Election Procedures and Technology
In the recent Kazakh elections, many Kazakh voters were offered a choice of voting on electronic voting machines or on paper ballots. At least some of the ballot boxes used in Kazakhstan are transparent in order to defend against ballot box stuffing. Each polling place was equipped with both a large ballot box and smaller mobile ballot boxes. The latter are designed to be carried, by poll-workers, to voters outside the polling place. This is an alternative to offering absentee ballots or proxy voting for voters with disabilities that prevent them from going to the polls.
Electronic voting in Kazakhstan is based on the AIS "Sailau" electronic voting system developed in Belarus and Kazakhstan. This system is best described as an indirect-recording electronic voting system, as opposed to the DRE voting machines that have been more widely studied. In this system, the touch-screen voting terminal in the voting booth serves as a ballot marking device, recording selections on a smart card. The voting terminal itself retains no record of the vote after the voter takes the smart card. The voter then takes the smart card containing the cast ballot record to the computer at the registration table that serves as the electronic ballot box where the permanent record of the vote is retained and tabulated.
On Nov. 16, 2011, Kuandyk Turgankulov, head of the Kazakh Central Election Commission, said that use of the Sailau system would be discontinued because voters prefer paper, the political parties do not trust it, and the lack of funds required to update the system.
Read more about this topic: Elections In Kazakhstan
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