Electronic voting by country

Origin

The first known use of the term CyberVote was by Midac 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.

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.

Internet voting

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. 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, costing an estimated $521 per vote. Electronically submitted votes were printed following polling day, and dispatched to the relevant Divisions for counting.

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. 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.

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.

Canada

It is a common misconception that there is no electronic voting in Canada. While federal elections still use paper ballots, electronic voting technology has been used since at least the 1990s in some municipalities. Today optical scan voting systems are common in municipal elections and Internet voting is increasingly used at the municipal level in Ontario and Nova Scotia.

Estonia

Electronic voting in Estonia began in October 2005 local elections when Estonia became the first country to have legally binding general elections using the Internet as a means of casting the vote and was declared a success by the Estonian election officials.

In 2005 Estonia became the first country to offer Internet voting nationally in local elections. 9,317 people voted online.

In 2007 Estonia held its and the world's first National Internet election. Voting was available from February 26 to 28. A total of 30,275 citizens used Internet voting.

In the 2009 local municipal elections, 104,415 people voted over the Internet. This means that roughly 9,5% of the persons with the right to vote gave their vote over the Internet.

In the 2011 parliamentary elections between 24 February and March 2, 140,846 people cast their votes online. 96% of the electronic votes were cast in Estonia and 4% by Estonian citizens residing in 106 foreign countries.

In the 2014 European Parliament elections 31.3% of all participating voters gave their vote over the Internet.

EU CyberVote Project

In September 2000, the European Commission launched the CyberVote project with the aim of demonstrating "fully verifiable on-line elections guaranteeing absolute privacy of the votes and using fixed and mobile Internet terminals". Trials were performed in Sweden, France, and Germany.

Finland

Internet-enabled DRE machines, supplied by the company Scytl, were piloted in the October 2008 municipal elections in three municipalities (Karkkila, Kauniainen and Vihti). While the government still considers the pilot program a success, 232 voters encountered a usability flaw resulting in their votes not being registered. Because of the uncounted votes, the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland ordered new elections in these municipalities.

On October 24, 2016 the Finnish government announced it would study the introduction of national online voting. On February 21, 2017 the working group studying Internet voting for Finland launched, with a target date for completion of its work of November 30, 2017.

France

In January 2007 France's UMP party held a national presidential primary using both remote electronic voting and with 750 polling stations using touch screen electronic voting over the Internet. The election resulted in over 230,000 votes representing a near 70% turnout.

Elections in France utilized remote Internet voting for the first time in 2003 when French citizens living in the United States elected their representatives to the Assembly of French Citizens Abroad. Over 60% of voters chose to vote using the Internet rather than paper. The Forum des droits sur l'Internet (Internet rights forum), published a recommendation on the future of electronic voting in France, stating that French citizens abroad should be able to use Internet voting for Assembly of the French Citizens Abroad elections. This recommendation became reality in 2009, with 6000 French citizens choosing to make use of the system.

Germany

In Germany the only accredited voting machines after testing by the PTB for national and local elections are the ESD1 and ESD2 from the Dutch company Nedap. About 2000 of them have been used in the 2005 Bundestag elections covering approximately 2 million voters. These machines differ only in certain details due to different voting systems from the ES3B hacked by a Dutch citizen group and the Chaos Computer Club on October 5, 2006. Because of this, additional security measures have been applied in the municipality elections on 22. October 2006 in Cottbus, including reading the software from the EPROM to compare it with the source and sealing the machines afterwards. The city of Cottbus ultimately decided not to purchase the Nedap voting system it had previously been leasing.

At the moment there are several lawsuits in court against the use of electronic voting machines in Germany. One of these reached the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in February 2007. Critics cite a lack transparency when recording the votes as intended by the voter and concerns relating to recounts. The certified Nedap machines are DRE systems which do not produce any paper records.

Following a 2005 pilot study during the national elections, wide public support and a unianimous decision by the Senate launched a plan for the implementation of an optical scan voting system based on digital paper in the 2008 state elections of Hamburg. After public claims in September 2007 by the Fraktion der Grünen/GAL and the Chaos Computer Club that the system was vulnerable, the Federal Election Office (Bundeswahlamt) found in public surveys that public distrust of the system was evident. Due to concerns over public confidence, plans for use of the new voting system were canceled.

Germany ended electronic voting in 2009, with the German Federal Constitutional Court finding that the inability to have meaningful public scrutiny meant that electronic voting was unconstitutional.

India

No other country in the world has used electronic voting in as large a scale as India has. Since India is currently the second largest population in the world and therefore by default becomes the largest national population to vote in a democratic process, any use of electronic voting machines on a pan Indian scale would make it the largest instance of electronic voting.

Electronic voting was first introduced in 1982 and was used on an experimental basis in the Parur assembly constituency in the State of Kerala. However the Supreme Court of India struck down this election as against the law in A C Jose v. Sivan Pillai case. Amendments were made to the Representation of Peoples Act to legalise elections using Electronic Voting Machines. In 2003, all state elections and by-elections were held using EVMs.

The EVMs were also used during the national elections held for the Indian Parliament in 2004 and 2009. According to the statistics available through the mainstream media, more than 400 million voters (about 60% of India's eligible voters) exercised their franchise through EVMs in 2009 elections. Tallying such a large number of votes took just a few hours.

In India, Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) system was introduced in 8 of 543 parliamentary constituencies as a pilot project in Indian general election, 2014. VVPAT is implemented in Lucknow, Gandhinagar, Bangalore South, Chennai Central, Jadavpur, Raipur, Patna Sahib and Mizoram constituencies. Voter-verified paper audit trail was first used in an election in India in September 2013 in Noksen (Assembly Constituency) in Nagaland.

Background

From the initial introduction in 1982, to the country- wide use of EVM in 2004, Election commission of India took long and measured steps spanning over a period of nearly two decades, in the matter of electronic voting. In the meanwhile, general elections to various legislative assemblies, and numerous by-elections and two general elections to the Lok Sabha have been conducted using EVMs at all polling stations. The tamper-proof technological soundness of the EVM has been endorsed by a technical experts subcommittee appointed at the initiative of the Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms in 1990. This experts committee (1990) was headed by Prof S.Sampath, then Chairman RAC, Defence Research and Development Organisation, with Prof P.V.Indiresan,then with IIT, Delhi, and Dr C.Rao Kasarabada, then Director Electronic Research and Development Center, Trivandrum as members. Subsequently, the Commission has also been consulting a group of technical experts comprising Prof P.V. Indiresan (who was also part of the earlier committee referred to above) and Prof D.T. Sahani and Prof A.K Agarwala both of IIT Delhi, regularly, on all EVM related technical issues. Besides, the Commission has in place elaborate administrative measures and procedural checks-and –balances aimed at total transparency and prevention of any possible misuse or procedural lapses. These measures include rigorous pre-election checking of each EVM by the technicians, two level randomization with the involvement of political parties, candidates, their agents, for the random allotment of the EVMs to various constituencies and subsequently to various polling stations, preparation of the EVMs for elections in the presence of the candidates/their agents, and the Election Observers, provision for various thread seal and paper seal protection against any unauthorized access to the EVMs after preparation, mock poll in the presence of polling agents and mock poll certification system before the commencement of poll, post poll sealing and strong room protection, randomization of counting staff, micro observers at the counting tables, and so on.

The Election Commission of India is amply satisfied about the non-tamperability and the fool-proof working of the EVMs. The Commission’s confidence in the efficacy of the EVMs has been fortified by the judgments of various courts and the views of technical experts. The Karnataka High Court has hailed the EVM as ‘a national pride’ (judgment dated 5.2.2004 in Michael B. Fernandes Vs C.K.Jaffer Sharief and others in E.P No 29 of 1999). The Election commission issued a press brief after the Indian general elections 2009 clarifying the same On 8 October 2013,Supreme Court of India delivered its verdict on Subramanian Swamy PIL, that Election Commission of India will use VVPATs along with EVMs in a phased manner and the full completion should be achieved by 2019.

Internet Voting Introduced

In April 2011 Gujarat became the first Indian state to experiment with Internet voting.

Ireland

Ireland bought voting machines from the Dutch company Nedap for about €40 million. The machines were used on a 'pilot' basis in 3 constituencies for the 2002 Irish general election and a referendum on the Treaty of Nice. Following a public report by the Commission on Electronic Voting, then Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Martin Cullen again delayed the use of the machines

On 23 April 2009, the Minister for the Environment John Gormley announced that the electronic voting system was to be scrapped by an as yet undetermined method, due to cost and the public's dissatisfaction with the current system.

On 6 October 2010, the Taoiseach Brian Cowen said that the 7,000 machines would not be used for voting and would be disposed of. As of October 2010, the total cost of the electronic voting project has reached €54.6 million, including €3 million spent on storing the machines over the previous five years.

Italy

On 9 and 10 April 2006 the Italian municipality of Cremona used Nedap Voting machines in the national elections. The pilot involved 3000 electors and 4 polling stations were equipped with Nedap systems. The electoral participation was very high and the pilot was successful.

In the same elections (April 2006) the Ministry of New Technologies in cooperation with two big American companies organized a pilot only concerning e-counting. The experiment involved four regions and it cost 34 million euro.

Kazakhstan

Elections in Kazakhstan have used electronic voting. In 2003, the Kazakh Central Election Commission entered into a partnership with the United Institute of Informatics Problems of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus to develop an electronic voting system. This system, known as the Sailau Electronic Voting System (АИС «Сайлау»), saw its first use in Kazakhstan's 2004 Parliamentary elections. The final form of the system, as used in the presidential election of 2005 and the parliamentary election of 2007, has been described as using "indirect recording electronic voting." In this case, voters signing into use the Sailau system were issued smart cards holding the ballot to be voted. Voters then carried these cards to a voting booth, where they used the Sailau touch-screen ballot marking device to record their votes on the card. Finally, the voters returned the ballot cards to the sign-in table where the ballot was read from the card into the electronic "ballot box" before the card was erased for reuse by another voter.

On Nov. 16, 2011, Kuandyk Turgankulov, head of the Kazakh Central Election Commission, said that use of the Sailau system would be discontinued because voters prefer paper, the political parties do not trust it, and the lack of funds required to update the system.

Netherlands

From the late 1990s until 2007, voting machines were used extensively in elections. Most areas in the Netherlands used electronic voting in polling places. After security problems with the machines were widely publicized, they were banned in 2007.

The most widely used voting machines were produced by the company Nedap. In the 2006 parliamentary elections, 21,000 persons used the Rijnland Internet Election System to cast their vote.

On 5 October 2006 the group "Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet" ("We do not trust voting machines") demonstrated on Dutch television how the Nedap ES3B machines could be manipulated in five minutes. The exchange of the software would not be recognisable by voters or election officials.

Apparently there was a case of an election official misinforming voters of when their vote is recorded and later recording it himself in municipality elections in Landerd, Netherlands in 2006. A candidate was also an election official and received the unusual amount of 181 votes in the polling place where he was working. In the other three polling places combined he received only 11 votes. Only circumstantial evidence could be found, because the voting machine was a direct-recording electronic voting machine; in a poll by a local newspaper the results were totally different. The case is still under prosecution.

Van Eck phreaking might also compromise the secrecy of the votes in an election using electronic voting. This made the Dutch government ban the use of computer voting machines manufactured by SDU in the 2006 national elections, fearing that secret ballots may not be kept secret.

In September 2007 a committee chaired by Korthals Altes reported to the government that it would be better to return to paper voting. The deputy minister for the interior Ank Bijleveld said in a first response she would accept the committee's advice, and ban electronic voting. The committee also concluded that the time wasn't ready for voting over the Internet. State secretary Ank Bijleveld responded by announcing a return to paper voting.. It was reported in September 2007 that "a Dutch judge has declared the use of Nedap e-voting machines in recent Dutch elections unlawful."

On February 1, 2017 the Dutch government announced that all ballots in the 2017 general election would be counted by hand.

Norway

The Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development of Norway carried out pilots in three municipalities at local elections in 2003 on voting machines in the polling stations using touch screens.

Norway tried to conduct voting by using the online voting method and it “did not increase voter turnout, not even among younger demographics.” People in Norway wanted to ensure that there was high voter confidence and believed that online voting would bring along with it security and political controversy. There are firsthand accounts given of some of the worries that are present with the introduction of a technology such as online voting.

The use of the Internet in elections is a fairly recent concept and as with any new technology it will undergo a certain amount of scrutiny until people can fully trust it and implement it into worldwide elections. Critics of online voting argued that online voting isn’t secure enough and thus creates a large amount of skeptics who oppose the use of online voting, which in turn will result in a challenge to implement online voting as the primary method of casting votes. Another area that people are worried about is the process of authentication of votes. In other words, what process will voters have to go through to ensure that they are who they say they are?

The Institute of Social Research in Norway conducted a study in which we can see signs that voters are afraid that their votes will become public, which they will see as a compromise of their democratic rights. In addition, voters’ fears are embedded in the encryption system that guards the privacy of their votes. How can voters be sure that their votes are safe from hackers? This led them to believe that in order to make this a viable voting system, governments have to ensure that the encryption system used to protect votes is as safe as possible. Until governments can ensure a certain level of safety for people’s votes, the outcomes in Norway are unlikely to change - the voter turnout will still be low even if the convenience of voting is made easier.

Philippines

In May 2010, the government of the Philippines planned to carry out its first ever entirely electronically tabulated election, using and optical scan voting system. The government invested $160 million into the new system. This included the electronic voting machines, printers, servers, power generators, memory cards, batteries, and broadband and satellite transmission equipment. This national implementation of electronic voting was intended to increase the accuracy and speed of vote tallying. In addition, it was expected to decrease the fraud and corruption found in past Philippine elections.

On May 3, 2010, the Philippines pre-tested the electronic voting systems. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) found 76,000 of the total 82,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan Machines to have faulty memory cards. The machines had miscounted votes and had given some votes to the rival candidate. After discovering discrepancies between manual and automated voting tallies, the memory cards were changed throughout the country. Many Filipino voters became skeptical of the e-voting system after the national recall. Because of past violent elections, 250,000 troops were placed on high alert around the country. These forces were instructed to guard the machines and voting stations in order to preempt any violent protests against the system. Some election officials attempted to postpone the May 10 election day but elections proceeded as scheduled.

On May 10, 2010, the Philippines had its first presidential election using electronic voting. Comelec reported that only 400 of the 82,000 machines malfunctioned. Most voter complaints were related to waiting in long lines and learning the new technology.

Romania

Romania first implemented electronic voting systems in 2003, on a limited basis, to extend voting capabilities to soldiers and others serving in Iraq, and other theaters of war. Despite the publicly stated goal of fighting corruption, the equipment was procured and deployed in less than 30 days after the government edict passed.

South Korea

Elections in South Korea use a central-count system with optical scanners at each regional election office. A separate ballot paper is used for each office being contested, and votes are cast using red ink and a rubber stamp. Ballots are similar in size to paper currency, and the optical scanners resemble cash sorter machines. After the ballots are sorted, stacks of ballots are counted using machines resembling currency counting machines. The Korean system has been praised as a model of best practice, but it has also been the subject of controversy, including questions about its legality and allegations of rigged counting in 2012.

Spain

In 2014, during its first party congress, the political party Podemos, conducted 3 elections using Agora Voting open source software to vote via the Internet on a series of documents which would determine the political and organizative principles of the party (112070 voters), the resolutions the party will adopt (38279 voters), and the people that would fill the positions defined by this structure (107488 voters). After the municipal elections carried out in May 2015 several city mayors have announced their plans to carry out public consultation processes using electronic voting.

Switzerland

Several cantons (Geneva, Neuchâtel and Zürich) have developed Internet voting test projects to allow citizens to vote via the Internet.

In 2009 and 2011, the 110,000 Swiss voters living abroad will have the option of voting using the Internet through a new pilot project introduced in September 2008.

Up until the vote on February 9, 2014, internet voting was only open to expatriates who lived in the countries in the Wassenaar Arrangement because of their communication standards. After this vote in 2014, internet voting has opened to all expatriates of Switzerland. Although this will cause more risk with voting from abroad, it will allow more people to participate in voting, and there no longer has to be a separation of expatriates during voting and registration.

On February 27, 2017 Swiss Post announced that it was offering a public demonstration version of its e-voting system. The Swiss Post solution has been used in Fribourg and will be used in Neuchâtel.

UAE Federal National Council and 2005 Elections

On December 2, 1971, with the adoption of the constitution, the federation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was officially established. A few months later, in February 1972, the country’s first ever federal national council (FNC) was set up as the country's legislative and constitutional body. In 2005, the UAE held its first national elections. This was recognized as a step forward to enhance a well-structured political participation in line with citizens’ aspirations, and as a major milestone towards modernization and development of the federation.

2011 Federal National Council Elections

After the first electoral experience in the UAE in 2005, the National Election Committee (NEC) approved electronic voting instead of traditional voting procedures as it had been attracting the attention of governments around the world. The same election model was used for the 2011 FNC elections, except for the electoral college, where the number of voters increased from around 6,000 to almost 130,000.

The 2011 FNC elections were considered to be more challenging due to the short time frame and the size of the electoral college, as well as the fact that the majority of voters were first-time voters and had never seen a ballot box. The government decided to take innovative steps to encourage participation and introduced technology-driven systems to facilitate the overall program. Hence a process was designed which required detailed planning in the areas of site preparation and capacity computation, technical infrastructure development, communication planning, addressing logistical and staff requirements, and the overall specifications of the electronic voting system.

England

Voting pilots have taken place in May 2006, June 2004, May 2003, May 2002, and May 2000.

In 2000, the London Mayoral and Assembly elections were counted using an optical scan voting system with software provided by DRS plc of Milton Keynes. In 2004, the London Mayoral, Assembly and European Parliamentary elections were scanned and processed using optical character recognition from the same company. Both elections required some editing of the ballot design to facilitate electronic tabulation, though they differed only slightly from the previous 'mark with an X' style ballots.

As at January 2016, the UK Parliament has no plans to introduce electronic voting for statutory elections, either using electronic voting in polling booths or remotely via the internet.

Scotland

An optical scan voting system was used to electronically count paper ballots in the Scottish Parliament general election and Scottish council elections in 2007. A report commissioned by the UK Electoral Commission found significant errors in ballot design produced more than 150,000 spoilt votes.

Current status

The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act of 1986 requires states and territories to allow overseas military personnel and citizens to vote in federal elections. The Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act of 2009 amended this law to require delivery of ballots by at least one electronic means (email, fax, or web site). As of September 2016, submission of ballots is done by mail in 18 states; the other states and the District of Columbia allow submission by one or more of email, fax, or secure web site.

States that allow remote electronic voting outside of UOCAVA:

2000 Arizona Democratic presidential primary Internet election

In March 2000 the Arizona Democratic Party ran its Presidential Primary over the internet using the private company election.com. The announcement received significant press coverage around the world, covered in virtually every country and medium as a test of whether internet voting could actually work in a statewide election.

Voting Rights Act lawsuits

Several attempts were made to stop the election, including a lawsuit instigated by the Virginia-based Voting Integrity Project, which claimed that Internet voting would disadvantage African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, all protected classes under the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Integrity Project, along with two African American and two Hispanic plaintiffs, claimed that by allowing Internet voting, minority groups, which at that time had less access to the internet, would have their collective voting power proportionately reduced. The plaintiff's sought an injunction to stop the election. The lawsuit, along with other factors, was depleting the resources of the Arizona Democratic Party. The court had to determine if the voting rights act applied, since this election was being conducted by the Democratic Party itself, not the state or country government; the plaintiff's argued it was. The court also had to decide if the election was unfairly diluting the minority vote, given the plaintiffs' claims that whites were more likely to vote over the internet than non-whites. Several organizations filed amicus briefs in support of the Democratic Party and the Internet election, including the Benjamin E. Mayes National Education Resource Center, the Center of Government Studies, and Professor Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School. On March 2, 2000 Judge Paul G. Rosenblatt, of the United States District Court in Phoenix, issued its decision. While the court agreed with the plaintiffs that this was a public election, it also noted in its decision that there were other ways to vote, including absentee ballot by mail, and voting at polling places, and thus there was no basis to stop the election. The court denied the request for an injunction to stop the election.

Civil rights concerns

Serious concerns about internet were also raised by civil rights organizations around the United States. Native American support is particularly important in Arizona, where they numbered more than 250,000. The states two most prominent leaders were Apache leader John Lewis, president of the Inter-Tribal Counsel, and Kelsey A. Begaye President of the Navajo Nation. The outreach efforts by Election.com CEO, Joe Mohen, and the Arizona Democratic Party to Native Americans were particularly successful, such that the Voting Integrity Project was unable to recruit even one Native American to be a plaintiff in their case, and The Navajo leadership, including President Kelsey Begaye, prominent Native American leaders posed for Television Cameras when they later voted over the internet.

On February 24, 2000, the Department of Justice granted pre-clearance for the election.

Security threats

Many public threats by hackers were made that they would bring down the election. These threats ranged from to denial of service attacks and voter identity theft. The election software was audited by KPMG. While the original plan was to use VeriSign digital certificates, though ultimately PINs were mailed to each voter and a challenge-response authentication system (such as birth date, place of birth, or social security number) was used as well. One magazine columnist, Howard Mortman, even hired a computer hacker to attempt to disrupt the election.

Voting period

The week of the election, online voting was allowed beginning Tuesday March 7 through Friday March 10. The following Saturday March 11, voting would be allowed at Polling Places only, through personal computers. There were some minor problems, in that a few polling places did not open on schedule, and some users with older browsers could not vote. The election went off successfully, with voter turnout increasing more than 500% over the 1996 Primary. Contrary to expectations, Native American turnout also increased more than 500% and African American and Latino turnout both went up more than 800%, defying those who claimed that minorities would not use the internet to cast votes. The results were certified by the State Board of Elections. There were many other "firsts"; news footage showing a middle-aged quadriplegic man in Arizona who cast his first unassisted, secret ballot using the Internet. election.com reported no hacking during the election. Shortly after, Mohen was featured on the cover of the Industry Standard Magazine.

Ongoing debate

The Arizona Democratic primary has been called the "first legally binding public election to offer internet voting". However, the Arizona Democratic Party and the private company administering the election argued in federal court that it was a private election outside of federal jurisdiction. Still others, such as the Internet Policy Institute, have classified the primary, as a "hybrid between public and private elections... not run by state election officials, but were still subject to some aspects of state and federal election law." And there were some glitches such as that certain Macintosh browsers did not work. Nonetheless, the 2000 Arizona Internet vote was hailed worldwide as a landmark case of using the Internet at a major election.

Venezuela

Elections in Venezuela first introduced electronic voting in the 1998 presidential election. The Venezuelan recall referendum, 2004 was the first national election to feature a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). This allow the voter to verify that the machine has properly recorded their vote. It also permits audits and recounts.