How automated-electronic poll systems fared in other countries

The consensus among Filipinos seems to be that the recent automated and electronic counting and canvassing and transmission of results of our May 10 national and local elections were a good step toward the right direction. Though E-voting (electronic voting) is relatively new to the Philippines, it has been around since the 80s.

India began using electronic voting on an experimental basis in 1982 for a vote on an assembly constituency in the State of Kerala. The country would soon use E-voting in 2003, when amendments to the People’s Representation Act allowed for state elections and by-elections to conducted using
Electronic Voting Machines (EVM). These EVM are produced locally, featuring only a button, beside the party or candidate running, which serves as a counter every time it is pressed. To prevent the takeover of polling places, which has happened frequently before in India, the EVMs have a failsafe feature. Once activated, it locks the EVM from accepting any more votes to prevent tampering.

India has also used their EVM in the 2004 and 2009 national elections for the Indian Parliament. India has a voter population of about 670 million and has 700,000 polling places, making them also the largest sample to undergo E-voting. Despite the large number of voters, the results were known only hours after the polls closed. The speediness of the result is one of the best pros of India’s E-voting system.

The system was offered by India for use here. But the Comelec decided to go through the Smartmatic AES method.

The Venezuelan election in 2004 to recall President Hugo Rafael Chavez also used voting machines from Smartmatic, the international company that provides the Philippines with Precinct Count Optical Scan machines. But instead of using optical scanners to read paper ballots, the Venezuelan election machines used an electronic touch-screen interface.

The election initially appeared to be fair with the result favoring Chavez—nearly 60 percent of the votes
were against his removal as tabulated by the Consejo Nacional Electoral, Venezuela’s Electoral Commission.
The opposition claimed to have found irregularities with the numbers and said the election was fraudulent.

They anomalies alleged were that 400 polling places had at least two or more machines with identical “Yes” votes and that 300 polling places had machines with the exact same number of “No” votes.

The Chavez government initially refused a spot-check audit when the polls closed. It did eventually allow an audit of one percent of the machines, which were allegedly chosen at random. This measure, however, failed to gain significant trust among the public. This controversial issue in Venezuela led to the realization that tampering with electronic voting machines can be done, but verifying the tampering is difficult.

Other countries have chosen to reject E-voting for different reasons.

Ireland scrapped the electronic method for voting twice, in 2004 and 2009. In the local and European election of 2004, the Irish government chose to revert back to the traditional pen and paper after initial testing of voting machines’ systems conducted by the Independent Commission on Electronic Voting revealed errors. The commission also found that the system was susceptible to security threats, and thus recommended that electronic voting not be used for insufficient accuracy and security.

In 2009, Irish Environment Minister John Gormley announced that electronic voting would again be done away with after the government had already spent 51 million euros for the system, not including the payment for the storage of the machines. The decision was made because the Commission on Electronic Voting found that “significant additional costs” would arise if E-voting was implemented.

Gormley announced that these costs could not be justified and that the Irish people were satisfied with the traditional means of pen and paper.

In the Netherlands, electronic voting has been used since the early ‘90s with the international company
Nedap providing the machines. E-voting in the country, however, has been continually opposed by the group called “We Do Not Trust Voting Machines.” The group demonstrated on Dutch television that the machines could be easily tampered with.

In late 2007, a Dutch judge ruled that the election conducted previously that year was unlawful. The 9,000 Nedap machines used for the said election were not adequately certified.

The Dutch government would eventually ban E-voting, opting to return to the pen and paper method, citing the lack of sufficient paper trail as one of the main reasons.

Despite these problems and lessons, several other countries have been continually using E-voting for quite some time.

Brazil began experimenting with E-voting in the state of Santa Catarina back in 1996. Since 2000, all Brazilian elections have been fully electronic.

Electronic voting in Belgium began in 1991 and has been widely used in general and municipal elections since 1999.

Electronic voting is also being partially employed in Germany, France, Italy and some counties in the United States. –RAFAEL PUYAT REPORTER, Manila TImes