From power outages to paper trails: experiences in incorporating technology into the election process

This paper documents work from four authors in the fields of information technology, election assistance, and electronic voting. It questions whether cutting edge technology is being pursued for the sake of being on the cutting edge, or for the sake of the electoral process.

Through their key findings, the authors formulate questions and discussion under three main approaches:

1. Maximising potential for successful election technology

At least five prerequisites are identified by the author which must exist in order to make successful use of technology likely. These include:

• a clear definition of the Electoral Management Body’s (EMB’s) mission to conduct free and fair elections, 
• clear goals for the technology project 
• technology can only effectively help an EMB accomplish its mission if the EMB has a strong sense of that mission and invests the time and energy to communicate it to the system designers.
  

2. The introduction of new technologies from the election administrator’s perspective

Ultimately, the basic questions that any EMB considering new technologies should focus on include the following: 

• will modernisation offer a significant improvement over the system that currently exists? 
•  what types of new technologies being considered make the most sense in terms of cost, capacity, and infrastructure?
  

3. Perspectives on electronic voting

Looking through the history of voting technology, there are at least five distinct reasons that, singly or in combination, have driven electoral authorities to adopt complex election technologies: 

• to centralise control over the conduct of elections 
• to deal with the complexity of voting rules

The document concludes that it is clear these technologies are difficult to administer and that election officials frequently find that they have accepted a burden that is more complex than they are prepared or equipped to handle.