Voting operations procedures usually depend on the electoral system and therefore on the relevant legal and regulatory framework, but there are steps common to all voting operations, namely:
- procurement of equipment and supplies needed for allowing voters to cast their vote during the established voting period
- storage of voting equipment and supplies
- transportation of all voting supplies to final destination
- recruitment and management of polling officers
- identification of voting places and publication of respective list
- voter identification and authentication
- publication of election results
- These steps can use specific technologies, such as:
- procurement systems to facilitate and control procurement of equipment and supplies to be used in the voting boots
- inventory systems to control the storage of voting equipment and supplies
- logistic systems to assist the planning of the transportation of all voting supplies to final destination
- database systems to store and manage information related to polling officers and the voters’ lists
- GIS and database systems to facilitate the identification of voting places and respective listing
- voting systems for identification and authentication of voters
- voting systems using optical scanning or direct electronic recording to record and count the votes
- communications systems to support telephone, fax, computer and printers networks.
While considering technology for voting operations it is useful to keep in mind these different technologies, which may be in use already for other electoral administration tasks. Since several independent software systems can run in the same computer, most of these systems can share computer hardware. The same is true for the software, since it is possible to develop different applications to run under the same basic software. For instance
- The GIS software and hardware used for boundary delimitation can also be used to identify polling stations and print the respective lists, although these two applications would run under different and independent programs.
- Database management systems software and hardware used to store voters information and produce the voters’ list can also be used to manage electoral administration human resources.
- Procurement systems software used to manage voting operations procurement can also manage all EMB procurement.
Machines used for the voting itself, on the other hand, are too specific to serve other purposes, but some sharing can be envisaged between districts and even between countries with similar voting requirements.
