The Association of Mining Engineers, Metallurgists and Geologists of Mexico (AIMMGM) held two district elections together with EVoting. After finishing the process, its General Director, César Vásquez, valued the implementation of electronic mechanisms at the time of voting.
From June 23 to 29, the district elections of the Association of Mining Engineers, Metallurgists and Geologists of Mexico were held in Guanajuato and La Paz. In the end, the elections concluded with a total participation of 83% of the eligible voters.
Cesar Vasquez, General Director of the association, talked to EVoting about the development of the process and the advantages of using electronic mechanisms in democratic instances.
How do you evaluate the process carried out together with EVoting?
It was carried out very well. The need for attention, changes and everything that happened afterwards, happened in a very harmonious way, with the satisfaction of the voters, which is the most important thing. In other words, when people have no doubts about a process, they tell you “everything was fine, everything went smoothly, everything went well”. So, the result for me, for my association, is very good, it gives us one more experience to work with electronic voting and, finally, I think that the most interesting thing is that it opens a path for future processes in which EVoting can help us.
How did you come to EVoting and what do you highlight about the service provided?
In Mexico electronic voting is not very common, there is no tradition of electronic voting. So it is complicated to look for an electronic voting provider. Looking for it on the Internet, knocking on the door, EVoting opened it for me and opened it very well, and we worked together.
I emphasize that there is greater fluidity, it is flexible, it reacts very fast; they have that advantage. There were adjustments that we had to make and EVoting was able to make them. Besides, they have the capacity and infrastructure to be able to execute them. So that point is very good.
What do you think of the participation achieved?
It was very high; that invites us to think that it was more efficient. I suppose that it increased efficiency so that people could access electronic voting and that led to a participation of more than 80% in the two processes. So, besides the interest that people may or may not have, the important thing was that it allowed them to exercise their vote electronically, that they received the mails they were supposed to receive, and we did not take advantage of the whole EVoting platform, we went to the simplest, which is where we can do the most, where we have a greater coverage, which are electronic mails. I believe that the fact that people had a greater facility with electronic voting was an incentive.
What is your opinion on the implementation of electronic voting in other areas?
For me electronic voting is not optional, it is an obligation. I mean, we are an association of more than 3000 people, not all of them vote, about 60% vote because they are the ones who have the quality of voters, the issue is that we are not concentrated, we are scattered in about 15 cities and mining units, so voting in another way is very complicated, it is not transparent, you never know if the paper vote arrived or not, if it came back or not. We have tragicomic stories of the use of the paper vote, once we received 150 votes from the election two years ago, things like that, things that we never knew what happened because communication via paper is very complicated. It is much more efficient for the member to have access through electronic voting.
Finally, what do you think is missing in Mexico for a greater implementation of electronic voting?
I believe that the associations must have greater transparency and electronic voting gives you transparency, besides, you cannot imagine the conflicts that we avoid thanks to this mechanism. I sleep peacefully with electronic voting. The idea is to invite you to get to know and see, above all, the advantage of not having conflicts and transparency, which is vital in an association, in addition to generating total credibility.