Elections are complex, many-faceted events. To organise and run an election, material has to be designed, purchased, stored, distributed and returned; personnel have to be employed, trained, deployed and paid; ballots have to be designed, printed/manufactured, distributed, used by voters, returned, counted, tabulated and reported; voters have to be informed, educated and motivated; candidates must play their parts; the media must be kept informed; and so on.
Technology can be used to facilitate all these different aspects of election management. As these tasks vary widely in nature and scope, a broad range of technologies have electoral applications.
Types of technology with electoral applications can be grouped under the following headings.
Electronic/Mechanical Voting Systems
There are several different kinds of electronic and mechanical voting systems. Some of them use technologies developed specifically for electoral purposes. Electronic or mechanical voting is used widely in the United States and to a lesser extent in a small number of other countries around the world.
The main types of electronic or mechanical voting systems include:
- Mechanical voting/tabulation systems
- Punchcard voting/tabulation systems
- Machine readable (optical scanning) voting/tabulation systems
- Direct recording electronic systems
For more detail, see Electronic/Mechanical Voting Systems
Scanning
Electronic scanning systems are used to convert data marked manually on paper into electronic form. While scanning is often used to capture voting data, using machine-readable ballots (see Electronic/Mechanical Voting Systems), scanning can also be used to capture other data, such as lists of electors who have voted or details shown on forms.
There are four main types of optical scanning technologies:
- Optical Mark Reading (OMR)
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
- Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR)
- Imaging Technology
For more detail, see Optical Scanning Systems
Identification Systems
There are several stages in the election process when a need arises to reliably identify a person. The obvious stage is when a person votes, but identification systems may also be needed when a person registers to vote, or where an employee needs access to a workplace or a computer system.
Some countries rely on the honesty of their voters, and do not require voters to provide proof of their identity. Others do require proof, leading to a need for an identification system.
As electronic voting becomes more widespread and more automated, particularly where voting is introduced on the internet or by telephone, identification systems become crucial to ensure that only eligible voters are able to vote.
There are a range of different kind of identification systems:
- Identity cards
- Personal Identity Numbers (PINs)
- Bio-identification systems (including voice, hand, finger/thumb, retinal identification systems)
- Digitised photography
- Barcoding
- Public Key Infrastructure/Electronic signatures
- Passwords
For more detail, see Identification Systems
Internet
The internet - the world-wide network of computers accessible by anyone with the necessary technology - can be used for electoral purposes in a variety of ways.
Some of the electoral applications of the internet include:
- Publishing information for voters, candidates, the media and other clients
- Electronic voting
- Email
- Voter registration
- On-line commerce
- Election results publishing
- Campaign finance reporting and disclosure
- In-house intranets
For more detail, see Internet
Communications
Communications are essential to the conduct of modern elections. In order to organise and run an election, a range of communication methods need to be employed. Voice, data, documents and images can all be transmitted electronically. The technology used for these purposes ranges from tried and relatively simple ones, like the telephone or radio, to newer, more sophisticated ones, such as microwave or satellite transmissions.
Some of the electronic communications methods used for electoral applications include:
- Telecommunications lines (phone/fax/cable/internet/intranet/data lines)
- Radio
- Television
- Satellites
- Microwaves
For more detail, see Communications
Office Automation
Personal computer-based office automation software has become an indispensable part of election management in many countries. Word processing programs have replaced typewriters; spreadsheet programs have replaced ledger books; database programs have replaced paper-based electoral rolls, inventories and staff lists; and personal organiser programs have replaced paper diaries.
Starting with basic, cumbersome word processing and spreadsheet programs in the 1970s, by the 1990s office automation programs had become very sophisticated. These programs have served to empower ordinary office workers by enabling them to complete tasks in-house that once had to be sent off-site to be completed by specialists.
For example, desktop publishing programs allow relative novices to produce professional-quality publications, where once even the simplest of typesetting tasks had to be sent to professional typesetters and printers. Database and spreadsheet programs running on high-powered personal computers allow ordinary users to input, store and use data in ways that once would only have been possible on large main-frame computers operated by specialist programmers.
For more detail, see Office Automation
Specialised electronic/mechanical devices
In addition to standard computers and electronic voting devices, there is a wide range of specialised electronic/mechanical devices that can be used for electoral purposes. For example:
- Counting machines
- Letter openers
- Mail inserting machines
- Label printers
- Overhead projectors
- Televisions/videos
- Electronic whiteboards
- Date stampers
- Automatic numbering machines
For more detail, see Specialised Electronic/Mechanical Devices
Non-electronic Innovations
Some uses of technology for election purposes are not electronic or mechanical. Most of these uses involve innovative use of manufactured materials. For example:
- Plastics, for ballot boxes, voting compartments and security seals
- Cardboard, for ballot boxes, voting compartments and polling place furniture
- Tamper evident materials
- Dyes and inks to prevent multiple voting
For more detail, see Non-electronic Innovations
Sources:
United States Federal Electoral Commission internet site, http://www.fec.gov/elections.htm (and linked pages on Voting Systems), 28 February 2000.
