The objective of voting is to allow voters to exercise their right to express their choices regarding specific issues, pieces of legislation, citizen initiatives, constitutional amendments, recalls and/or to choose their government and political representatives. Technology is being used more and more as a tool to assist voters to cast their votes. To allow the exercise of this right, almost all voting systems around the world include the following steps:
- voter identification and authentication
- voting and recording of votes cast
- publication of election results
Technology for voter identification and authentication
Voter identification is required during two phases of the electoral process: first for voter registration in order to establish the right to vote and afterwards, at voting time, to allow a citizen to exercise their right to vote by verifying if the person satisfies all the requirements needed to vote (authentication).
In most countries this process of voter authentication and verification of identity is done manually, but some countries have implemented and others are experimenting with an automated or at least semi-automated method to verify the identity of voters and their right to vote. This implies the existence of an electronic voter register. In fact, the technologies used for voter identification at election time depend on the technologies used to establish the voter register.
Most recent voter identification technologies need to use digitalized voter information and may include the use of:
- smart cards that record a person’s personal information and even biometric data
- database management systems where the digitalized data is stored and managed
- biometric information, such as finger print identification
Smart cards
Smart card technology permits the storage of digital information that can be updated and accessed with an inexpensive reading device that may or may not be linked to a computer network. The smart card, itself, is a plastic card that resembles a credit card and contains a small chip, which includes memory and sometimes a microprocessor. Gold contacts connect the smart card to the reading device. Since it can store more data than a magnetic strip, a smart card can keep the voter’s relevant data, including biometric data, and can also store non permanent data, such as the polling station where the voter is supposed to vote, for instance. Encryption techniques secure the data, and the tiny processor, if it is there, allows the smart card to be programmed for different applications.
Data Base Management Systems
This technology enables the recording, storage and management of required voter data.
Finger printing recognition
While this technology is not new, the electronic methods of recording and recognizing an individual finger print advanced substantially during the last decade of the 20th century. Today, identification can be achieved in a few seconds with reasonable accuracy. As a result, the use of automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS) that record, store, search, match and identify finger prints is rapidly expanding. AFIS can be integrated in a suite of applications that work together to provide a comprehensive fingerprint and palm print identification system.
Technology for voting and recording of votes cast 
Once the voter’s right to vote has been established, the person proceeds to the voting itself. Any credible and reliable voting procedure needs to ensure the voter’s anonymity translated on a secret ballot and freedom of choice meaning that the voter is free of undue pressures. Votes have to be correctly recorded to make certain that every vote counts without being modified.
Through the centuries, different technologies have been used to ensure that a vote is recorded correctly and that it can be accurately counted afterwards. Manual systems using stones, marbles, and paper ballots led to mechanical voting machines and punch cards to achieve faster vote counting. Now electronic voting machines and Internet voting promise more accuracy and convenience.
Voters trust in the voting method is probably the most important consideration in choosing a voting system. In some countries, ballot papers are the most trusted voting method, while others prefer mechanical or electronic machines. Although most countries distrust Internet voting, others are quickly moving to adopt it.
Some countries, especially so called “old democracies”, where voting is not compulsory and that have seen a significant decline in voter’s participation in elections, are aggressively experimenting, with electronic voting machines and with allowing voters to vote using the Internet, usually within a longer period of time.
In the United Sates, mechanical voting machines and punch card systems, which were widely used all over the country to record votes, are being replaced by optical scanning devices and direct electronic recording devices (DRE).
Technology for vote counting
Over the years there has been an increase in pressure to get election results, or at least provisional results, within hours of the closing of the official voting period. This has led to an effort to improve voting systems efficiency and capacity to deliver election results in a short time while ensuring the secrecy of the vote and the accuracy of vote counting.
Many people around the world believe that printed paper ballots (some in Braille for the blind), no matter what the short comings, are still the most accurate way of voting and are the most reliable for vote counting. Others believe that the use of technology protects against fraud and is more accurate and reliable for vote tabulation. In an effort to respond to the pressures of delivering election results in a short period of time, Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) all over the world seem to be following the technology trend.
Technologies used for voting and vote counting are closely related since most voting machines, besides recording a person’s vote, usually have some mechanism, either mechanical or electronic, to count the votes cast into the machine.
The most serious problem with the use of voting machines that count votes can be the lack of a log or paper trail, which could enable a reliable recount in the case of machine failures, suspicion of fraud during vote counting or any other problem. Many vendors of voting systems worldwide are trying to address this problem by providing some kind of paper trail or other trail mechanism to ensure that a vote recount can be done and that election stakeholders can audit both the vote recording and the vote counting at any time during or after the voting session.
Technology for vote tabulation
While vote counting at the lowest level can be manual, tabulation is usually done through a computer or a computer network that may even use basic software such as a spreadsheet, although sometimes a database management system or a custom made program is used.
These vote counting programmes need to be closely scrutinized by software experts to ensure that no fraud is introduced via counting software, which actually can deviate votes to a specific candidate. Programmes with a few lines of code are less likely to introduce vicious code then more complex ones], where it becomes easier to hide fraudulent code.
Another issue is data entry errors, which affects election results. There is a need to have a mechanism to help check data entry error. Usually two different people enter the same data in a computer network and then these two independent versions of the same data are compared: if they do not match, the data is rejected; the error verified against the manual values and re-entered.
This is a tedious process that can be simplified if the vote is recorded in a way that it can be automatically counted. This makes the case for the use of voting machines.
There are several ways to get the vote counted by the voting machine to the next level of vote tabulation, which can be a vote counting regional centre or the local, regional or national election authorities. In some countries, the voting machines are connected to a central computer system through a secure local, regional or national network where all the votes can be automatically tabulated at local, regional and national level.
Image:
Launch of Voter Registration Campaign for IT Functional Constituency by Charles Mok is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License.
