Since 1996 the Basque Government Directorate for Electoral Processes and Documentation has made major efforts to apply new technologies to the democratic process and to be proactive in the promotion of technological development and its implications in political life and in public involvement, to help modernise the Basque public administration and raise Euskadi to a position among the most advanced countries in the application of new technologies to electoral processes. This initiative gave rise to the Demotek© system, an innovative electronic balloting system that maintains the current form of voting but speeds up the telling of ballot slips and the reporting of election results.

The automation of balloting is developing slowly all over the world, because to work properly it requires not only technological advances but also assurances that it can meet all the requirements of privacy, security and confidentiality that must be in place for a system to be considered democratic. This is illustrated by the fact that the earliest attempts to automate balloting were made in the late 19th century. The first balloting machines were used in the USA around 100 years ago, and since then many countries have taken an interest in automatic balloting but only a few (the USA, Belgium, Ireland, Brazil, Paraguay, India and the Philippines) have actually implemented such systems. This means that there are currently very few governments that have adapted their legislation to electronic balloting procedures.

The pages below provide an overview of the state of the art of electronic balloting around the world. The situation in Europe, America, Asia, Africa and Oceania is described, with a distinction drawn between those countries where electronic balloting has been fully implemented and those in which it is being studied or is at the trial stage.