A number of automated devices are marketed as a means of improving voting methods and reducing costs, especially staffing costs. Some of the machines claim to offer a high degree of reliability and resistance to electoral malpractice. Many are now capable of providing audit trail facilities. These include EVMs, which have been used in countries such as Australia, Belgium, Bhutan, Brazil, India, the United States and Venezuela. Although there is no reliable cost- effectiveness analysis on the use of new technology for voting and counting, there is evidence that technology such as EVMs may reduce election costs over time, especially costs associated with the printing and storage of ballot papers and counting votes. The use of OMR devices to count votes can also provide accuracy and time effectiveness in the electoral process while still ensuring the existence of a paper ballot that can be physically examined if necessary in the course of post-election disputes.
It is important to weigh the use of new electoral technology against the level of public trust and confidence in the electoral process, to involve stakeholders in pilot testing new electronic systems, and to obtain major stakeholders’ agreement on the introduction of new technology. Due to the potential lack of transparency of e-voting and counting, the use of EVMs may generate distrust among detractors, who can argue that such technology can easily be manipulated. This is not surprising, given the security deficiencies and the omissions and errors in recording votes that are regularly reported in the use of DRE machines and other EVMs in the United States.
The accuracy and integrity of these machines are only as good as those of the companies and persons that design, programme, test and maintain them. There are ways of introducing EVMs that can provide integrity, cost and time benefits to the election process — provided that clear controls and accountability measures, such as those described in Chapter 9, have been implemented. The Council of Europe’s 2010 e-voting handbook provides useful background for such controls.
It is not wise for a poor country to go high tech while failing to feed and develop its own people. The use of electoral high technology such as biometric voter registration cards, computerized electoral registers, and electronic voting and counting should be weighed against other pressing national priorities such as health and education. Electoral technology may be more sustainable where it can be used for other ongoing functions. Its introduction needs to be compared not only to the immediate costs and alternative uses of funds, but also to the future costs and human skills required for its maintenance. Assessing sustainability needs to consider the longer-term consequences.
The counting process is a prime target for automation and cost reduction in many countries, and many automated machines both record votes and tally them. Unless paper audit trails are recorded for each vote, transparency may be lacking in these automated counts. The counting process is considered to be a vulnerable part of an election, and always needs to be conducted in a transparent and verifiable manner by well-trained staff.
The requirement for openness at all stages of the counting and tabulation of votes may also limit the cost-saving measures that can be introduced into manual vote counts. Stakeholders in the Union elections in Zanzibar in 1995 and 2000 and Kenya in 2007 complained that events that took place during the tallying phase of the count adversely affected the election results and underlined the importance of transparency in the entire counting process. These cases involved changes made by unknown persons to some of the count results subsequent to figures being issued from polling stations. Opposition parties believed that the interference affected the outcome of the elections.
