Representatives of important higher education institutions in Chile, Costa Rica and Ecuador highlighted the advantages of remote electronic voting.
In the past two years, 19 universities have conducted more than 190 election processes with EVoting’s electronic voting platform, electing internal authorities remotely. It is a service that has been quickly validated, receiving more than 130,000 votes, with over 600 elected positions and an average participation rate of 84%. The platform has been used in 15 student election processes.
The progress has been recognized by the representatives of the higher education institutions involved. The university with the most experience in this area is the Universidad de Concepción of Chile, whose Rector, Carlos Saavedra, emphasized that the service has allowed “maintaining the continuity of the renewal processes of democratically elected authorities through these new mechanisms that guarantee the fundamental aspects of an election process: the information, secrecy and integrity of the vote”.
In the meantime, Pablo Palacios, Coordinator of Computer Services of the Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador, said that “the tool very well fulfilled what it offered to do, providing guarantees that the results were correct. It can deliver accurate data, and a very serious, transparent and secure process can be conducted”.
Likewise, the new Rector of the Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación, Elisa Araya, elected in a process with electronic voting, expressed that this type of voting, “in the university environment, where everyone is connected, opens the possibility of a wide participation. I believe that it should not go backwards, the University should continue to deepen these mechanisms”.
On the other hand, Fernando Orellana, Secretary General of the Universidad Católica del Norte in Chile, indicated that in most of the elections conducted electronically on his campus, “the level of voting increased a lot. More people have participated than they traditionally do. I think that electronic voting should be kept; the way the system is working today should not be changed, on the contrary I think it should be maintained”.
Working with the academic world has been a great responsibility, recognizes Felipe Lorca, EVoting’s Voting Manager who is in charge of the EUniversities service: “it is a mean that demands the highest standards of quality, efficiency and rigor, and to be in permanent revision and constant updating”.