E-voting in Southeast Asia is growing stronger

In our digital-driven world, technological innovation has become an essential pillar to carry out routine activities as well as to stay updated and at par with others. Elections are one of the many areas where some countries are reaping the benefits technology has to offer.

Three examples in the election field are the registration of voters, the adoption of electronic voting machines, and the use of digital platforms to share and inform election details to stakeholders via SMS, emails, or social networks.

Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Singapore currently are global technology hubs. Yet, they have not taken full advantage of it to make election processes easier, more robust, and public friendlier.

Most South Asians[1] and Southeast Asians[2] have historically relied on the traditional methods of elections, i.e. with limited use of technology, and they continue to do so. Voters still must go through dated registration and voting processes, including long queues to manually cast their ballots, and waiting days -or weeks- to get official election results.

India and The Philippines

India in Southern Asia and The Philippines in Southeast Asia, however, have led the train of change on e-voting. For the last decade, voters in both countries have been casting ballots through electronic voting machines, with significant and positive results for Election management bodies (EMB) regarding ease of use, speediness, and efficiency of the voting technology.

According to a recent paper: Independent Electoral Commissions (IECs) for Inclusive, Honest, Orderly, and Peaceful Elections presented at the 25th World Congress of Political Science (July 2018), “The automation of elections in the Philippines despite the numerous organizational and technical issues, had an overall positive effect on public trust in the voting process, and public confidence in the COMELEC. The adoption of an automated election system also triggered institutional changes and improvements in the COMELEC.”

Other countries in the region are following The Philippines and India, and they are starting procedures to upgrade and trial new election technologies. Electronic voting pilots have taken place in Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, and Mongolia. While Biometric voting registration has been adopted in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Nepal.

Social networks help

Let us not forget social media is also inducing voting consciously in the region to a vast extent. People in Southeast Asia are using these networks to convey an array of ideas and perspectives diluting knowledge for others.

Social platforms are acting as a forum to discuss the pros and cons of a candidate or a party contesting elections, helping leaders or candidates to connect with the public, and grasp a trend of public needs and expectations.

Therefore, even if countries in Southern and Southeast Asia are not widely benefitting from election technology just yet, there are some leading examples and several domains in which digital transformation is smoothing the election cycles.

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[1] Current territories of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka form South Asia.

[2] Current territories of Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Singapore, The Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam form Southeast Asia.

How badly were US elections hacked?

After the 2016 elections in the United States, a large number of headlines appeared regarding the supposed intervention of hackers to manipulate the voting system and to change the will of the citizens.

Thousands of web pages spread fake news through social networks and generated misinformation. Today we know that Russian nationals were indicted for conducting an illegal "information warfare" effort to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, possibly distorting the popularity of Donald Trump’s candidacy.

The real impact of such campaigns is hard to measure: recent research on the real effects found that most voters reading such fake news already supported their candidate. In other words, they somehow favored voting for President Trump; or they already were not too enthusiastic to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Besides this media campaign, there were the hacking events against the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Also, there were attempts to attack state election offices where intruders sought to hack voter registration databases in Illinois and Arizona.

However, there is no evidence to proof that even a single voting machine was hacked. As the article Voting machines in America are reassuringly hard to hack; Voter rolls are not from The Economist points out, “Rigorous software studies and vote counting revealed that there is no evidence of manipulation, change or votes eliminated during the 2016 elections”.

Also, this article from Politico: What we know about Russia’s election hacking states that “Officials from the Department of Homeland Security say they haven’t seen any evidence of digital tampering with election organizations, individuals or systems — though that doesn’t rule out some broader effort to undermine public faith in the U.S. political system or sow unrest”.

Although voting machines were not hacked and not a single vote was changed, Russia might be still trying. “It is 2018, and we continue to see Russian targeting of American society in ways that could affect our midterm elections” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats stated. Therefore, the US should be seeking to adopt a more secure, accessible and reliable election system – one that can only be achieved through modernization.

One out of three US voters have concerns about the accuracy and reliability of the voting technology used at their polling place, and one out of five Americans who voted in the 2016 presidential contest do not fully trust that the national election results were tabulated accurately. However, they also propose a clear solution: eight out of 10 voters believe that upgrading the nation’s voting technology will strengthen and build trust in future elections –a fact the administration and its commissions should not ignore.

To achieve this, there is not only the matter of modernizing and upgrading the voting systems. All sectors involved (media, government, NGOs) and influencers should debunk the myths that are generated daily by false news that seek to warp democracy in the United States. By the way, here an Expert advise on how to fight fake news.

Controversy surrounds election automation in DRC

The controversy around the upcoming DRC elections has only increased after the South Korean Government distanced itself from Miru Systems, the Korean company that will be providing voting equipment to the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI in French).

The decision of the Korean government to cut ties with Miru for this project comes as a surprise to many as the government, through its International Cooperation Agency (Koica), has funded and supported basically every international election project in which Miru has been involved.

The Korean Government seems to be lining up behind other world powers who have expressed their concern about the way automation is being imposed. In February, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, stated: "an unfamiliar technology for the first time during a crucial election is an enormous risk." Several other countries also manifested their skepticism about the idea of introducing technology in an already highly-polarized political landscape.

Another critical setback for the automation project is the refusal of A-Web, a Korean non-profit organization, to participate in the election providing support. “Until last year, A-Web, a Korean non-profit organization, provided technical support to CENI regarding the use of the voting machines. However, A-Web severed ties with the Congo, consistent with the position of the Korean government," the embassy statement read.

Three years ago, Miru had basically no international experience. However, things changed when it partnered with A-Web and Koica, the Korea International Cooperation Agency founded by the government to administer grant aid and technical cooperation programs.

With Korean funding from Koica and A-Web’s endorsement, Miru signed a series of election business deals, in many cases bypassing public bids.

Between 2014 and 2015, the troika formed by A-Web, Miru and Koica provided election technology and support to Kyrgyzstan. The funding provided by Koica allowed the country to purchases optical scanners from Miru. A-Web provided election support and observation.

A-Web, Miru, and Koica were also very much involved in the 2017 referendum held in Ecuador. South Korea donated 1,850 Miru scanners. And for the 2018 Legislative and Municipal elections held this year in El Salvador, Miru provided optical scanners to digitize tallying reports. Again, Koica provided funds, A-Web election support and election observers.

In spite of the success this troika has had, something different may be happening this time around. While declining to be part of the election, Seoul emphasized that it couldn’t force a private company -Miru in this case- to refuse participating, "The Korean government possesses no legal right to forcibly discourage a private Korean company from exporting its products."

With two of the members of the troika out, Miru is left alone combating the impression that automation will lead to a more transparent and trustworthy election process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Only time will tell.

Video 1 from Noticiero Hechos Estelar. El Salvador.

                                       Video 2 from Noticiero Hechos Estelar. El Salvador.

El Salvador: An open path to election modernization

During the recent Legislative and Municipal elections held on March 4, El Salvador’s elections tribunal implemented a software solution to consolidate, aggregate and publish results, which allowed them to offer reliable and timely preliminary counts. 

Back in 2015, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE in Spanish) took three weeks to come up with an official tally. With this fresh memory in mind, and given the recent events in neighbouring Honduras (where they had to wait 21 days for results, amid protests and unrest that left 33 dead), the TSE decided to take no risks. In addition to the software solution used to announce winners only a few hours after voting ended, the TSE also utilized another technology solution to audit its own preliminary results. 

Mission accomplished. The preliminary count was published in real-time as the tallying reports were being processed. Although these results were not official, public opinion knew in less than 24 hours what the voting trends per party were, with 79% of the voting records processed. A hundred percent of the records were made available online 36 hours later. Quite a feat considering previous elections.

Although some politicians tried to belittle the work of the TSE and the companies that processed the data (especially after an incident was reported with the preferred votes in San Salvador and La Libertad), these results are auditable. And most importantly, the official results shown a month after the vote fully matched the preliminary count.

One additional benefit of the incorporation of technology to process preliminary count, was that once the unofficial results were made public, the TSE was able to begin their official count without much political pressure. Knowing what the voting trends were calmed the waters and allowed authorities to finish aggregating tallying reports.  

Unlike what transpired in 2015, authorities, political parties, the media and citizens were able to follow the preliminary count on a public website. It was precisely this level of transparency and auditability what allowed people to detect the inconsistencies found in the departments of San Salvador and La Libertad. Parties and citizens were able to compare the digitized voting records against the results being published.

Although the election observation missions from the European Union (EU) and the Organization of American States (OAS) acknowledged the complexity of El Salvador’s voting system, they praised the efforts made by TSE with the addition of technology. The modernization of all the processes to generate preliminary results, helped the country to overcome the issues of 2015.

These 2018 elections, held in the most densely populated country in the Americas, are a clear demonstration that implementing technology in the vote count -one of the most crucial phases of any election-, makes the overall process faster and more transparent. Results were available on Election Night and were audited in real time.