SZTAKI - Department of Distributed Systems

New Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are present in all areas of society and public administration.

Nowadays, the relations between citizens and public administration are characterised by the increasing use of electronic procedures. In this context, citizens demand modernisation of electoral procedures in order to increase the efficiency and transparency of elections.

Private organisations like large companies, trade unions, sports clubs and associations have electoral processes to elect their governing bodies.

An electronic voting system for these kinds of elections gives these organisations an opportunity to increase the efficiency, reliability and transparency of the elections. The logistics and personnel involved in the election will be reduced and it will mean a reduction in the costs of holding the election for the company.

The development of methodologies for the implementation of electronic voting procedures provide society with better quality electoral services, characterised by the reliability and transparency of the new systems.

The electronic voting system is an intermediate state, before reaching the concept of e-democracy. This means a modernisation of the services offered to citizens, without having associated social and political implications:

• The results will be available to citizens in a shorter time and the reliability of the process is always available. The innovation applied to the voting process improve the voter turnout statistics.
• The organisations responsible for electoral processes will benefit from the implementation of electronic voting. Election management will be simplified, the risks of the procedure will be minimised and logistics and personnel involved in the process will be reduced.

The aim objective of the MOVOT project was to develop two alternative electronic voting systems and a new methodology to allow Public Administrations and Private Organisations to use electronic voting equipment in their electoral processes together with the corresponding transfer of technology.

The main difference with the traditional voting procedures will be the elimination of the paper ballot. As a consequence, the costs associated with ballot printing and logistics will be eliminated. This will mean savings of tons of paper which are required for every traditional election process, saving at the same time thousands of trees.

Data will be stored, so if it is necessary, it will be possible to audit the process by checking that the data stored is the same as data transmitted to the 'Totalisation Centre'.

The MOVOT project addressed the development of innovative procedures by using electronic equipment in the electoral process for both the public and private sectors.