Ecuador tried out three different voting technologies in three different areas during its sectional elections of 23 February. The aim was to choose the best possible one to use in future. The pilot involved 10% of the country’s voting population.
Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas
In this province, Smartmatic provided a fully integrated and 100% automated and auditable solution involving 1,121 voting machines along with all the services needed to run them (see the ‘Services’ link to the right and below).
272,673 voters were registered to vote in this province – and all their votes counted towards the actual election results.
Each one could verify their choice was made using their printed paper voting receipts.
Scope
- Ecuador’s voter registry had 11,682,314 voters
- 272,673 of them voted using Smartmatic technology in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas – that’s 2.3% of the total
- They used 1,121 Smartmatic SAES-3376 voting machines.120 were on standby ready if any failed.
- In order to guarantee a flawless execution on election day, the election authorities organised three voting simulations to be carried out in ten polling centres in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas before the election. These simulations included both electronic voting and results transmission.
- 1,121 Polling Boards operated in 53 polling centres; 90.62% corresponded to Santo Domingo and 9.38% to La Concordia. The boards were distributed among 8 urban parishes, 10 rural parishes and 13 electoral zones
- The political-territorial division of the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas comprised: eight (8) urban parishes, ten (10) rural parishes and two (2) cantons
- Voting started at 7 am and ended at 5 pm
Electronic voting: a trend that’s come to Ecuador
Of the world’s 3.1 billion voters, around 1.1 billion (35%) vote using automated systems.
It’s a number that’s constantly growing as more and more electoral commissions discover the benefits.
Why automate?
- No human error – intentional or involuntary
- Increased auditability and transparency
- No subjectivity in decision making
- Faster processes: voting, counting, publishing results and verification, etc.
- Guaranteed vote secrecy and security
Total vs partial automation
Smartmatic’s solution in Ecuador was 100% automated – meaning that there was no room for human error. More than that, however, voters could leave the polling station knowing their vote had been counted correctly, thanks to their paper voting receipts.
Paper trail
Ever since Smartmatic carried out the world’s first election using voting machines producing printed vouchers in 2004, verifiable voting has become a global trend.
The voucher our machines printed in Ecuador allowed voters in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas to verify their choices. It also made post-voting verification much easier as well.
To guarantee total transparency, our technology also offered one physical and two electronic records for every phase of the process. This paper record of every step generated what we call a paper trail, or voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT).
Remember these elections piloted three technologies in three areas. While ours provided this crucial paper trail, the technology employed in the area of La Morita (Quito) did not. Neither did the solution in Azuay. It registered votes in a ballot. At the end of the day a poll station worker manually fed them into a machine for counting. Had the ballot been destroyed, the vote would have been lost.
Services
Besides demonstrating its technology in these sectional elections, Smartmatic offered the following services to guarantee everything worked perfectly:
- Electronic ballot definition, planning, organisation and logistics
- Warehouse infrastructure supply
- Provincial Support Center operation
- Guaranteed data transmission during testing, simulations and election event
- Guaranteed processing and backup of tallying center data
- Electoral results publication infrastructure supply
- Support for every audit
- Engineering test definition, planning and execution (in conjunction with the CNE)
- Voting simulation definition, planning and execution
- Logistical planning
- Supplying staff
- Staff and voter training and education definition, planning and execution
- Hardware and software installation
- Voting machines configuration
- Election-360 (E-360) software installation at the Provincial Support Center
- Configuring and adapting the management system for the production of e-ballots and their components
- Electronic election kit preparation, deployment and collection
How they voted?
Here’s a step-by-step description of how a person participating in our portion of the pilot would have voted:
- Upon arriving at the polling centre, the voter presents his or her ID card or passport so the polling board can find them on the voter registry
- The president of the board presses the activation button and the voting process begins
- The voter makes his or her choice using the voting machine’s touch screen
- The voter can then either verify or change his or her choice
- Having verified their choice, the voter then confirms his or her selection by pressing the ‘VOTE’ button on screen
- The machine prints a voting voucher showing the selected option
- The voter folds it with the printed side facing in and puts it in the ballot box
- The voter signs the poll book and gets his or her ID card back plus a voting certificate