Electronic Elections: A Balancing Act

This article aims to share some major lessons learned from the pioneering experience in Brazil with the world's first full national implementation of universal electronic voting. Differing notions of security, and their “collateral entanglements”, appear to play a key role and are contrasted in Brazil's pioneering electronic voting saga. After an introduction, we puzzle through what election security may mean. We elaborate on how technological innovations may affect the underlying risks, their nature, corrections and balance. Then we describe some ways in which innovations have been deployed and validated, and how the results are being perceived, before some closing remarks.