The ACE Elections and Technology topic area was one of three new topic areas developed after the original nine topic areas were launched on the website in 1998. (The other new areas were Media and Elections, and Election Integrity).
After the launch it quickly became clear to the project team that the use of technology for election purposes impacts so many aspects of electoral administration that it warranted its own topic area. Unlike the other topic areas, which focus on specific areas related to the organisation of elections, such as Electoral Systems, Parties and Candidates, Voter Education and Boundary Delimitation, the Elections and Technology topic area cuts across all facets of the electoral process.
In 2000, Therese Laanela, Project Manager of the ACE project for International IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), became coordinator of the Elections and Technology topic area. She assigned the job of lead writer to Phil Green, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Electoral Commissioner who had contributed to the Vote Counting topic area.
Phil has been the ACT Electoral Commissioner since 1994, a position he still occupies at the time of writing in 2006. Prior to this, he worked for the Australian Electoral Commission from 1982-1992. The ACT Electoral Commission was established in 1994 to conduct elections for the ACT Legislative Assembly, the local parliament for Australia’s national capital. With the advantage of starting a new election management body (EMB), Phil was able to become an early adopter of technology for election purposes, using computers to automate many election tasks.
When Phil began work on the Elections and Technology topic area, he was involved with introducing an electronic voting and counting system for ACT Legislative Assembly elections. This system (see www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html ) was subsequently used with great success at the 2001 and 2004 Legislative Assembly elections. The ACT electronic voting system remains the only electronic voting system in use for parliamentary elections in Australia (as of March 2006).
Phil took the view that the topic area should be drafted from an election management perspective, rather than a technical viewpoint. While there were plenty of technical instruction manuals out there, there was no lay person’s guide to applying technology to elections. After some initial guidance from Therese and others on the ACE project team, Phil started writing, taking leave without pay from his job as ACT Electoral Commissioner over several months.
The first version of the Elections and Technology topic area went live on the ACE website in 2001 with case studies provided by contributors from around the world, including Palestine, Russia, St. Lucia and the US. Given the nature of technology, the content was almost immediately out of date due to the emergence of new software, new hardware and new experiments in voting technology. The 2001 US election focused the world’s attention on “hanging chads” from voting punch cards, and led to calls for “voter verified paper trails” for electronic voting systems.
Aware that the elections and technology topic area would require regular updating to keep it current and relevant, the ACE project team requested that Maria Helena Alves, a founding member of the ACE project and its Project Manager for the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs until the end of 2002, take on the task.
Helena had built a career as a software systems engineer in private industry until joining the UN New York Computer Centre in 1981. In 1990, she joined the UN Department of Technical Co-operation and Development (UNDTCD) where she worked as an advisor on Information Technology (IT) systems for public sector agencies in developing countries. In 1992, she became involved in the organisation of elections and since then she has designed and managed several UN/UNDP technical assistance projects. She has also participated in numerous technical assistance missions to assess Electoral Commission needs and to assist with specific technical issues.
Providing technical assistance to EMBs in charge of organising elections made Helena aware that more widely available information on issues related to electoral administration was needed. She was invited in 1995 by Horacio Boneo, the first director for electoral assistance of the newly founded International IDEA, to participate in a brainstorming session with experts from all over the world on how to create and implement a globally accessible information resource on administration and cost of elections.
Helena embraced the pilot project produced by the meeting and continued to work on the project to define the technical approach and content requirements for the ACE Electronic Publication, even after retiring from the UN. She coordinated the preparation of the Boundary Delimitation, Election Integrity, Legal Framework, and Voting Operation topic areas for the ACE Project versions 0 and 1.
Helena is proud of what the ACE project has achieved and has cherished working with a great group of people from the member organizations. She says that the experience has been one of the most rewarding of her professional life.
Helena also shares the view with Phil and the other ACE project team members that the Elections and Technology topic area is best approached from an election management perspective. References to more technical oriented sources are made throughout the topic area to assist technicians’ specific needs.
