Electronic Voting Experiment in the 1997 Local Elections

The first experimental piloting of electronic voting in political elections in Portugal was carried out on 14 December 1997 during the 1997 Local Elections and was organised by the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Procedures-STAPE. It took place in the ward of São Sebastião da Pedreira (Lisbon), without the results counting towards the official results.

The voters of this ward had the opportunity to try out electronic voting using a voting machine designed by the Portuguese company OMRON Electronics Ltd. The machine had a touch screen where the ballot appeared and voting was carried out. An electronic card reader with a chip (like an ATM electronic cash card) which was formatted and identified as being a voting key, and empty of votes, was given to each elector to enable them to vote using the electronic machine. There was also a mobile phone telecommunications interface which remained disconnected during voting and which was used, once a printout of the final voting results had been made, to communicate to the centre for vote counting. This communication was also possible by landline. The vote cast was recorded on the electronic card, which was then placed within an electronic ballot box, and after reading and recording the vote to the ballot box’s memory, the voting information was erased, thus enabling the card to be used by the next voter. In this way, the system allowed for the use of two independent vote counts, one in the voting machine itself and another in an electronic ballot box.

64 volunteer voters participated in the experiment, corresponding to 20% of the electorate of the ward.

STAPE stated at the time that the voters had had a very positive impression regarding the possibility of electronic voting, and had not questioned aspects relating to either security or confidentiality.