Then a slew of missteps by Venezuelan election authorities, including their initial rejection of international inspection, undercut whatever confidence they had acquired from the public. Nevertheless, the Latin American nation has accomplished something that has long eluded the United States: a national system of electronic voting.
"The Carter Center concludes that the automated machines worked well and the voting results do reflect the will of the people," former US President Jimmy Carter wrote after his organisation observed Venezuelan voting and audited a results sample from the Aug. 15 referendum to recall President Hugo Rafael Chavez.
For all its vaunted leadership in technology and all things democratic, the United States finds itself in the unusual position of looking to developing nations for direction in the field of electronic voting. Mistrust of technology and the closed systems that have been created to tally votes have scuttled touch-screen and other electronic voting systems.
Under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the federal government hoped that a majority of precincts would begin to use e-voting systems, but only about 31 percent of the nation's voters will likely cast a ballot on an electronic system this fall.
While foreign voting systems are certainly far from perfect, both supporters and detractors of e-voting agree that the United States can learn some important lessons from parts of the world that have not been historically associated with sophisticated voting technologies.
"Before we start experimenting with new technology and real elections, we can use what other countries are doing as an experiment," said Aviel Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University.
India, whose per-capita income is a 70th that of the United States, has moved to an electronic system that ties a million terminals together to enable the entire country's citizens to vote digitally. In India's most recent elections, e-voting machines counted every ballot. Nearly 390 million people voted out of a possible 670 million eligible to vote, according to data from the Election Commission of India.
Venezuela has also converted its ballot boxes to digital devices. In the recent attempt to recall President Chavez, nearly 70 percent of the voters, or about 10 million people, turned out to cast their votes on touch-screen terminals, according to the Consejo Nacional Electoral, Venezuela's electoral council. The referendum resulted in 59 percent of voters denying the recall.
Despite obvious achievements, the speed of e-voting advancement in other countries has come at a price.
Fearing fraud in Venezuela
In Venezuela, for example, the government gave the opposition fodder for claims of tampering by initially denying a spot check of voting machines after the polls closed. Election authorities eventually allowed an audit of 1 percent of the machines, allegedly selected randomly, but the number of machines checked was limited; the high voter turnout caused polls to close late. A second audit, requested by international observers, occurred three days later, but the government selected the method of review.
"The random sample wasn't chosen by the Carter Center but by the government," said Roberto Rigobon, an economics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management.
3%
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