The idea of using electronic devices in political elections occurs long before the birth of the Internet (which for the purposes of this Focus On is dated in the late 1980s, after the interconnection of the ARPANET and NSFNET and the emergence of commercial Internet service providers). Various forms of electronic voting machines were invented around the world in the second half of the 19th century. They focused on the voting procedure in Parliament and they all suffered the same fate: Politicians rejected them, mostly because they were afraid of changing existing voting procedures. Debates on mechanical voting machines go even further back to the beginning of the 19th century, e.g. in the British Parliament.

In the middle of the 20th century, voting technology that was aimed at counting ballot papers was started to be used in polling stations. In 1959, the Norden Division of the United Aircrafts used marksense scanners for counting ballots (Norden Electronic Vote Tallying System). It required the use of special ink to mark the ballot. A few years later, in 1965, the first optical mark vote tabulator was developed (Votronic). It could sense marks made with a graphite pencil. Around the same time, in the mid-20th century, punch-card voting systems were started to be used. The first such system was Votomatic. Punch card voting systems were in use for a long time. After the US presidential elections in the year 2000, the popularity of punch-card voting systems decreased. In the 1970ies another type of voting machine was invented: in 1974, the first direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machine was developed in the US and used in a legally binding election.

Since the Internet Revolution in the late 20th century, various countries are experimenting with e-voting. In some countries, the use of voting technologies in elections or referendums forms a regular part of the electoral process, while other countries deliberately refrain from using electronic voting technology. Early deployments of remote Internet voting in legally binding elections or referendums include municipal elections in Estonia in 2005, municipal elections in the Canadian State of Ontario in 2003 (where voters from 12 municipalities could vote electronically) and a national referendum in 2004 in Switzerland (where voters from four municipalities in the canton of Geneva could cast their ballot electronically).