scales that electoral automation generate, which make electronic elections cheaper than manual elections when several electoral cycles are taken into consideration. Moreover, inaccurate and murky manual elections bring to the surface enormous “hidden” costs that need to be taken into account in order to fairly compare electoral systems.

In the presidential elections held in Mexico in 2006, according to the official numbers of the Mexican Electoral Court of the Judicial Power, candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) lost to Felipe Calderon by a narrow margin of nearly half percentage point. AMLO refused to accept the results alleging that a massive fraud was carried out, and commanded a series of street protests in the Federal District for more than two weeks. After such traumatic incidents, the only losers were not AMLO and his followers; paralyzing parts of one of the biggest metropolis in the world meant a strike to the Mexican economy beyond imagination. Manual elections, besides inaccuracy and little transparency, carry with them a series of latent costs that appear when this sort of “unexpected events” occur.

In spite of all efforts made by Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) to improve the administration of elections, the presidential elections held in Mexico a couple weeks ago lead to a very similar situation. AMLO, again in the second place, is refusing to accept results and assures to be able to prove multiple irregularities like pre-marked ballots, and purchase of votes, which question the accuracy and transparency of elections. Also, in light of the narrow difference between the first and second candidates in some jurisdictions, the IFE had to recount votes in about 68.000 (50%) polling stations. Even though we do not know the cost of the recounting process, it is probably an amount not easy to

disregard.

In the last six years Mexico has witnessed, first hand, how expensive it is to have an inefficient, murky, and outdated voting system. Cost analysis to compare voting systems should take into consideration these types of expenses to truthfully reflect the economic convenience of electronic voting.

Tolerance of Fraud, A Fatal Consequence of Manual Voting

The OAS mission sent to Santo Domingo to oversee the democratic process held on May 20 declared that the Dominican Republic Presidential Elections were fair. The ruling Dominican Liberation Party, represented by Danilo Medina, got 51% of the votes, while Hipólito Mejía got 46%. Mejía accused Medina of fraud and called for the rejection of the results “as they do not represent the will of the people.” However, Tabaré Vásquez, former president of Uruguay and chief of the OAS mission, congratulated Dominican Republic for its “great civil maturity.” However, the organization also pointed out in its report that the election registered the biggest amount of shooting, arrests and raids from the past twenty years.

In spite of the apparent smoothness and transparency of the electoral journey, Vásquez pointed out that there actually were some cases of vote buying by both parties, but that these did not have a significant impact on the final results. Which raises the question: why is an organism like OAS tolerating an issue that could endanger democracy? Is there such thing as ‘just enough’ fraud?

Manual voting is a traditional system that has accepted little change throughout its history. People have grown habituated to its processes and shortcomings, including the ever-present possibility of someone rigging the elections. Consequently, both civilians and supervising authorities tend to expect a certain degree of dishonesty every time elections take place. In this scenario, the will of the people never gets to be fully represented, and in some cases, they just actually accept this.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. An accusation like Hipólito Mejía’s would not hold any validity in a completely automated system (including biometric validation) where human error is suppressed and the voter’s identification process guarantees the principle one elector = one vote.

With a biometric identification system implemented on Election Day, many of the vulnerabilities exhibited by manual voting would be completely eliminated: There wouldn’t be any illegal voting, voter impersonation, multiple voting and manipulation of voter’s lists.

Integrating this technology with an auditable voting system, it would not matter if thousands of ID’s were bought at the doors of a polling station, because it wouldn’t be just the ID the only requisite to cast a vote. Your fingerprint would be the other, and a fingerprint can’t just be bought.

Democracy is not supposed to be something that works in spite of obstacles set by those with their own private agendas. While some defend stagnant tradition, people’s interests are at stake. This is why a change of mentality is imperative and inevitable if we want to preserve the sanity of our political system. Automation is the key to democratic processes in which people don’t have to settle for the next best thing, for ‘just enough’ fraud to be tolerated.

When a fully automated and auditable electoral system is implemented, election results are secure and accurate, because the guarantees and mechanisms of verification provided by the system precisely represent the will of the electors. Let’s hope Dominicans can learn this lesson and a zero tolerance to fraud politic is adapted for their next elections.

Comparative Analysis of Different Voting Systems

In our previous post (Basic criteria for choosing voting technology) we covered the five basic principles to consider when choosing a voting system. We will now analyze Manual Voting (MV), Optical Scanners (OS), and Direct-Recording Electronic Voting Machines (DRE), according to the first two principles described before: Accessibility and Security.

Accessibility 

The strongest supporters of MV (manual voting and manual counting) proclaim accessibility as one of its most alluring advantages. For the average voter, manual voting is simple and intuitive. It is actually a familiar system that most of us have used in the past to either elect a high school student council member, a graduation song, a advisory board member, etc. 

In theory, OS (manual voting but automated tallying) are also fairly easy to use. The voter marks his/her selection to later feed the ballot into the machine. However, when the election requires different ballots for many posts to be elected, this simplicity fades away. Furthermore, reading errors often reach a problematic 5-15% on Election Day. In this sense, experience demonstrates that OS can be frustrating for the voter, and also for operators and electoral authorities, as they will be held responsible for a considerable number of null votes. 

With the new technological developments, such as touch screens and voice sensitive devices, voting with a DRE system (electronic voting and automated tallying) has evolved to become user friendly. Modern voting machines simplify interaction by providing voters with feedback messages, visual or auditory help, and a confirmation of their choice in any preferred language. It is important to mention that this is the only voting method that allows correcting a wrongly marked selection. 

In recent years, an urge to grant access to a hassle-free voting experience to individuals with special needs has prompted electoral authorities to set new guidelines for voting systems. For instance, the federal law Help America Vote Act (HAVA), established in 2002 new conditions to give citizens with disabilities, including the blind and visually impaired, equal opportunities to participate in elections. 

Electoral authorities have had a difficult time trying to cope with these new standards while complying with universal mandates such as secrecy. For example, assisting an impaired individual can compromise the secrecy of the vote and independence of the voter. MV and OS systems offer little options to improve the voting experience of these citizens. Through the use of touch screens, friendly interfaces, visual and auditory assistance, DRE machines developers have taken ease of use to a whole new level. Their more customizable interface has allowed them to gain an edge over the other technologies in this regard. 

Security 

Many of the traditional problems faced in manual elections revolve around security issues. The high levels of human intervention necessary in sensitive areas, such as tallying and transmission of results, and the always latent incentive to alter results, are the root of unintended and malicious errors. Pre marking ballots, or ballot stuffing (the illegal act of one person submitting more ballots than allowed) are some of the usual problems encountered with manual voting. 

In terms of Security, Optical Scanners have had an advantage over MV as they diminish human interaction by substituting human counting and the transmission of results. However, the process of transmitting results is usually made through methods that do not guarantee 100% the safety of the data. Moreover, the typical irregularities often found with paper ballots are present with this technology. 

DRE voting system providers have in Security one of the most compelling selling attributes. By minimizing human interaction with electoral material, increasing levels of auditability, and recording, processing and transmitting the information through safe protocols, a well designed DRE machine impedes any alteration of the voter’s intent. 

An advanced DRE system provides a paper trail for each vote casted, thus creating a double record (physical and electronic) which enhances the transparency of the process. Some advanced Optical Scanners also offer this redundancy of records.

On the Road to Democracy, Manual Voting Becomes an Obstacle

After almost 50 years of military oppression, the people of Burma were finally able to choose the representatives who would fill 45 parliamentary seats. The country’s by-elections were held at the beginning of this month.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who won the Nobel Peace Price in 1991 for leading the fight for democracy in the country, and who had been under house arrest for 15 years, was finally able to see the progress of her struggle as a free person, even though she was not able to vote for logistic reasons. People all over the country celebrated this step towards reconciliation.

However, by March the irregularities were already palpable. Suu Kyi warned that these elections would not be free and fair. Voters complained of damaged voting papers and names missing from the register. International observers were invited by the government to oversee the elections, but they were not allowed inside the polling stations. Of course, most of these problems could have been avoided with the implementation of e-voting in the country. Why?

Reliability is one of the many benefits electronic voting offers, since a good and auditable system offers multiple technological resources to recognize fraudulent situations (intent to alter the results), eliminating the possibility of null votes. An auditable electoral system also offers accuracy, so there is no room for misinterpretation of votes or human error in processes like tallying and consolidation. Also, it’s auditable, meaning that your vote is stored in several instances, thus creating protections that guarantee the possibility of multiple audits.

But the road is long, and Burma still has time to learn the best ways to regain the trust that was lost during the years of the military regime.

All and all, this event shows that the hope for democracy to finally reach Burma is stronger and stronger within the hearts of people. Let’s hope that the desire for freedom is stronger than corruption, and that it can finally take over the shadows of the past.

Palm Beach County’s New Voting Disaster

(March 21st, 2012) A new voting scandal erupted in Florida’s Palm Beach County when authorities incorrectly certified two candidates as winners in the Wellington Village Council elections.

Due to a suspect program flaw that seemingly got overlooked in the software supplied by Dominion Voting, the results that were certified and announced by the Palm Beach County Elections Office gave the victory to the wrong candidates.

This serious incident is reminiscent of the 2000 presidential election, when voting authorities and service providers were incapable of deploying efficient solutions and over two million votes were invalidated in what has become known as the Butterfly Ballot disaster. Palm Beach was among the counties using the obsolete technology that allegedly induced voters to make mistakes, either selecting the wrong candidates or making more than one vote in the ballot.

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office Susan Bucher is now blaming Dominion Voting, the company providing voting and tabulating equipment to the county, for the recent electoral fiasco. She stated that software errors were the root of the problems. The company is disputing her argument and claims to be "investigating the source of the anomaly”.

Regardless of where the blame will fall, Palm Beach County’s electoral authorities need to guarantee the success of elections soon to come. It is imperative to better train poll workers and election officials; and to perform sufficient testing and auditing before, during and after each process. Only a few weeks ago, and while facing all sorts of difficulties in the testing stages, Dominion offered modems to reduce the time to produce results. In the field tests they found out that the modems were incompatible with the county's phone lines. In light of the software & hardware know-how and experience now available in the market however, errors of this type are unacceptable. 

It has been almost ten years since President Bush signed the Help America Vote Act into a federal law. HAVA was the response to the controversy surrounding the 2000 presidential elections in which he was reelected President. The law brought positive changes such as the creation of the Election Assistance Commission, mandating the replacement of obsolete technology (punch cards and lever-based voting systems), and setting a minimum of election administration standards. 

Electronic voting has surpassed manual voting when clear rules and experienced, competent authorities are met with a technology provider capable of delivering up to the expectations. Around the world, electronic voting has been steadily implemented with excellent results. Moreover, it has proven key in contributing to bring stability to nations with politically turbulent atmospheres. 

Unfortunately, Palm Beach County, home of paradisiacal beaches and full of vacation resorts, has a sad record of voting scandals, and this new incident, where Dominion Voting and the Palm Beach County electoral authorities have been the protagonists, has not helped to make it any better. 

Overall, it's obvious that the United States of America, a foremost economic, military and technological world power, needs to step up and set more rigorous standards in its voting practices. Voting is the fundamental act of a nation’s core values, Democracy.

Internet Voting: Interview with William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.

William J. Kelleher has a Ph.D. in political science, from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1984).  He has written two books about the process of elections in the USA. The first, The New Election Game (1987), reviewed the history of campaign finance reform in US presidential elections, and discussed Buckminster Fuller’s idea of telephone voting as an election reform.  That book came out just before the “PC Revolution,” in the US.  So, the new technology soon made that book out of date.  His second book on election reform is Internet Voting Now! (2011).   As the title suggests, he advocates using Internet voting for all US elections.  

Read the interview

Manual Voting Absurdities Around the World

Picture: Wagner T. Cassimiro "Aranha" 

The processes supporting democracy are no laughing matter. Elections of all sizes have a great deal of importance for the areas they cover, but this doesn't mean that there are not laughable absurdities when it comes to the world of politics. More specifically, there have been many absurd situations over the years regarding manual voting.