In the coming days, the process to implement electronic voting in the upcoming elections in Buenos Aires will begin. The system, already used in 2015it is part of the “concurrent elections” called by the head of government, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, which provides for two simultaneous voting mechanisms: the traditional ballot box and the OX (Single Electronic Ballot). In the latter case, there are 5 companies interested in maintaining a contract estimated at 2,000 million dollars from industry sources.
The organization of the Buenos Aires elections is entrusted to the IGE (Electoral Management Institute), which since last week has been preparing the specifications for the tender against the clock. Time is tight (PASO is scheduled for August 13), but “We should arrive without problems, except for some imponderable last minute”they admit to that autarkic body, which is led internally by the former electoral director Ezio Emiliozzi.
Due to the characteristics of the election, the IGE must coordinate the operation with the electoral court of Buenos Aires and the judge with electoral jurisdiction of the district, María Servini de Cubría. Hence the difficulty in establishing the final cost of the OX, which is the same system that It was used this Sunday in Neuquén. MSA, the company that supplies the system, will raise $700 milliona price established on the basis of the register of 555,000 voters.
MSA is of national origin. It was created in 1995 and was software-oriented (its first name was Magic Software Argentina), but later it focused on providing electoral infrastructure: voting machines and digital counting. In Argentina and in some countries of the region it competes with the Spanish Indra (which will handle the provisional national ballot), the Anglo-American Smartmatic, the Korean Miru System and the Dominion Voting, of US capital.
“The so-called OX is a hybrid mechanism, i.e. partly physical because it is inserted in a device that prints the chosen electoral options and also records them electronically in a radio frequency data collector (chip), which is located inside the electoral card ” , explains former national electoral director Alejandro Tullio.The specialist recalls that the system has been used repeatedly in Salta, Chaco, now in Neuquén, in some municipalities of Córdoba and “it is the same that was used in 2015 in the city of Buenos Aires”.
Salta is the neighborhood with the greatest history. Voting has been done there with an electronic ballot box since 2011. The same will happen on 14 May. MSA won the $980 million bid to provide all the technology support for an election in which 1.2 million voters are eligible. The amount of the deal depends on the owner. The price of each vote averages about US$5, but it can vary depending on the services requested on each occasion.
The number of voters in the capital hardly moves. The 2021 Buenos Aires census counted 2,552,058, just above the 2,551,306 in 2015. That year, MSA credited $152 million for organizing what was the first concrete experience of electronic voting in the Buenos Aires area. In other words, the cost of the OX at that time was close to $11 million, nearly the same figure estimated for this year, according to private sector calculations. in dollars, because in pesos it represents more than 13 times that of 2015.
Although the details of the tender are not yet known, it is assumed (from Larreta’s own statements) that the Buenos Aires authorities want to repeat the same mechanism of 2015. The single electronic voting system is based on a card that the voter receives before entering the dark room and containing a chip that digitally records the vote chosen by the voter. The machine (which is operated as if it were an ATM) prints the same information on the back of the ballot which will then go to the ballot box.
In the Buenos Aires area, they are excited about the possibility of the race progressing without major setbacks. That is to say that no disputes or complaints arise from competing companies. In qualifying, Smartatic is MSA’s main rival in the race. It was the company that carried out the nationwide interim audit in 2019, instead of Indra, the most veteran in that industry. On the market they argue that Indra has voting machines but would not be interested in fighting for the contract with CABA. The company did not return Clarin’s calls.
Source: Clarin
