Scytl’s 2014: Annus horribilis, or may be not

2014 was a peculiar year for the noisiest, albeit not the only Spanish company specialized in voting technology and solutions. Despite some major setbacks resulting from ill-developed voting solutions, it managed to close a $104 million financing round this year.

Image: Pixabay

The year had a bumpy start for Scytl. For Ecuador’s 2014 Sectional elections in February, Scytl was to deliver a solution that would help the Ecuadorian Election Commission to process the tallying of the votes with the goal that results could be announced within 72 hours after closing the polls. Yet, one whole month after the election was over, Scytl was still counting votes and was still unable to provide final results. In the mean time, Ecuadorian authorities were confronting the herculean task of convincing public opinion that the results would “soon be announced”- were legit. As a result of the scandal and ensuing public unrest, Domingo Paredes, head of the electoral management body, declared that the Election Commission had unilaterally terminated the contract, demanded payment of guarantees, and began taking legal actions against the company. Oddly enough, after the fanfare published in Scytl's website news in February and March about projects "in the works" as if the February election had been "a successful implementation", there has been a complete silence on Ecuador the following months.

A few months later (June) Norway —one of the countries leading the crusade to make internet voting a reality, and a client of the Barcelona-based company—, halted i-voting experiments amid security fears. As evidenced in the video posted by the Norway electoral authorities (2:31:13), the secrecy of 54% of the vote was in fact compromised during the September 2013 pilot due to a bug in the encryption key. These cryptography issues were also reported in the Expert Study Mission Report from the Carter Center.

Even though bad news are the ones usually travelling faster, neighboring Peru seems not to have found out about Ecuador’s ordeal with Scytl. And only five months after the infamous incident aforementioned, the National Office for Electoral Processes (ONPE) of Peru experienced first-hand the mishaps of a poorly designed in-site Internet voting solution. In August, while conducting an Internet voting pilot using Scytl technology, voters ran into all sorts of trouble to cast a ballot. In spite of the simplicity of the contest –only 186 polling centers serving 34,672 voters– the company was once more unable to deliver up to the expectations.  

To cap off the year, on October 27, Scytl ran into trouble once again— this time staged by its branch in Canada, while providing its internet voting platform for elections in 20 Ontario municipalities.

According to the company, five election files had been mislabeled due to human error, creating tabulations problems that delayed results. On November 6, the 20 municipalities got together to discuss the issues and demand explanations. Scytl apologised and offered a discount of 25% from the charges for their services, plus a 10% discount on a future project, as if Ontario's woes were of financial nature. Read more here.

In spite of all these incidents, Scytl managed to raise over 100 million dollars from capital investors. Among them: Vy Capital, Vulcan Capitan and Sapphire Ventures, formerly SAP Ventures – the independent venture capital firm associated to Europe’s largest software company.

Scytl’s PR department deserves a standing ovation for not allowing such a poor track of performances ruin a financing round; especially in the age of global communications and instant scandals when such blunders happen.

Scytl in Ecuador: how to jeopardize an entire election

A simulation on the February elections
was carried out last February 9 in Quito
using the Scytl system.  (Image: Ecuador Times)

On April 18 the president of Ecuador's National Electoral Council (CNE for its Spanish acronym), Domingo Paredes, announced a series of legal actions to be taken against Scytl, a digital voting services company, for failing to meet their contractual obligations during the February 23 Sectional Elections.

More specifically, Paredes proclaimed the unilateral termination of the contract and the immediate collection of the bank guarantee, further, he demanded the return of advance payments made, and officially declared that Scytl had not met the requirements of the contract.

This new chapter of the February 23 Sectional Elections has prompted a round of mutual accusations between the parts –the National Electoral Council of Ecuador (CNE) and Scytl-, as neither one wants to take the blame for the egregious delay of the national results. 

Among other things, the Barcelona-based company had been hired to process the tallying of the votes so that results could be announced within 72 hours after closing. However, it actually took nearly a month to complete the task of processing the votes and arriving at official results. Only Azuay and Santo Domingo de Tsáchilas, the two provinces with automated voting for which Scytl did not offer its tallying system, announced results on Election Day. 

Besides the legal disputes that are likely to evolve from the public positions both parties are taking, one simple, yet very important question, needs to be asked: Why didn't Scytl warn this was going to happen?

Good practices in the Electronic Voting industry require that a series of tests and pilots be carried before any election occurs. In-house alpha, beta, and “real-world” pilot testing are crucial in any mission critical project of this kind.

Testing is the only way to guarantee minimal disruption in the flow of the process, and to prove that the applications logic and accompanying infrastructure are in working order. 

There are two possible answers to the question. Either the test runs were poorly planned, so they did not raise the necessary flags to avoid the catastrophe; or the tests did in fact serve to alert the problems ahead, but no adequate or sufficient action was taken. Time will tell, as the two parts explain their viewpoints. 

In a February 15th pilot, a group of technicians pointed out some weaknesses possibly leading to failures of the system. In an article published by Hoy, Enrique Mafla -Ecuadorian computer expert- pointed out that issues with the source code and the awarding system had been detected before E-day. He signaled Scytl as responsible for them. 

Fabián Auz, informatics delegate from SUMA, also claimed there had been poor planning of the technical audits prior to the election, and that several problems had been spotted.

During the days that followed Election Day, and while the entire nation was demanding results, Scytl representatives acknowledged problems with their application. However, they are now fighting back claiming their system performed as planned, that it provided timely results, and that they met all contractual obligations.

It is hard to judge at this point who will finally be blamed for jeopardizing the election. Every effort needs to be made to ensure zero delays occur. But a one-month delay is not acceptable. Not in the age of instant communications, not with the advanced election technology now available in the market.