Brazil’s Electronic Voting Machine Turns 30

Overview

• The system, which marked 30 years on Wednesday, anchors a new exhibit in Rio that displays the 1996 prototypes and shows how the hardware’s look changed little as its software advanced.
• First used in 1996 with about 70,000 machines in 57 cities, the UE96 prototypes came from a joint effort by election officials and engineers from Inpe, ITA and Air Force research centers known as the “ninjas.”
• Today’s machines use digital signatures, encryption and verification checks developed by the electoral court, and they face regular public security tests where outside experts try to break the defenses.
• The next nationwide vote in Brazil arrives on October 4th, when the same equipment will run a full slate of races and deliver results within hours instead of the weeks once needed for hand counts.
• A new study found that more than 45% of recent false election posts targeted how the machines work, often with claims about the confirm button or auto-filled numbers, as polls show 53% of Brazilians say they trust the system.