20 Facts About Electronic voting

Electronic voting is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting ballots.

Electronic voting technology intends to speed the counting of ballots, reduce the cost of paying staff to count votes manually and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters.

Key issues with electronic voting are therefore the openness of a system to public examination from outside experts, the creation of an authenticatable paper record of votes cast and a chain of custody for records.

The newer optical scan Electronic voting systems allow a computer to count a voter's mark on a ballot.

In Brazil, the use of DRE Electronic voting machines has been associated with a decrease error-ridden and uncounted votes, promoting a larger enfranchisement of mainly less educated people in the electoral process, shifting government spending toward public healthcare, particularly beneficial to the poor.

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Internet Electronic voting systems have gained popularity and have been used for government elections and referendums in Estonia, and Switzerland as well as municipal elections in Canada and party primary elections in the United States and France.

Internet Electronic voting has been widely used in sub-national participatory budgeting processes, including in Brazil, France, United States, Portugal and Spain.

Paper-based Electronic voting systems originated as a system where votes are cast and counted by hand, using paper ballots.

In 2002, in the United States, the Help America Vote Act mandated that one handicapped accessible Electronic voting system be provided per polling place, which most jurisdictions have chosen to satisfy with the use of DRE Electronic voting machines, some switching entirely over to DRE.

One device, the Electronic voting Unit is used by the voter, and another device called the control unit is operated by the electoral officer.

Public network DRE voting system is an election system that uses electronic ballots and transmits vote data from the polling place to another location over a public network.

Internet Electronic voting systems have been used privately in many modern nations and publicly in the United States, the UK, Switzerland and Estonia.

Security experts have found security problems in every attempt at online Electronic voting, including systems in Australia, Estonia, Switzerland, Russia, and the United States.

Similarly, a further study of the Swiss case found that while online Electronic voting did not increase overall turnout, it did induce some occasional voters to participate who would have abstained were online Electronic voting not an option.

Electronic voting is perceived to be favored moreover by a certain demographic, namely the younger generation such as Generation X and Y voters.

Online Electronic voting is widely used privately for shareholder votes, and other private organizations.

Charles Stewart of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that 1 million more ballots were counted in the 2004 USA presidential election than in 2000 because electronic voting machines detected votes that paper-based machines would have missed.

An internet Electronic voting system called "Caveat Coercitor" shows how coercion evidence in Electronic voting systems can be achieved.

Fundamental challenge with any Electronic voting machine is to produce evidence that the votes were recorded as cast and tabulated as recorded.

One method to detect errors with Electronic voting machines is parallel testing, which are conducted on the Election Day with randomly picked machines.