Beyond E-Voting: Alternative Ways to Improve Electoral Processes by Introducing New Technologies

Preliminary vote counts are increasingly under scrutiny. In Argentina, the absence of specific rules, involvement of the Ministry of the Interior and delays and errors in recent elections have raised concerns among parties and candidates. The controversy is not trivial: citizen trust in elections may be affected. Against this background, the province of Santa Fe sought to adopt new technologies to improve the accuracy and celerity of preliminary vote count. The innovation consisted of a tablet with a user interface that guided polling station workers through the filling and printing of polling station forms. Also, a cell phone was used to scan and send the forms to the data center. Until then, forms were transmitted by fax. To assess the impact of these changes, a randomized controlled trial was conducted during the 2017 provincial election. The results revealed that the new technologies significantly improved the accuracy and celerity of preliminary vote count. They eliminated errors that occur when filling the forms by hand, faxing them, and typing polling station data at the data center. Also, processing time was reduced. In 2019, the new transmission technology was implemented in two districts that account for 54% of the provincial electorate: Rosario and Santa Fe. Another evaluation was conducted. This paper presents the results of the randomized controlled trial and the evaluation conducted in 2017 and 2019 respectively. The findings are a contribution to the ongoing debate regarding the introduction of new technologies in electoral processes: they show that even without automating the casting, counting and tallying of votes, the adoption of new technology can improve election administration.