New technology is not only considered a pressing necessity for electoral modernization, but it has also become a status symbol for many organizations and countries. The question is not whether to employ new technology, but how much to use and at what cost. Examples below from countries at different levels of socioeconomic development examine this feature of electoral systems.
In Australia, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has proposed to upgrade its Roll Management System (RMANS) and the supporting IT capacity. This will be undertaken over a four-year period and will enable the MANS to integrate with other Web-based systems, exploit image and optical character-recognition technologies, meet e-government standards, and more easily adapt to new technologies as they emerge. Pilot programs have been undertaken to test the use of optical scanning and character recognition to process applications for enrollment and other forms. An automated postal voting system is also envisaged. The trials have successfully collected Continuous Roll Update (CRU) enrollment application data and transmitted the information to a RMANS test database. The results of these tests will be reported to government by June 2005. Over the next two to three years, the AEC will further enhance the security of its IT network with the rollout of additional network attached storage (NAS) servers to each division.
In Sweden, investments have been made in new technology and Web-based communication during the past few years. The cost of IT support and technology almost doubled in 2002, when it was a little more than 20 million kroner ($2.6 million). In 1994, the Swedish central EMB was first in the world to publish preliminary and later final election results in real time on the Internet. Results for the parliamentary elections of that year were reported through a reporting receiver to the central EMB (then located at the National Tax Agency) directly from the polling stations. In the parliamentary elections of 1998, the final election results were reported in this way also. The central EMB was established as an independent authority in 2001, and one reason for the structural change was to facilitate the installation of new technology.
In Canada, all aspects of the administration of federal elections, except voting, have been computerized since the 1990s, and the systems are upgraded constantly. The National Register of Elections was established in 1997 as a permanent voter list to replace a door-to-door enumeration system, and this has resulted in considerable savings. Elections Canada also developed REVISE, a system used for the revision of the preliminary lists of electors during an election and to oversee the integration of changes into the Register. In 2003, Elections Canada developed REVISE-2, which allows changes of address across all electoral districts. Also, a Web site has been developed on which a range of training materials, handbooks, forms, election returns, election results and maps are made available.
In Spain, permanent voter lists are computerized and updated on a monthly basis. Early transmission of results is facilitated by high-tech communication. The electoral unit at the Ministry of Interior has developed a Web site with electoral information and results. The use of electronic voting is being tried on a pilot scale. At the national level, a branch of the National Police—a civil guard composed of 70,000 individuals— voted by Internet for its Staff Advisory Committee in 2002 and 2004. On a much smaller scale, a rehearsal with Internet and cellular telephone voting took place in four small municipalities during general elections in May 2004. Prime Minister Zapatero announced in August 2004 that electronic voting might be used in the referendum on the European Constitution early in 2005. Apparently, electronic voting is seen more as a way to encourage voter turnout than to reduce costs.
In other countries like Guatemala, office management and the voter registries are computerized. Furthermore, quick vote counting and transmission of preliminary results are subcontracted with a private firm. Nevertheless, there are no plans to introduce other new technologies like electronic voting.
In Cambodia, the electoral list is compiled in a centralized database. For the past three elections, lists for each polling station have been generated by computer. (A new computer system costing $220,000 was offered to Cambodia in 2001.) Efforts are ongoing to improve technical aspects related to the sorting of voter names and the cleansing of double registrations; the budget for this is around $20,000. There are plans to change the software platform to one that is less expensive to maintain and to provide computer equipment to all provincial offices, including networking capacity; the prospective budget for these operations is $103,000. Such initiatives are bound to improve the technical quality of the list while reducing the costs of technical maintenance. The production of the list on CD-ROM will enhance its accessibility and considerably reduce the cost for political parties to buy the list for their own use.
