The Central Electoral Commission, CEC, has abandoned the planned use of new pilot technologies in the June 23 parliamentary elections, after tests revealed problems. The Electoral Code mandated the CEC to pilot two new election technologies for these elections: an electronic voter verification system, EVS, in the district of Tirana, and an electronic counting system in the region of Fier. But according to a CEC report 11 per cent of the identity cards tested could not be read from the machine. Tests with the EVS system in Tirana revealed that the system could not read deteriorated IDs or prevent attempts of multiple voting at different voting centres.
The ballot scanning system in the region of Fier will not be used either, after tests conducted in April revealed a number of problems with the system, including slow processing speed and insufficient capacity.
The capacity of the selected ballot counting system is limited to 42 names while the final ballot lists 67 political parties.
The e-voting system in both Fier and Tirana were contracted by the Spanish company Indra at a cost of €2.6 million.
Full Article: Albania drops electronic voting from June 23 parliamentary elections.
