Electronic voting by country varies and may include voting machines in polling places, centralized tallying of paper ballots, and internet voting. Many countries use centralized tallying. Some also use electronic voting machines in polling places. Very few use internet voting. Several countries have tried electronic approaches and stopped because of difficulties or concerns about security and reliability.
Electronic voting requires capital spending every few years to update equipment, as well as annual spending for maintenance, security, and supplies. If it works well, its speed can be an advantage where many contests are on each ballot. Hand-counting is more feasible in parliamentary systems where each level of government is elected at different times, and only one contest is on each ballot, for the national or regional member of parliament, or for a local council member.
Polling place electronic voting or Internet voting examples have taken place in Australia,Ron McCallum, 'Participating in Political and Public life' (2011) 32 AltLJ 80. Belgium, Brazil, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Namibia, the Netherlands (Rijnland Internet Election System), Norway, Peru, Switzerland, the UK, Venezuela, Pakistan and the Philippines.
To this date no Free or Open Source electronic voting systems have been used in elections.
Summary table + Summary of status of electronic voting in parliamentary elections by country Country Technology currently used in elections Year of introduction Notes National Municipal Argentina No Some 2009 Australia No Some During the 2007 federal election, electronic voting was made available for blind and low-vision persons. Bangladesh No Yes 2010 Used partially at the municipal level since 2010 and for the first time in a general election in 2018. Bangladesh reverted to ballot box for the 2023 General Election after opposition led by BNP protested against use of Electronic Voting Machines. Belgium Yes Yes 1999 Brazil Yes Yes 1996 BulgariaYesYes2021Electronic voting is mandatory for sections with more than 300 registered voters. Paper ballots are still in use both in smaller sections and as backup in case of equipment malfunction or other unforeseen events. Burkina Faso No No Canada No Some Several reviews into use in federal elections concluded against using it Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Yes No 2018/2019 Estonia Yes Yes 2005 Finland No No Trialed 2008; Review in 2016-17 concluded against internet voting - risks outweighed benefits France By citizens abroad No 2017 review concluded against introducing internet voting. Citizens abroad vote by internet in legislative and consular elections, not for President or EU Georgia Yes No 2024 Germany No No Trialed in 2005, but court found it unconstitutional in 2009 Ghana No No India Yes Yes 1982 Ireland No No 2002 System scrapped in 2010 Italy No No 2006 Japan No Yes 2002 Currently no municipal governments use electronic voting - Last city stopped in 2018 Kazakhstan No No 2004 Discontinued 2011 Lithuania No No Plans to introduce internet voting are being drafted, but it is unclear when it will be implemented Malaysia No No Mozambique No No Namibia 2014 Netherlands No 1990s Discontinued 2007 Norway No No Trialed 2003PakistanNoNoPrototype Electronic Voting Machine developed in 2021 and presented to the public through media. The Election Commission of Pakistan raised 37 objections regarding the EVM in review. No final decision regarding use by the Election Commission yet taken. Islamabad High Court in an judgement regarding the case of EVM said "Use of EVM needs sanction of Parliament of Pakistan" Philippines Yes Yes 2008 First implemented on 2008 Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) election in August 11, 2008 and later prepared for the May 10, 2010 adaptation to the national level from 2009 to 2010 after the computerized system was used at ARMM. Currently in review by Congress due to technical glitches, defective vote-counting machines, SD cards and transparency issues. Romania Limited trial 2003 South Korea For central counting of ballot papers only Spain No No Sweden No No Switzerland Internet voting for expatriates only from 2014 United Arab Emirates Yes United Kingdom No Used for central counting of ballots in Scotland from 2007 United States Yes Yes Venezuela Yes Yes 1998 Zimbabwe No No
Argentina
Used in provincial elections in Salta since 2009, in Neuquén since 2019, and in local elections in Buenos Aires City in 2015.
Australia
Origin The first known use of the term CyberVote was by Midac Technologies in 1995 when they ran a web based vote regarding the French nuclear testing in the Pacific region. The resulting petition was delivered to the French government on a Syquest removable hard disk.The Age, Melbourne; September 5, 1995 (from International Internet NewsClips)
In October 2001 electronic voting was used for the first time in an Australian parliamentary election. In that election, 16,559 voters (8.3% of all votes counted) cast their votes electronically at polling stations in four places. The Victorian State Government introduced electronic voting on a trial basis for the 2006 State election.
Accessibility Approximately 300,000 impaired Australians voted independently for the first time in the 2007 elections. The Australian Electoral Commission has decided to implement voting machines in 29 locations.Blind and visually impaired will be able to cast secret ballots, Macey, Jennifer. ABC's The World Today
Internet voting
iVote is a remote electronic voting system in New South Wales that allows eligible voters a chance to vote over the Internet. However, during the New South Wales state election in 2015, there were several reports that over 66,000 electronic votes could have been compromised. Although the iVote website is secure, security specialist believe that a third party website was able to attack the system. This was the first time a major vulnerability was discovered in the middle of an ongoing poll.
In 2007 Australian Defence Force and Defence civilian personnel deployed on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands had the opportunity to vote via the Defence Restricted Network with an Australian Electoral Commission and Defence Department joint pilot project.Electronic Voting Trial for Deployed Defence Personnel from the Australian Electoral Commission After votes were recorded, they were encrypted and transmitted from a Citrix server to the REV database A total of 2012 personnel registered for and 1511 votes were successfully cast in the pilot,Evaluation of the remote electronic voting trial for overseas based ADF personnel electors at the 2007 Federal Election, Australian Electoral Commission. March 2008 costing an estimated $521 per vote.Remote Electronic Voting at the 2007 Federal Election for Overseas Australian Defence Force Personnel, a joint report between the AEC’s E-voting Team and Defence. Electronically submitted votes were printed following polling day, and dispatched to the relevant Divisions for counting.
Bangladesh
Belgium
Electronic voting in Belgium started in 1991. It is widely used in Belgium for general and municipal elections and has been since 1999. Electronic voting in Belgium has been based on two systems known as Jites and Digivote. Both of these have been characterized as "indirect recording electronic voting systems" because the voting machine does not directly record and tabulate the vote, but instead, serves as a ballot marking device.Douglas W. Jones, The Sailau E-Voting System, Direct Democracy: Progress and Pitfalls of Election Technology , Michael Yard, ed.; see the section titled Indirect Recording Electronic Voting Systems, International Foundation for Electoral Systems, Sept. 2010; pages 77-78. Both the Jites and Digivote systems record ballots on cardboard magnetic stripe cards. Voters deposit their voted ballots into a ballot box that incorporates a magnetic stripe reader to tabulate the vote. In the event of a controversy, the cards can be recounted by machine.Expert Visit on New Voting Technologies: 8 October 2006 Local Elections, Kingdom of Belgium, OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, no date.
In the elections on 18. May 2003 there was an electronic voting problem reported where one candidate got 4096 extra votes. The error was only detected because she had more preferential votes than her own list which is impossible in the voting system. The official explanation was The spontaneous inversion of a bit at the position 13 in the memory of the computer (i.e. a soft error).
Brazil
Electronic voting in Brazil was introduced in 1996, when the first tests were carried in the state of Santa Catarina. Since 2000, all Brazilian elections have been fully electronic. By the 2000 and 2002 elections more than 400,000 electronic voting machines were used nationwide in Brazil and the results were tallied electronically within minutes after the polls closed.
In 1996, after tests conducted by more than 50 municipalities, the Brazilian Electoral Justice launched their "voting machine". Since 2000, all Brazilian voters are able to use the electronic ballot boxes to choose their candidates. In 2010 presidential election which had more than 135 million voters, the result was announced 75 minutes after the end of voting. The electronic ballot box is made up of two micro-terminals (one located in the voting cabin and the other with the voting board representative) which are connected by a 5-meter cable. Externally, the micro-terminals have only a numerical keyboard, which does not accept any command executed by the simultaneous pressure of more than one key. In case of power failure, the internal battery provides the energy or it can be connected to an automotive battery.
A 2017 study of Brazil found no systematic difference in vote choices between online and offline electorates.
Canada
Federal and provincial elections use paper ballots, but electronic voting has been used since at least the 1990s in some municipalities. Today optical scan voting systems are common in municipal elections.
There are no Canadian electronic voting standards.
Committee reports and analysis from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia have all recommended against provincial Internet voting. A federal committee has recommended against national Internet voting.
Some municipalities in Ontario and Nova Scotia provide Internet voting.
The 2012 New Democratic Party leadership election was conducted partially online, with party members who were not in attendance at the convention hall able to cast their leadership vote online. However, for part of the day the online voting server was affected by a denial-of-service attack, delaying the completion and tabulation of results."Mulcair handed NDP reins; Successor to Layton faces big challenges". Calgary Herald, 25 March 2012.